Scavenger Hunt Draft Winner: Sachmo!!!

[captaincrunk]

I've still only found 8 depth charts including my own which I never bothered to post since I already had it in mind.

EDIT: And it really changes things for Ian.

Here's the depth chart I've made for Ian

Kidd 34/ Bayless 14
Allen 34/ Thornton 8/ Rip 0
LeBron 38/ MWP 20/ Hill 8
Bosh 35/ Blatche 15
Varejao 35/ Diop

Adjusting for injuries along the way, etc. Blatche looks to play PF/C in this lineup I guess?

LaDocMatic

Conley 33/ Jennings 22
Terry 34/ Young 8/ Jordan Crawford
Gerald Wallace 36/ CJ Miles 6
Nowitzki 36/ David West 23
Gortat 30/ Jason Thompson 14/ Bismack

Fred's team

CP3 36/ Mo Williams 12/ Sessions
JHard 34/
SJax 35/ Chandler 24/ Prince 10/ J.Johnson
Horford 36/ Anderson 12
Bogut 36/ Hawes 5

JMAC

Curry 36/ JJ. Barea 5
Lou Williams 34/ Derozan 10/ Rudy F.
Melo 37/ Hedo 12
Thaddeus 34/ Taj 20/ Charlie V
Brook 36/ McGee 16

Stun's edited lineup (his was impossible)

John Wall(35)/Roddy Beaubois(20)
Aaron Afflalo(20)/Brandon Roy(20)/Terrance Williams(10)
Danny Granger(30)/Trevor Ariza(15)
David Lee(25)/Tyrus Thomas(20)
Roy Hibbert(30)/Chris Kaman(15)/Kwame Brown(0)

Kemba2Hendo's

Felton 34/ DCollison 20
Wade 38/ JRich 13
Pierce 34/ Barnes 13/ RJeff 13
Scola 35/ Speights 10
Blair 30/ Shaq 0/ Biedrins 0

Those are the lineups you get for those of you who didn't submit one.

[fatlever]

for the others you should just do the depth charts as you see fit... im sure it would be close. no too many secrets out there.

[captaincrunk]

for the others you should just do the depth charts as you see fit... im sure it would be close. no too many secrets out there.

Done in the edit. I used the final ratings to kind of guage where they were.

[captaincrunk]

Did one season without injuries just to do it.

Games won

Sachmo 62 (More than he got in ANY sim so far, clearly depth is an issue here for him)
Ian 61
Fred 59
Crunk 58
Fats 56
Stun 55
Countryboi 55
JMAC 55
Takuya 54
BigSlam 53
LaDocMatic 53
Kemba2Hendo 50
Jaruff 48
Paydro 36

Paydro's team has a lot of depth but he doesn't use it, which is probably why the injuries were actually helping him. Baron Davis is probably the 5th or 6th best player on the team and he's getting 0 minutes? What? And Millsap could use more too, and Griffin needs more, and Gay needs more too. I feel bad letting this rotation continue. I'll run the sim again with no injuries and see if anything interesting changes. Hopefully Paydro improves because a team running a 5'3" 40 year old Andrew Bynum at point won more games than him (Though that 5'3" Bynum got 15 and 10 and 3 and won Rookie of the year).

Ran it again and got this interesting outcome.

Countryboi 63
Ian 63
Crunk 58
JMAC 58
Sachmo 57
Takuya 56
Stun 55
Fred 55
Fats 53
LaDocMatic 52
Kemba2Hendo 51
The Lakers Lead by Andrew Bynum 51????
BigSlam 51
Paydro 41
Jaruff 41

Apparently Bynum is just too good. I'll have to just delete him from the Roster.

[captaincrunk]

First sim season done. This time I'm doing a whole season and playoffs for each run to make it more fair with the injuries.

Run 1: Sachmo over Crunk in 7 games, injuries everywhere (but I turned down the severity so less people had season ending ones).

Run 2: Kemba2Hendo over Sachmo in 5 games.

Run 3: Crunk over Ian in 7 games.

Run 4. Ian over Crunk in 7 games.

Run 5. Ian over Stun in 5 games.

Run 6. Fred over JMAC in 6 gaes.

Run 7. Crunk over Ian in 5 games.

Run 8. Crunk over Sachmo in 7 games. First time anyone beat a healthy Sachmo.

Run 9. Ian over Crunk in 7 games.

Run 10. Crunk over Ian in 5 games.

