BuzzerBeater Forums

Hi and welcome to all the newcomers. Good luck this season.

Springfield Storm Acquire Big Man, Turn Inside Game Into Huge Strength


The Springfield Storm dipped into the player market pool today, coming up with a big acquisition. Colombian native Hernando José Salazar came out of his short retirement to suit up for the Springfield Storm in hopes of saving their season. Springfield finds themselves in 6th place in the Big 8 conference, with a mediocre 2-6 record. They hope Hernando can help turn the ship around. Salazar has averaged 12 rebounds and 10 points per game this season playing overseas in England's division II league. The acquisition came as somewhat of a surprise as the inside game was already the team's strength. It's presumed that Hernando will slide into the starting Center position, shifting the team's best player and reigning division IV MVP into his more natural Power Forward position. This will delegate Frederic Zabalo, the league's 5th best rebounder into a bench role. The Springfield GM had this to say when asked about his team's frontcourt depth moving forward, "We're extremely comfortable with our depth with Hernando moving forward. Our depth was fine before, but an injury could have shaken things up a bit. Now, we have a rotation of 5 guys that we'd feel comfortable starting in a pinch if we needed to." He also responded to questions about how this would affect the team's trio of prospects, "We just felt that we needed to strengthen our inside game to take pressure off of our young guards, on both defense and offense. Fidelis (Koveras) and Cezaris (Aksomas) are coming along very nicely, but they're still a year or two away. Their offensive games aren't advanced enough to run an offense on their own yet, so we're surrounding them with playmakers in the frontcourt. I think this will only enhance their development and possibly mask any mistakes that younger players tend to make. I think it'll be great for them."

you know, i've thought that this season, i had to be in one of the toughest leagues in the division, but i wasn't sure how to go about quantifying it. i think i've come up with a decent metric. now, yes i know that money doesn't say everything, and that salary doesn't tell the story of estimated current incomes due to decay or improvement, but i think it's a pretty solid ballpark metric. usually salary has an extremely strong correlation with winning. it's the best predictor i've been able to find over my years playing this game. however, when comparing leagues to leagues, having a total salary is extremely misleading due to teams tanking, and some just being top heavy. i decided that i would take the top 5 teams from each conference in terms of wins, accounting for 10 teams per league, and find out the total salaries between the different leagues. i considered just doing playoff teams, but that doesn't quite tell the story of the difficulty to entry into the playoffs, and also avoiding a relegation series, which i think both factor into how "tough" a league really is. all that said, here are the results, listed highest total salary to lowest total salary. dividing them by 10 gives you the average salary of the top 10 teams (in terms of standings, not wins) in the leauge. without further ado, here is how the leagues stack up against one another:

1 - III.15 - $2,746,345
2 - III.7 - $2,705,501 <---my league
3 - III.16 - $2,662,063
4 - III.13 - $2,499,216
5 - III.11 - $2,497,514
6 - III.8 - $2,466,445
7 - III.12 - $2,289,008
8 - III.3 - $2,271,410
9 - III.5 - $2,234,385
10 - III.4 - $2,192,685
11 - III.14 - $2,165,297
12 - III.1 - $2,083,316
13 - III.10 - $2,076,643
14 - III.2 - $2,060,135
15 - III.6 - 2,043,725
16 - III.9 - $1,996,066

thought it might be interesting for all the other leagues to see

That makes me feel better about my team's lackluster showing this season. It's great to know that I was included in this study, I squeaked into 5th place with a 8-14 record. I'm hoping to contend for the play offs next season. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to that! I though this was a hard league also.

this league in particular i actually thought was a victim of circumstance, and that the numbers didn't quite show its strength. there are 3 outstanding teams here, which forced a few managers to sort of... not improve their team, as they had no realistic shot of promoting for a few seasons. it's one of 2 leagues where i thought this metric didn't quite capture the overall strength of the league.

LOL.