Tuesday, September 20, 2011

2011-12 Ultimate Season (Update)

So, apparently, WhatIfSports sucks at allocating minutes to "Dream Teams." Here's a few examples - 1.) Jerry West starts over Magic Johnson on the All-Time Lakers squad, which would be fine, but they split minutes at the point right down the middle and each end up with only about 18 minutes a game. (Slater Martin picks up the rest.) 2.) Michael Jordan does not start for the All-Time Bulls. Jerry Sloan does. And the split time at the 2-guard slot. 3.) Larry Bird not only doesn't start for the All-Time Celtics, but he averages only 9 minutes a game... And this is when I stopped letting What If Sports do it's own thing and decided I needed to step in.


So, here's my plan - I'm going to come up with a system to determine which five guys would be most beneficial for each team to start. I'll try to stay as close to their original position as possible, but I may move some guys up or down a slot if it seems like they could handle that spot and still be far superior to their replacement. (Example: I will probably start both Shaq and Kareem for the Lakers, rather than Pau Gasol, who is the best true "Power Forward" on the team.)


Basically, I'm going to start the best true point guard, the best two wing men (these will most likely be shooting guards or small forwards, but could conceivably contain a point guard under the right circumstances), and the two best big men (either power forwards or centers - or small forwards if a team is desperate.)


And I plan on allocating minutes based on whatever the minute per game average was for the player's best year according to What If Sports. (Yes, I realize that won't add up to the correct number of minutes every time, but WIS can short the non-starters if need be.)


Does that make sense to everyone? Or does anyone have any better suggestions for formulating a team's starting five?

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Ultimate Season

In anticipation of the looming cancellation of the 2011-2012 NBA season, I've decided that instead of doing the Ultimate Tournament this year, I'm going to try to do the Ultimate Season. I'm going to take the ultimate rosters (I'm in the process of updating them right now) and run the entire 2011-2012 schedule with those rosters. A couple notes:


1. The Rosters will be mostly the same as they were last year for the Ultimate Tournament, a few teams might be slightly updated because of the results of last year and the addition of win share data from before 1952.
2. The games will be run through the WhatIfSports simulator. During last year's tournament, I determined the minutes and positions and whatnot myself, but due to time constraints, I'm afraid I'm going to have to let WIS do that on it's own.
3. If this takes off enough, hopefully we can do an All-Star Game and season Awards and Honors. If I get enough readers, maybe I can even have people vote on it. That'd be kind of cool.
4. If anyone has the schedule for every team for every month on one sheet/page or knows where I can find it, please post the link in the comments.
5. Wish me luck!

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Hanging from the Rafters - Dallas Mavericks


On to the reigning champs. Not exactly a rich history here. But we've got a definite top 20/top 25 all time player here and probably three fan favorites. (Not that Dirk's not a fan fave, but you know what I mean.) It's a good balance of players, I think.

The List of Greatness - 1984

I hope everyone's enjoying their Saturday. I'm currently putting off doing homework for my graduate degree by brushing up on some Big Ten football (as a newly minted Big Ten man/Nebraska alum, I need to start figuring this stuff out) and putting together basketball stats. I just watched Ohio State barely hold off Toledo (yeesh...) and I'm currently watching Iowa-Iowa State go into triple overtime. I love overtime in college football. Especially when you hit the third and you gotta start going for two after every touchdown. Anyway, we've got a Legend joining the List today (and a surprise joining the supplementary list, as well.)


Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Hanging from the Rafters - Cleveland Cavaliers

One thing that I might not have made clear in my intro to this series of posts is that the point of running these is to establish a consistent, uniform basis of requirements for all teams by which a jersey should be retired. Right now, it's all a hodgepodge of what each team wants to do, and consequently, a guy who did great for one team might not get his jersey retired even though 25 other teams would gladly put it up there. For example, the Lakers and Knicks only retire Hall of Famers, the Celtics will retire just about anyone who's won a title or two, the Cavs will retire anyone they feel like. So, the point of this is, "if every team had the same rules, who would we see hanging from the rafters." I may adjust the requirements when all is said and done and we can look at who we have and haven't retired, but for right now, it's just an exercise in making sure equal accomplishments result in equal honors.


Anyway, I bring this up now because the Cavs have retired a lot of jerseys. Way more than you'd expect. But I imagine they won't be retiring LeBron's any time soon. Even though he's far and away the best player that's ever played for the franchise. He will be on this list. And the above paragraph explains why.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The List of Greatness - 1983

I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend. Well, all my American readers anyway. I dunno how stuff works in other countries. I assume you had a regular weekend. Which I hope you had a good one of anyway. I did absolutely nothing productive with my three days off, this was as much as I got done, so enjoy it, folks.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Hanging from the Rafters - Updated Requirements


Originally, I had the games requirement to have a number retired set at 800, but I have been thinking about tinkering with that number a little bit. I felt like ten years with a team had to be the requirement in order to make it as a "fan favorite" and someone a fan base would really want to see honored, which would make it 820 games. Then I thought I'd just round down to account for injuries and whatnot and make it an even 800.


But now I'm thinking missing 20 games over 10 years is asking a bit too much. So, I've come to the conclusion that the requirement should be 739 games. Which is nine full years of service plus one game. So essentially, a guy had to be on a team for ten seasons, but he could miss 81 games throughout those ten years and still be have has number retired. (Any more games missed than that and fans aren't really going to get behind him with their full support anyway.)


Similarly, the 400 games & Hall of Fame Inductee was supposed to be five years and Hall of Fame, so I think I'm going to adjust that down to 329 games and making the Hall of Fame. I'm going to be making adjustments to the ones I've already posted throughout the week and then just go with those numbers from there.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Hanging from the Rafters - Chicago Bulls

Well the Bulls certainly have more guys than the Bobcats, but we're still not getting anywhere close to Boston Celtics territory.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Friday, September 2, 2011

Hanging from the Rafters - Charlotte Bobcats

Well, there obviously haven't been any Bobcats who have done enough to merit a jersey retirement in the team's seven years of existence. But click ahead if you want to see the "close calls" on who made it the closest for each criteria.