Run 10. Crunk over Sachmo in 7 games. Sachmo can't catch a break :p

Notes on each team discovered in simulation:

Sachmo enters the playoffs injured more often than not, but when he managed to be healthy all at the right time, he probably takes the championship half the time (which is pretty good considering the competition). Kobe should have more minutes, Duncan more minutes, Garnett less (injuries piling up wearing him down), and he needed one more guard. He only had three on the team and when one goes down, it doesn't look good for him. He reminds me of the 2010 Celtics. Biggest weakness aside from age is that Jrue Holiday is the best player not in the starting lineup, by far. Also, Sachmo kind of defied the whole, best guy wins all the time thing. Kobe was rated a 92 (which put him above Derrick Rose, below Wade), but he only played 34 minutes a game.

Ian's team was probably the most clever. Jerryd Bayless is probably the weakest backup on the team, but with LeBron on the court the distribution is still taken care of when Kidd steps off (which he does, often.) Varejao was the obvious weak link here. The team actually performed better when he was off the court, because that meant Bosh was at center more often than not. The several finals runs he made stands as a testament to roster though. Injuries struck often (Kidd, Varejao, Diop) but it usually worked out despite injuries. Basically, Ian had LeBron and won a lot of games.

JMAC does well when his team gets hot. He didn't write the lineup but starting Lou Williams and Curry wasn't the best idea. There weren't many other options though, other than running Derozan 35MPG which I wouldn't wish on any team. Every time he ran into a good frontcourt, he got slaughtered. Against Crunk, Takuya, and Sachmo he probably didn't win a single game. Still managed to get good seeing though because of his thorough depth. Curry was well backed up (which is necessary for him), the depth in the frontcourt was actually impressive defensively, and Anthony doesn't miss a lot of games (and Thad Young covered for him when he did).


Jaruff's team was **** any time Dorell Wright, of all people, was off the floor. The best option to back him up was Henderson, who was given 0 minutes. So instead, Elton Brand gets about 9 MPG at the SF spot, and Amar'e gets 10 there. When Dorell was injured, it was hopeless. And Dorell was only slated for 30 MPG. Jaruff would have had a much better team if he had more SFs. Brand should have had 30 MPG backing up PF/C, but got only 20. Arenas had as many minutes as OJ Mayo, which when you think of it makes sense, but not at 34 a piece. I ran some tests with different rotations just to see, and Jaruffs win percentage went up by like 14%. Which is pretty big.

Countryboi had by far the funniest team in the simulations. One sim, Boozer is out for the season, the next Perkins, the next Carter. Had fantastic depth at the C spot. Beasley off the bench was a great idea, but only giving him 23 minutes really hurt the team. I ran one without Mbah a Moute (and Beas with 32 MPG off the bench) and he took the 6th man from Manu, the only time that happened. Batum should have started SF, Mbah a Moute would have been nice injury insurance, instead your team was begging for him to be injured. Derrick Rose and Johnson were stellar every single season though. Neither are all defensive team kind of guys but the size was killer.

BigSlam's team was just plain great. He didn't win a championship but he was in and out of the WCF several times. Deng only had 30 MPG for some reason, which hurt the team a bit. Martell Webster didn't really need the ten minutes he took from Deng. Especially not with J.R. Smith waiting on the bench at 23 MPG. Anthony Randolph too could have had more minutes, he's better than Deandre Jordan IMO. The biggest question mark was Ricky Rubio, but Dwill took all the minutes anyway so it didn't help/hurt Slam at all. Odom was a little disappointing, he didn't get the assists he should have in that second unit full of guys who score on the drive and off the dribble (Livingston, Smith). Depth was fine, but the bench wasn't as well put together as the fantastic starting lineup.

Paydro's team would have been great, if it ever got to see the court. I'm not talking about injuries, I'm talking about Blake Griddin with 32 minutes a game! And Paul Milsap only had 20, and Gay only 34? Those are not playoff minutes, and it hurt the team. Splitter and Monroe were brilliant though. I don't think Anderson was even necessary on this team. He isn't as good as those two, and he gets injured a lot. Baron Davis needed some playing time badly. George Hill is good, and Westbrook is good, but BDiddy was a waste of a pick at 0 minutes. Either play him or nab someone else. Tony Allen at 30 MPG (ended up with 27 most seasons due to injuries) was well above the most minutes he's ever played before 2010. Nearly had 2 steals a game in that time too. That's fantastic. And keeping him off the bench gave you George Hill and BDiddy (who you didn't use) scoring and directing traffic, which was a clever move that got him a lot of wins against teams without much backcourt depth.

