RealGM

All-Time Keeper League with 8 year intervals

I wanted to set down for comments some ideas for a league along the lines of Warspite’s
suggestion of an All-Time keeper league. I decided on 8 years intervals so only about 15-20% of
league stars are keeper stars. (5 year intervals move this up to about 40% but make an awful lot
of seasons!) I am suggesting using choice of season over a 3 season span both to increase the number of keeper players and to insure that great players who had one injury year aren’t left
out of the mix. The league would start in 1950-52 (pre 24 second clock) . . . on up to 06-08.
Franchises would be limited to about 2/3 of those in the league on a schedule like the following:

50-52 (6/8 franchises) –
58-60 (6/8 franchises) –
66-68 (6/9 franchises) – no ABA seasons allowed

74-76 EXPANSION (two leagues! 10/17 NBA + 6/10 ABA) new owners needed
82-84 Merger (one league 16/22)

90-92 2ND EXPANSION (20/27) if we have enough interest
98-00 3RD EXPANSION (24/29) again, if interest
06-08 (24/30)

12 players on a team. Drafting for the first league would be ABBBBB; future leagues would
be in reverse order of previous finish with expansion teams drafting first. Winners would be
by vote of competing GMs, in the 6 team leagues vote order from 1-6; larger leagues double
elimination playoffs (double to get more differentiation). Note that participation would be
pretty time consuming so two GMs per league in the early years might be useful.

Wait, not sure I completely understand, so far for a listed time-span we'd be drafting only players from that era, and seeing who has the best team and then moving on to the next era where we repeat the process and so on? Kind of like building the best dynasty?

Yes, like the ATL league here except you keep the players that are still playing in the next time frame (very few, about 8 per under the 8 year thing . . . I thought there would be more) and running somewhere between 8 (initial 6 teams) and 2 (final 24 teams) seasons.

Biggest problem is that I dont want to come in to a game halfway played by being an expansion team. Im sure most feal the same way. Its kind of like the NFL not counting championships pre superbowl.

The obvious answer is to move the start into the 60s to increase the number of players in the 1st draft. I would like a 5yr league but I certainly understand the daunting problems that would create. Its true that some drafts would have maybe 4 rds and 20 players picked in a 5yr window. So whats worse?

1. More smaller drafts with more writeups/touneys
2. Fewer but much bigger drafts with fewer writeups/tourneys.

The smaller eras mean its more twekaing
The Bigger eras mean its more rebuilding

Would it be possible to sim games with the smaller eras? Im not a huge fan of What if sports.com but it makes as much sense to me as most posters do. I would love to see a 82 game sched played out.

Im not a huge fan of pre 1960 myself. in 3 yrs Russel, Wilt, Oscar and West entered the League and IMHO thats when basketball began to become the game it is today. Im also not interested in actualy drafting in the 10th rd players that were actual 10th men. the biggest problem is that in 1960 there are 96 NBA players (a 16 team league thats 80 starters)

Is anyone in favor of an 8 man rotation/team? That would make things alot easier in drafts and also make building a team a little more challenging as you dont always have a back up at every spot. Most teams in the 60s played there starters over 40 mins anyway. Maybe only picking starting lineups untill the 70s could be an answer. I would much rather give up a bench for more teams in this league. That would also make the drafts much smaller.

In some ways, I like the 5 year league too, that way about 40% carry over rather than just 15%; it just seemed a bit much logistically. The 8 year break allows some keeper continuity but pretty much has one go around in each era instead of 1.5-2.

I tested the 5 year format first and while the keeper portion was more interesting at first, they started running together pretty fast. If you want to start at 15, start at 71-73 with the 10 team NBA and 6 team ABA then combine for 76-78 for some extra flavor.


If you aren't interested in the 50s stuff, join the league in the first big expansion of 74-77; either when the NBA expands from 6-10 (the weakest keeper version of all 8 too, the best player still playing is John Havlicek, then it drops to Dave DeBusschere so expansion isnt a major disadvantage, possibly an advantage). I'd like to try an early 50s version just because it is so different (foul drawing and free throw percentage are much more important with fg% so much lower); on the other hand, I'd really like to have an ABA team instead of an NBA team.