hoopsdude: Larry Bird, Julius Erving, Steve Nash, Robert Parish

Two very good players here who are both best suited for shooting guard. I have never seen Larry play that position in the ODL however and my guess is you plan to play him at forward (Edit: eleibowitz played Bird at SG in ODL 41 and won the ship!). Julius gives you great defense, but I hate his usage. These guys give you bunch of rebounds and assists from the wings however, and this could be a great foundation from which to build. We will see where you go from here!

I love Nash. He is simply an offensive monster. Yes, his defense is terrible, which stops him from being a perennial first rounder, but in the third round he is great. He will boost the doctor's shooting percentages which is huge, and will make a bunch of shots himself. This team still needs some good bigs, but there are still a few low usage, high rebound guys with decent defense available. Just like Robert Parish! Now all you need is one more. Parish provides the things this team needs: good efg%, good rebounding and decent defense up front.

Just for the record I started Larry Bird at SF not SG.. The lineup was:

PG: Mike Miler
SG: Player not drafted but rarely is
SF: Larry Bird
PF: Marcus Camby
C: Alonzo Mourning

That's interesting, I had just assumed looking at your roster that Larry had played shooting guard. I would never have thought Mike Miller would have been the point guard, but I guess at 98% you can make it work.

Posted by benhoidal on 11/20/2014 10:32:00 AM (view original):
That's interesting, I had just assumed looking at your roster that Larry had played shooting guard. I would never have thought Mike Miller would have been the point guard, but I guess at 98% you can make it work.

Yeah Larry Bird gives you a lot of flexibility.

Billy Cunningham. Definitely the most outside-the-box pick I've made in a while. I was going with a different, rarely-if-ever-drafted, high-usage guy before Batum got taken away (was banking on him making it) and so this is a wild Plan B. It may blow up in my face, but it will be fun. He'll be my starting SG and backup PF - how often can you say that?

He brings some big positive numbers and some big negative numbers. 32.7 % crb at SG is about as good as it gets, and in playoff matchups I might swap him with Penny and put him at PG if I want to take advantage of defensive matchups. 17% assist is great too, and he has the aforementioned positional flexibility, which helps with an 80+ defender on either side of him in the starting lineup.

His usage is just under 27%. At 49.1%, his efg is very low for a high-usage player, but I'm hoping that having a great scorer next to him (Penny) will draw some focus away and give him a bump (or free Penny up to do some more damage, either way). His ft% is close to 80%, and he should shoot 400+, which will lessen the blow of the subpar fg%.

The fouls are bad, and the turnovers are worse; it helps that the rest of the team doesn't turn it over or foul too much. It remains to be seen how much those big negatives will hurt.

Al-Farouq Aminu  (Ameru? Idi Aminu?)  Well, only one Al-Farouq so we know who.

He actually has 33% Creb and almost 100 steals for 2000 bench minutes. His efg% and defense are a little below average but they won't kill you so value buying in for more quality elsewhere on my bench.

I have a couple of very busy days ahead. I will hopefully have all the evals done by Sunday night, and I will do predictions as soon as the league starts (but not the games obviously) so I can see everyone's team.

Okay ben I understand. Just want your thoughts about the addition of Mason. Now the lineup is loaded with assists which will bump up McGrady's EFG%. I always lose in the ODL playoffs seemingly to me due to a lack of offense. This team has plenty of offense.

vancem: I don't know if your lineup is Loaded with assists. It definitely has enough assists and should be in the top ten, but there definitely going to be teams who have higher ast%. Your lineup is definitely intriguing and Tracy and Karl will score a TON of points. I am interested to see your final roster and see how you fill out the lineup.