Stun's team was intruiging. Picking John Wall first was a mistake, I think we all agree (exception: Stun). But John Wall was a pretty good distributor for the team. Usually averaged 8 assists in his limited 35 minutes which was pretty cool.. Didn't score a whole lot, but that'll come later in his career (I hope). Aaron Affalo starting helped spread the floor with Wall, even if he didn't get a lot of minutes. Beaubois was the X factor for this team. With him, John wall had a backup (and they shared the court a lot due to Wall's size). Without him, the team died over and over again in the second round. It's hard to depend on a guy who can't stay on the court. Hibbert was good, David Lee deserved 8 more minutes a game, Granger could have used more minutes too. I think you had the best frontcourt depth and that helped make up for the lack of star power. Tyrus and Kaman wouldn't be a terrible starting lineup, and you had them on the bench, which was cool. Even though Tyrus and Kaman are often injured (and Roy, and Roddy B, and Wall) you had enough players to cover usually. That's why when no one was injured, you took Ian and LeBron to 5 games.

Los Angeles Lakers: What the hell? I change Bynum to be 5'3" and make Shannon Brown your starting Center, get rid of Pau and Kobe, and you still win 50 games and manage to get to the second round over and over? What the hell man? Kemba Walker, with an overall of 67, managed to be ROY I think 8/10 times. Just weird.


Kemba2Hendo's team was another weird one. Felton is so close to being good enough for this team, but so far away. Collison and Felton are too small to play together, so neither got a lot of minutes. But when Felton was injured, Collison stepped up. The problem was that no one at all was behind him, so Wade played a lot of PG when Collison or Felton were injured. Wade was Wade, 94 overall and killin it. Paul Pierce got injured a lot, making Richard Jefferson and Matt Barnes look useful. JRich saw a lot of playing time when Felton and Collison were injured because no one, no one else could play SG besides Wade. So one more guard could have helped this team a lot, same as Sachmo's. It was a situation where, when everyone was healthy you won loads of games, but when even minor role players were injured you were hurt pretty badly. DeJuan Blair started C for you and was actually pretty good. When Dwight missed a whole season, Blair took DPOY. Shaq never played a single minute for the team though, and probably shouldn't have been picked. Barnes or Jefferson could have been substituted for another guard (I'd have moved Barnes personally).

Crunk's overall isn't the highest. It's middle of the pack at 81 for the team (compared to an 85 for BigSlam, and a 86 for JMAC, and a 76 for Fats) but the minutes are spread well and when one player goes down, there are quality players filling in the playing time. When Oden was healthy, the team was just nasty. When Oden wasn't healthy, the team still won thanks to JJ Hickson and Lopez, and Dwight's amazing durability meant he played 40 MPG nearly every playoff series. Frontcourt dominance coupled with backcourt speed and shooting proved to be a lot better than what the Magic have done (chuck threes, hope Dwight gets the offensive board, dump to Dwight, etc). Also interesting: Dwight's scoring percentages were way better when Oden was in. Limiting Oden's minutes to just 22 a game meant that he was able to stay somewhat healthy and still get 8 and 8 while playing good defense. The big problem was surprisingly Manu. He missed a lot of games. The brewer brothers (I know they aren't related) covered defensively more than enough, and shannon brown could pile on the points, but he was missed when he was gone for sure. Losing Dwight was bad but he so rarely gets injured it didn't matter much, and Crunk had the frontcourt depth to weather it.

Fatlever's team was pretty vanilla. Nash got a lot of assists, but less than last year. Probably because guys like Randolph don't need to be assisted, but he still got his 16 PPG. Randolph was probably the best PF in the league, when he wasn't facing Dwight Howard. He somehow got 11+ RPG in 32 minutes, over and over again. His scoring was down because the minutes weren't always there for him, but Frye did alright covering for him. Ibaka was a little small, but Randolph's size really seemed to help that. Paul George was actually a pretty good pick, all joking aside, because he gave you someone besides Crawford who can backup the 2 guard spot, and he covered the SF spot too. AK was pretty boring, he didn't do much. Martin was in and out of the hospital, but even with that said he should have had more minutes while he was on the court. You needed his scoring, he could have had 24 a game with 35 minutes. This team however had too many resources where it didn't need them, and as a results the minutes just weren't there for the team.

