BuzzerBeater Forums

Is there any way that on the 'Manage My Team' page, that the 'Scrimmages' suggestions could point us to teams of a similar caliber?
As a new player, I'm not sure that I'd like to play against a team ranked in the top 200 in the World...

But as a new player you probably don't realise that even the no 200 in the world team will be doing funny things in a scrimmage. They may have their $80,000 PF playing PG, an 18 year old $4,000 SG playing SG, a $1,000 idiot playing small forward, a lucky fan at the PF and a real $100,000 C getting extra minutes at C. It can be such a mixed bag that rankings often don't mean much.

Still not sure that there's any relevance in playing him for me then.
I want to use scrimmages to try things out, and to learn. The best way for me to do that is to play teams around my rank, or slightly ahead of me. Not someone who's so far ahead of me that the game has very little meaning, and as a result they're either doing weird things or it's a blowout.
It's certainly not something that will encourage those 'new' to stay... and even as a "new player" I've seen the threads enthusiastic about expanding BuzzerBeater. As someone who's played a similar (but different) basketball game, there's definitely a very good product here to be sold.
And they (the powers-that-be) seem keen to do so (and that's a very good thing).

It is a common misconception by new players that the scrimmage means something. I often see new players post something like "well i got smashed in my league games lol but won my scrimmage by 20 and my new pg scored 17!!!".

The scrimmage is strictly an orgnaisational thing that teams use to manage training and game shape minutes. Winning and losing is of 0 importance. The two league games and the cup games early on in the season are what really matter. Seeing as you are a supporter you can also play one more meaningful game a week, in a private league. They are the best thing about being a supporter but be careful about which one you join.

Ours is utterly fantastic, we have league ladders, confrences, league MVPs, federations to discuss tactics and a very active private league message board with over 5,000 posts. I look forward to my private league games as much as my real ones. But watch out, you can easily join a private league with a bunch of boring duds with super powerful teams that will beat you by 50 every week but never say a word. Private leagues are the place to try things out and learn because you play against everyone's best roster every game. Join one! But do your research first!