This Rinaldi one is a work in progress and if any of it bothers ash I can take it out:
Scene: A camera focuses on a basketball, bouncing up and down on an empty outdoor basketball court. The sound of piano music plays. The camera shifts to a bunch of dudes in darkly lit rooms logging onto a poorly designed website.
Tom Rinaldi: How far back in time must you go to find the answers? If you go back in time, and end up back in the present, did you ever know the question? What if the answer was to the question you never thought to ask? In the land that development forgot, one man set out to find the truth. The truth about usage. The truth about assists. The truth about the possession battle. The truth about himself. But how he found out those truths, and who got to benefit from them was a tale that spread beyond the forums. It was a tale about the question. The question of, What If?
Copernicus: I remember when ashamael showed up. He won a few championships in his first handful of teams and then started showing his ***. He started lecturing all the old timers about what he figured out. Then he joined the ODL and all hell broke loose.
Tarheel1991: I was only a kid back then, so I guess I thought this was just how middle aged white dudes on sports simulation sites behaved. But ashamael shows up in the ODL, starts yammering away. This one dude 98average really took a disliking to him.
Ashamael is shown, but only as a black silhouette, with a voice modulator on.
Ashamael: I don’t like to go into the details on that. Let’s just say, it went farther than it ever needed to go.
Tom Rinaldi: If you reach the pinnacle, but no one knows who you are, have you ever truly won?
Dh555: It was hard to see honestly. This guy shows up, he is winning everything left and right but he is tormented by these outside aggressors. It was almost like he thought if he won enough, he might finally find peace.
Tom Rinaldi: When the winning isn’t enough, where do you go? Maybe it isn’t championships you need. What if… what the man needs isn’t a new salary formula, but a place to call home.
Copernicus: Look, I know this is a little on brand, but seriously, **** Scott. This ******* guy creates this convoluted system where all the players I think should be good suck, but the players than I think should suck are good. And I have registered for more screen names than anyone on this site, so I deserve to be heard. Anyway, one day me and the boys are throwing a few back in the forum, talking **** at Scott’s expense. Back then we didn’t know **** all so we would just try and do dumb stuff like get the most FGAs per minute and stuff.
Ncmusician: People were running teams with like 50 cumulative usage.
Longtallbrad: Anyway, I remember Scott dropped into the thread randomly and actually gave us some useful information for once. That was the day everything changed for ashamael.
Ashamael: By that point benhoidal hadn’t showed up, so I was still the baddest man on the block. I was to WhatIfSports what Dream Theater is to prog metal. But nobody gave a ****. No matter how many times I won, ******* tools like grayfoxx or 98average or one of those dudes would find a way to **** on me. But to see how excited everyone got over even the slightest carrot from Scott inspired me. I was raised by gypsies and we were always on the road but we always had a community. I thought, maybe I could start that here.
Tom Rinaldi: *more piano music* In one small corner of the internet, one man etched his name into history.
Benhoidal: He started with one post. But then he just kept on going.
Tom Rinaldi: When you teach a man to build a winner, he gets credits for a new team. When you teach a man about usage tiers, he builds winners for a lifetime. In a forum filled with boomers, a new voice boomed louder than them all.
*Montage ensues. Happy piano music plays.* dBKC, benhoidal, tau1624, kinoa1 are all shown signing up for the site. They are reading the forums. Gleefully, they are building their first team winners. They are shown hugging their families.
Robusk: I played an open league once in 2007. It was all Manute Bol and Dale Ellis. I didn’t play SimLeague Basketball again for a few years. When I came back, all the sudden there were manifestos written on how the simulation engine worked, what didn’t. At first I was like ****, this dude is REALLY into Charles Barkley. But then I figured out what he was trying to do. I think winning wasn’t fun for him anymore. He wanted everyone to win. He wanted a challenge.
Tom Rinaldi: What if I told you, when you won it all, you found the answer you weren’t looking for, but the answer you needed… then the only thing left to do was lose.
Copernicus: After that he kind of disappeared. He was still around but he wasn’t in any cool theme leagues or open leagues.
Dh555: I think he only played in progs. At that point, all his enemies were gone. All the millennials sucked up all his knowledge and some even surpassed him. I think he wanted a simpler life. He wanted to argue with bds9992 and all3, to tank for draft picks.
Robusk: We were both on this site for a decade and a half and only had passing interactions. It kind of felt like he was lost. Yeah, he did all right in progressives but anyone except bds9992 can win a progressive if they follow a simple formula. He just seemed like he was wasting away.
Benhoidal: *shown with a skateboard and backwards hat* I learned a lot from him at first. But then he just kept using all these Maynard James Keenan allegories and I couldn’t deal with him anymore. Look, he had a lot of good ideas and I learned a lot. But you don’t get to be a all time three point leader at a division 3 school unless you are better than the next guy. I took his knowledge and I improved upon it. Once he wasn’t number one anymore, I think he just got bored.
Tom Rinaldi: *montage music plays again* Like any great phoenix story, eventually greatness rises from the ashes. With hubris, haughtiness, huge headedness, hfdhgfdhdfshgsfdhgsshsgfds (The Rindaldi Bot 5000 starts to malfunction on its alliteration loop for a minute before coming back online) the legend returned to the tribe he built. There were Savages, and ODLs and other theme leagues. He was welcomed back with cheer and jeers. Even with his wins less certain than before, in a way, everyone’s wins were a little bit his.
*fade to black*
6/30/2020 12:59 AM (edited)