The GM Perspective

[DJ_3_Ball]

Mods, maybe this needs to be moved somewhere else or incorporated into another thread. I don't know. I just think this is one of the more fascinating and educational experiences with basketball that I've had. And, I want to share it with other Mavs' fans because those are my peeps. So, I hope this can stay in the Mavs forum.

Some of the threads we post (Trade Central, Should This Team Make a Trade?, etc) are basically "Roleplay as GM" threads. For some fans, like myself, that's half the fun of being a fan---for me more than half the fun.

I think there are things that seem very easy from the Armchair Quarterback position, but in real life are very difficult.

SO... I came across this game called basketball gm a few weeks ago, and I've been obsessed with it. I think I've played over 200 seasons already. I think the game is fairly realistic, and there's some things I've definitely noticed/learned.

The basic rules are you have salary cap restrictions (you must maintain a minimum salary & you can't trade for or sign FAs if you're over the cap, and you pay a steep luxury tax if you go over). And, the game is basically balance winning with being profitable. It's harder than it sounds. Especially as you move up the levels from Easy to Normal to Hard to Insanity.

Here's a few things I've noticed/learned:

#1 - Just as I believe is true in real life, it's imperative to find an MVP level candidate if you're going to win a title. My very first team/league, I chose the Mavericks of course & the easy level. Doncic ripped off about 9 titles in 13 years and all I had to do was not F it up & I was going to either win the title or at worse be in the Conference Finals every year.

On the more difficult settings getting to the Conference Finals every year isn't near as easy, but the dynamic of have an MVP caliber player is still true. I have tried several times to build a more balanced roster & then in the playoffs I inevitably go up against a team who has a top 3-4 player in the league, and I lose. I think it's a 2015 Atlanta Hawks type of story, because I'll come in as the 1 seed and lose to a 6th seed in some cases. True the game is built with biases, but it's also just raw data being calculated based off of player ratings, etc.

#2 - In the game you can get fired, I remember the first time I got fired it was 2 seasons after I just won like 3 out of 4 titles. Not very realistic in that sense, but you have to balance your spending, your crowd & avoid mortgaging the future for winning now, or you will be hard pressed not to get fired after winning titles.

The game has a counter balance for every move i.e. if you trade all of your draft picks for veteran additions when you have a good team, then you will have high paid declining veterans you have to let go in 3-4 years and no draft picks who are developing to step in.

When you get in a rebuild mode like that, your team isn't very good, so your crowd goes down. You have to cut ticket prices to keep the crowd #s from plummeting. Your revenue goes down, so you have to cut expenses for Scouting, Coaching & Facilities, which means when the draft comes it's harder to identify talent (also the player ratings you use to judge trades & FA signings), it's next to impossible to sign top level FAs because if you cut expenses on Facilities they won't resign. At that point, it becomes super hard to make the playoffs. You can easily be profitable, but if you don't win you'll get fired too.

At that point, you have to really get creative to find a decent team. I usually have to go 4-5 years to rebuild my draft picks. It's all about cultivating a decent player & flipping them for a future draft pick (which teams do not want to give up easily). That's the most exhausting part of the game. There's a feature called "Trade Block" where you request trades for players or picks. Every team is trying to rip you off on every deal & you have to negotiate back & forth, back & forth... Sometimes I just give up it's so exhausting. I can't imagine how frustrating that is in real life.

***You also learn the times of the NBA calendar that are best to make moves. You trade an expiring contract at different points of the season/off-season, and you'll get different return values for them.

Anyways, once you've rebuilt to the point that you can afford to spend money on your Scouting, Coaching, and Facilities (oh and the Coaching is important or you'll draft a guy with a 50 rating but a potential 70 rating & then they won't improve if your coaching isn't ranked highly among other teams in the league). Once you've done all that, THEN you can start your rebuild. This part is a little unrealistic, but there's been times I had like 7-8 first round draft picks (never more than 3 lottery picks, including my own, teams just won't part with them), and I've managed to acquire 3 of the top 5 players in the draft. You think you'd be all set. But, so many times all 3 of them won't pan out. You'll get 1 barely starter level player & 2 busts. It's really hard to rebuild through the draft.

#3 - This should go towards just how bad the Knicks have truly been. If you're the Knicks, then you're the #1 market in the game, and you can spend more and charge more for tickets. It's way easier to be successful with them. I tried to be the 30th ranked team, the Utah Jazz, on the Insanity level. I got fired in 4 seasons. Lol. That's basically immediately, because no matter how poorly you do, they game will give you 2-3 seasons to try and make things happen.

#4 - Just in general you learn how much time is involved to build a good team. Once you do find that MVP talent, which is usually once every 10-15 years, then you see all of the difficulties of building around that player. Sometimes, I've had an MVP talent player who was a PG, and I could sign a quality FA, but they were also a PG, and I couldn't get my hands on a decent C/PF to give me the things I was missing Rebs/Rim protection, etc. Then, there are times when it works out beautifully & you get to the Conference Finals and your best player goes down with an injury & you get rolled.

(Oh & I should really say this too. This is one of the most frustrating parts of the game. You play the season, do the draft, and then you re-sign your own FAs. They can refuse to sign with you, and you don't find out until that screen comes up & you see their decision. It sucks! I can't tell you how many great plans I had laid out, and I get to that resign my own FA, and the player refuses. You can only go over your own salary cap when you're resigning your own guy, so if they refuse, often times you can't replace that level of talent. It screws up your playoff chances, your profits, your future spending. If basically can destroy your entire time table & force a 4-5 year rebuild right there on the spot).

One other thing too. Sometimes you'll draft a guy, even late in the 2nd round, and BOOM! They're a 2nd team all league player on their way to being that future MVP caliber player, and your time table is completely off for taking advantage of it. If you don't win in the playoffs, guys will rarely resign with you. So your draft picks you only control them for 2-3 years. It's really hard to build yourself into a contender that fast, so you wind up having to trade a guy away because you know they won't resign with you. It's like even when you win in the draft, sometimes you still lose.

I recommend you guys play & see what it's like to try and be a GM and win a title. Stay away from the Insanity level, though. It might literally cause you to break your laptop. Lol! But, play at the Hard level at least. The Easy & Normal is too soft. You can win like 10 out of 15 titles pretty quickly on there. Hard is at least a challenge.

This whole thread is more of a theoretical discussion. My thought in posting it was to get some Mavs' fans reactions to things they wish the front office would do, but you don't understand why they haven't & then maybe this game can provide some context to why it's not happening.