Takuya's team fought injuries hard. Billups was often out, Gasol was often out, and so was Camby. Gasol had decent minutes at 36, and Durant at 38 was right on. Josh Smith could have had more though. Josh Smith, Durant, and Pau were the best things about this team. Ben Gordon wasn't very good for you. Evan Turner would have been a nice gamble here but he never got the minutes. Battier had to push other guys out of the way to get his minutes, and wasn't much help when guys got injured because he didn't have the scoring to make up for it. Carl Landry couldn't get the minutes he deserved, and neither could Camby. I think Josh Smith could have had 33 minutes off the bench (the same as he had starting) and the team would have been much better, and instead of Carl Landry Takuya could have invested in a better PG backup. That would have helped a lot, since Billups was often injured. Jack couldn't handle it, and there was no one to back Jack up but Evan Turner and Ben Gordon, neither of whom are really much of a PG.

LaDocMatic's team was very poorly designed. Two key positions were logjammed: PG and PF. Conley and Jennings are too good to be getting such low minutes, and neither is big enough to play SG at all. Jason Terry was small, and often injured. Wallace was often injured, which left the team in a terrible state with no defense to speak of aside from Gortat (who only had 30 mpg). David West was the third best player on the team, but only got 23 mpg. Any minute he took had to be from Nowitzki, or you'd have David West as your center. So he played 11 MPG or so at Center, making this the smallest team in the league without being very fast. Jason Thompson was a good pickup, would have been nice to have more of him but the minutes weren't there. Final Verdict: Trade David West for a starting SG (Kevin Martin or so) and you would have cleared up a lot of issues.

Fred's team was baller theoretically and pretty good in the sims. Bogut and Horford were fantastic. Just great. Ryan Anderson is a decent backup, but not in this league. Still, he covered reasonably well. Stephen Jackson and Wilson Chandler were kind of reduntant, minutes wise. The team had depth, that much is for sure. CP3's backup was a capable Mo Williams who was pretty durable when CP3 wasn't, and having Sessions was just a great idea all around. He backed up Mo, and the SG spot. He was the injury insurance MVP of the simulation, for sure. James Johnson hardly saw a minute, and Hawes saw too many when there was injury. Hawes and Anderson just didn't really cut it though, I think that's why Fred lost some games. Harden was underwhelming.


Final Verdict: Each team really proved that they could compete. No one was really left in the dust aside from being huge injury risks. With such a small roster (12 per team) it was pretty much versatility that won in the face of injury. And clutch performances didn't hurt either. The overall ratings were NOT a big factor in this, it seemed like the better composed teams were winning more often than not.

[captaincrunk]

Edit: If anyone wants I could do more tests with more variables, I just didn't see a point in going much further if I didn't know if anyone would read it.

[Diop]

Sachmo Kobe should have more minutes, Duncan more minutes, Garnett less (injuries piling up wearing him down), and he needed one more guard. He only had three on the team and when one goes down, it doesn't look good for him.

Yeah I was trying to prove that my starters didn't need to play large minutes and spread the minutes out more. I should have played Kobe more.

I count Iggy as a guard as well, which is probably an issue with 2K11 which keeps players at certain positions. In a pinch Iggy was the 3rd point guard. Dudley also plays a fair bit of 2 guard for Phoenix.

[fatlever]

great stuff crunk. thats was a fantastic write-up. it really looks like you put a ton of time and effort into your sims and i think we can all appreciate that. i hope you had fun doing all that as well.

interesting to see that depth and injuries really were such a factor, just like real seasons. in the past years we did 15 man rosters, but i cut it down to 12 this year because i feared 15 rounds would start to drag and people would lose interest.

it would be kinda interesting to add 3 more categories so that each of us could address some of our weaknesses and then run with new, deeper 15 man rosters.

[fatlever]

and how does a high scoring free flowing team fatlever look vanialla? damn you 2k11

[captaincrunk]

Sachmo Kobe should have more minutes, Duncan more minutes, Garnett less (injuries piling up wearing him down), and he needed one more guard. He only had three on the team and when one goes down, it doesn't look good for him.

Yeah I was trying to prove that my starters didn't need to play large minutes and spread the minutes out more. I should have played Kobe more.

I count Iggy as a guard as well, which is probably an issue with 2K11 which keeps players at certain positions. In a pinch Iggy was the 3rd point guard. Dudley also plays a fair bit of 2 guard for Phoenix.

