So far I’ve had two “Franchise” players of note, one an NT Guard, one an NT Big. Based on success of the team in each era, I have to say the big. My guard (Hongjing) was arguably the better of the two and in big games could go on runs late in the the fourth of consecutive threes that stole games we didn’t deserve to win, but my team has consistently been better with role player guards and Lambkin (my big) then with role player bigs and Hongjing.I suspect, though, that three $100k guys and two $50k guys beats out a $250k franchise, a $50k guy and three $30k guys for a similar price range.
There is a manager who currently has a player on the NT, Charlieboy, who has Holley on the team, who seems to be doing that approach. He has another guy who is somewhere between a SF and.SG and Holley who is more of a SF/PF. These players are the “Franchise” players, but outside of them there are the guys who don’t get training every week but do get it regularly, so end up sort of SF builds. His team was very competitive in Div2 quickly, but he made the jump to ABBL when he purchased the best C in Australia at the time, Meehan, and dropped out of ABBL the following season as Meehan started to decline. A really good centre makes a huge difference. If you can carry the salary is almost go a gun C and a gun PG and have mid level SF players for all other spots.