BuzzerBeater Forums

This is a radical suggestion but bear with me because I think it solves a number of problems that the game has now. It will undoubtably need some tweaking especially with the specific formula.

Problems:

* Players are too cheap in general

* The best players are cheaper than medium skill players

* New teams buy players that are too expensive, go broke and draw the conclusion stupid game and quit

* The truly elite NT level players, the Kobes, Lebrons, Roses and Howards are close to worthless: For example the BEST big man on the Australian NT Keith Anderson (22818997) has been recently sold for $70,900. He is 25, HoF potential yet no-one wants him.

* Players can STILL easily load up their team with rentals for big cup matches, playoffs and relegation series they just need to get them before the Friday and train GS

Solution

Make the minimum price you can list any player at 10 times their weekly salary.

This will have a dramatic short term effect of causing a mass retirement of older mono-skilled players that no-one wants. Then the price of players will dramatically increase. The market will be a big mess for a bit while the adjustment is in progress. Maybe there could be a $1,000,000 maximum just like with free agents.

It is simple, elegant, already in place for free agents and solves five massive problems.

10 times?!
It seems a bit too much. Quite all the 100k+ salary players would disapear, and not only the mono-skilled ones.

As I said the numbers are flexible maybe five times would be more reasonable. Not al the $100k + salary players would go some still trade for above that right now and when supply started to become shorter their value would go up until they were all worth that even the monoskilled ones.

Yes correct. Ample notice needs to be given, say about half a season so if someone gets stuck in this situation it is their own fault. It would certainly create a bit of turmoil in the upper leagues for a short time but would have little impact on the great majority of teams who reside in lower leagues.

I don't agree with the suggestion. I do however agree that top players are way too cheap but it has to be approached differently. The current problem is that it is only when challenging for titles or similar that you can afford to bring in a player of more than 150k salary. I have played for 10 seasons in highest division in Sweden so I can say from my own experience that these players are generally non-affordable. Why? Because you will have a negative economy with salaries above 700k and the best way for most teams is to have a balanced salary of the starting line-up. Having two 120k guards, an 80k SF and two 150k inside players adds up to 620k and then to have a non-desperate team you need cover-up players for at least 80k (suggestably a guard and an inside player with 40k salary each and the rest with 5-10k salary).

As long as it is not possible to reach above 700k without jeopardizing the economy it is not likely to be a change. If the availability of players are decreasing the 100-150k players will surely increase in price and it is pretty likely that players of higher salaries will be even less interesting.

The main problem with your suggestion is not the price for buying the players but that you are in a big risk of not getting anything back if you sell. This means that it is even more likely that you will have to tank for seasons to recover after a challenge for a title. It does not make sense that we all the time should have teams that waits for their economy to be great and then just grab the title to very rapidly have to rebuild again and get new money to challenge for the top again. Because with a negative economy they basically have no other option than to release their high salary players.

I am not sure if an increased income or a decreased salary of players would be the way to go but surely would it change BB a lot. Was it not because the income was so high in comparison with the player salaries in the past that the transfer sums for the best players was so much higher? I can't see any other explanation at least.

I do think that BB should increase the income for all teams. Then high salary players would be very attractable as you would not be able to stay in highest division without them and you would have to use the weekly profit to buy new players to strengthen your team.

Great post. I do not know about Sweden but I do know than in the ABBL in Australia that if you do not have a $1,000,000 roster you can forget any championship aspirations. This season for the first time no-one bought up for the playoffs but there were teams that had been running the massive rosters since around the all star break.

I don't think increacing the income for all teams changes the problem that the best players are not as desirable or in demand as weaker ones, I think reducing supply would help a lot. However I admit that changing their salary formula so that those elite players cost less would also improve things so that maybe someone maigh actually want to have LeBron, Dwight or Kobe on their team.

It would be more difficult to buy a strong team ahead of playoff if it would be more interest in high salary players. To increase your salary to around 1 million would cost you much higher transfer fees so you would be less tempted to improve your roster just before playoff.

That is correct and that is the point of my post, making those players much more scarce and more expensive to buy will make it much harder to get rentals and "steal" a championship.