Dudley played way too much 2 guard for your team. Iggy can distribute in a pinch, much like Odom does for the Lakers now, but Odom is coming off the bench which helps in that department, to be where he's needed.

great stuff crunk. thats was a fantastic write-up. it really looks like you put a ton of time and effort into your sims and i think we can all appreciate that. i hope you had fun doing all that as well.

interesting to see that depth and injuries really were such a factor, just like real seasons. in the past years we did 15 man rosters, but i cut it down to 12 this year because i feared 15 rounds would start to drag and people would lose interest.

it would be kinda interesting to add 3 more categories so that each of us could address some of our weaknesses and then run with new, deeper 15 man rosters.

I think we should do TWO leagues and 15 categories. I think the reason I did so well was that every single player on my team could play multiple positions to great effect. If it wasn't Dwight who was injured, my starting lineup actually improved with injury

and how does a high scoring free flowing team fatlever look vanialla? damn you 2k11

Just nothing terribly crazy happened. I don't think you had the speed. Ibaka isn't a scorer, and Randolph just likes to screw around on the block a lot of times. Nash's assist totals suffered I think. Kevin Martin was a cool fit, but AK was too slow too I think. It all turned out kind of normal.

[Fred Williamson]

good job crunk

[captaincrunk]

Thanks guys. It was a lot of fun but it was also a lot of work. I even had to do some hoopdata research to get shooting percentages realistic haha.

EDIT And I volunteer to do this again next year or next week or whenever.

[Diop]

Thanks for that Crunk. I had a quick look on my 2k11 to see how much work is involved, and there is a lot!!

I love fantasy drafts and this has been a lot of fun.

[countryboi]

i am not going to lie to you guys i hated my team....and everynoe not named joe johnson and derrick rose...if this was a real team i would have been actively trying to trade boozer....i really wanted a al jefferson type....anyway this has been tons of fun

[Paydro70]

Just a thought, but what teams and what team settings did you use for each franchise, Crunk? Phil Jackson might make a big difference for the Lakers.

[BigSlam]

Crunk with the stand out lead for post of the year! Great stuff crunk, thanks for all of your hard work with this.

[captaincrunk]

Just a thought, but what teams and what team settings did you use for each franchise, Crunk? Phil Jackson might make a big difference for the Lakers.

After running a few in association and realizing that teams were signing free agents (like LeBron and Wade and everyone I dropped to give our 14 teams an edge) I quit association mode and went into "Season" mode, which includes a playoffs as well. I turned off FA signings, and by controlling every team there were no trades. You couldn't affect the coaching staff, and it most likely didn't use coaching stats to affect gameplay. It didn't tell me anything that would lead me to believe it did, but just in case I chose middle of the road coaching for the non-created teams (Cavs - decent coach, bucks, decent coach, etc.) But I really don't think it came in to play aside from MAYBE playbooks, but since all games were simmed I don't think even those should matter.

[Paydro70]

Why wouldn't coaching stats affect simming? They have Offense and Defense ratings, I'd assume that matters somewhat to simulation outcomes.

But what I was more thinking about was the coaching strategy stuff... tempo, crash boards rating, etc. My team would presumably play much better if it was D'Antoni's system than Larry Brown's.

[captaincrunk]

Why wouldn't coaching stats affect simming? They have Offense and Defense ratings, I'd assume that matters somewhat to simulation outcomes.

But what I was more thinking about was the coaching strategy stuff... tempo, crash boards rating, etc. My team would presumably play much better if it was D'Antoni's system than Larry Brown's.

Coaching isn't accessible in "Season" mode like it is in Association. You don't get to see their ratings or affect things. That leads me to think that it probably has little or no effect, especially when considering that there were NO coaches for the created teams (COTY just went to "First/Last"). At least that's what I suspect anyway. Most teams were created teams, including myself and Sachmo and Ian, who I think were the standouts of the simulation when injuries allowed.

[BigSlam]

We based the winner on who won each of the cats the most. Therefore:

In board count = Sachmo, Fred and Ian (tie)
Outside of board count = Fred
Comparison thread count = Sachmo
SIM = Crunk with the most wins @ 5

Based on that, Sachmo and Fred appear the most with 2 each so it's STILL a tie!! We decided to make the SIM the count back tie breaker and therefore:

IT'S STILL A TIE BECAUSE BOTH SACHMO AND FRED WON 1 SEASON EACH!!

Sheesh, this thing is harder than a rubix cube!!

So, on a double count back based on the SIM finals appearences (not just wins) between Sachmo and Fred, the winner is:

SACHMO

(he played in 4 finals Vs Fred who played in just the one).

Great work everyone. It was a fun draft that moved along at a nice pace.