Your thoughts are pretty similar to mine, ben - although I think my assists should be OK, if not exceptional. Cunningham is a huge gamble with his high usg% and low efg% (not to mention the fouls and turnovers) so I'm interested to see how it works out. He'll probably have a few games where he shoots 30% and turns it over 7 times and makes it hard for me to win. Hopefully he will be rampaging around chucking up enough shots that Penny and Bynum get less attention.

ben what are your thoughts regarding assists - my starting unit will have 60% which I thought I read somewhere is 10 points above the penalty basement - that's not enough? I've read in the forums that if you get them ridiculously high (like 110) you'll see a bounce but in toying around in the past I cant say I've seen much difference between 60 or 70 or 80%

Biggest steal: Cheeks (Best porn name as well!)
 

I believe you're forgetting Magic Johnson (not to mention Fat Lever)

thohoops: Magic Johnson, Chauncey Billups, Bobby Jones, Dirk Nowitzki, Dan Majerle, Willis Reed, Ricky Pierce

You still badly need rebounding. Sure, Magic gives you a great rebounding advantage at the point, but there isn't a 20+ dreb% player on this team yet and that scares me. 

Majerle certainly isn't the big rebounder you need. Hopefully you can address this in the sixth or with your undrafted players, because right now through five rounds, you have by far the worst rebounding team. That spells trouble.

The Inconceivable starters will have 30/89/89/363 for cumulative OR/DR/AST/DEF.   Not sure exactly what that spells in this league ... 

The "1100 minute burning band"  at the end of the bench, on the other hand, comes in with 23/68/36/146 which spells s-c-a-r-y ... 
(can't shoot the rock, either ... )

Posted by thohoops on 11/25/2014 3:08:00 AM (view original):
thohoops: Magic Johnson, Chauncey Billups, Bobby Jones, Dirk Nowitzki, Dan Majerle, Willis Reed, Ricky Pierce

You still badly need rebounding. Sure, Magic gives you a great rebounding advantage at the point, but there isn't a 20+ dreb% player on this team yet and that scares me. 

Majerle certainly isn't the big rebounder you need. Hopefully you can address this in the sixth or with your undrafted players, because right now through five rounds, you have by far the worst rebounding team. That spells trouble.

The Inconceivable starters will have 30/89/89/363 for cumulative OR/DR/AST/DEF.   Not sure exactly what that spells in this league ... 

The "1100 minute burning band"  at the end of the bench, on the other hand, comes in with 23/68/36/146 which spells s-c-a-r-y ... 
(can't shoot the rock, either ... )

The dreb% of the starters is fine. The oreb% is low. The ast% is great. The lack of bench rebounding definitely puts you in the rebounding danger zone, though.

copernicus: I love assists and love the efg% bump you get from them. I realize it's hard to get too many in this league, but going off of past years most 50 win teams have over 70% ast% in the starting lineup with decent ast% off the bench (although the team with the best record last season only had 56.5% in the starting lineup.

thohoops: I was clearly talking about your first five players drafted as you had not drafted Reed yet. After adding Reed, your starting dreb% is good, but you are going to have problems when you sit him as you do not have a backup drafted center. I actually like your team, I just thought Majerle was a bad pick that didn't really address your team needs.

Posted by benhoidal on 11/25/2014 12:31:00 PM (view original):
copernicus: I love assists and love the efg% bump you get from them. I realize it's hard to get too many in this league, but going off of past years most 50 win teams have over 70% ast% in the starting lineup with decent ast% off the bench (although the team with the best record last season only had 56.5% in the starting lineup.

thohoops: I was clearly talking about your first five players drafted as you had not drafted Reed yet. After adding Reed, your starting dreb% is good, but you are going to have problems when you sit him as you do not have a backup drafted center. I actually like your team, I just thought Majerle was a bad pick that didn't really address your team needs.

still in learning mode here (obviously) ... 

top bench Dreb will be 20,15,28 and 17  (in order of playing time)

I drafted Majerle as a SG with reasonable usage and 3pt attack off the bench.
I'm sure as I better understand the sim, I'll find better choices in the future, but I always liked watching Thunder Dan, and having him on the team is part of the fun