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I’m not sure your examples are exactly apples to oranges, but I do think they actually support what I am saying. The European countries you are referring to are doing an excellent job of developing a significant portion of the next generation of great basketball players. Young players are (and should be) more likely to play in their home countries than in other countries. But once these players are good enough to play in elite leagues, they can find more money in the NBA and likely to make the jump if they are good enough to star there. Not all players go these days since leagues in Europe are now paying decent salaries, which helps keep players from jumping oversees. But let’s face it, winning the Euroleague championship is not like winning an NBA championship, which is won with many many international players nowadays.

U21 leagues are not comparable to BB since in the U.S. U21 is essentially college, and the best U.S. college players generally don’t play on U21 teams. (The college players in the U.S. from other countries do, though, like Dogus Balbay from Turkey paying at the University of Texas.)

And read my point about player development in local countries again. I was making the argument that making it harder for countries with fewer teams to be able to buy the best talent from the world would actually make it more likely for these countries to develop their own players, hence bolstering their NTs.

Why not give teams from countries with few teams a shot in the BBB? Could you see the Euroleague champions beating the Los Angeles Lakers in a best-of-seven series? The Lakers aren’t just the US NT, they have some top talent from around the world, too (Gasul, Vujacic, Mbenga).

Game shape and enthusiasm counts in B3 matches. We need them at the top to be competitive.

Game shape and enthusiasm counts in B3 matches. We need them at the top to be competitive.

OK, so you throw Cup games for enthusiasm/GS purposes? I'm not getting at something, I'm just asking because I don't understand.

Think about it more like: the level of fan interest is about the same in every country. There is only enough interest in every country to support 16 division I teams, 64 division II teams, etc.

I disagree with this. I think the number of teams that are registered does reflect an abstract metric of fan interest relative to BB.

My country have only 800.000 population, 70+ teams USA has 300M. So by percentage the interest in my country about the game is bigger than yours.

I'm not looking at country population as a factor, and see above where I mention I'm not trying to say anything about any country's particular fans. I'm sure a higher percentage of people in Japan follow baseball than in the U.S. and in Taiwan that percentage is probably even higher. U.S. teams still make more money. Japanese stars sometime come to play in the U.S. U.S. players only play in Japan when they can't get a job in the U.S. It's just the way it is.

It doesnt change the fact that a small country can be power house on sports. If they give you way more income than us then that it will be disappear, and BBB will be 5-6 countries game.

Anyway if you want some advantage on that they can use champions league format. They can play the 4 best teams there from countries like England Italy Spain Germany have 4 teams to compete there, where the Hellas for example (being weaker domestic league) have 2. Playing on the Champions league teams have some serious income.



Last edited by JohnnyB at 1/27/2010 2:25:02 PM

It doesnt change the fact that a small country can be power house on sports.

I'm not disagreeing with this. A country where teams train their own players effectively can have great NTs

If they give you way more income than us then that it will be disappear, and BBB will be 5-6 countries game.

Probably true, but think about how glorious it will be when a team rises from an underdog country to make a run in the BBB. And better NTs will be a nice compensation. Maybe when these countries with fewer teams can't buy $140k+ salary players, they will be less likely to sell their stars, and the big boys won't have as big a pool of players to pull from on the TL.

I think if we ease into a country income modifier, the market will adjust and the end result will something closer to reality, and maybe a better game (this is debatable, which is obviously having this debate, and a civilized one at that, which is nice).

If I want to win my league I need the HCA. The only way to get it is wining league games and leading the regular season. Under normal circunstances I would be able to try to win them without giving too much minutes to my key players (and having good shapes). Just throw the cup if a dificult round comes soon and play the 2 league matches/week full competitive.

If I try to play a 3rd match I'll be forced to give too many minutes to my players. Some years I threw the cup in 4th round because is really dificult to play 3 matches/week having good shapes.
The problem cames with the B3, to be competitive in the B3 you need thursday cup matches to have a key TIE that allows you to be competitive during the weeks that the international tournament is going on. And that means that you have to win rounds no matter what the rival is. Sometimes you have to put your players lots of minutes and you destroy the team game shape in order to advance in the domestic competiton. If you dont do it you will fall from the cup losing the enthusiasm boost for future B3 rounds.
And if you do it (put them in the cup match) you lose the game shape, of course.

The other way to fight the B3 is giving one league match per week to your rivals while you compite in the B3, but I personally dont like this choice. Mostly because today is more important for me the fair ACBB title than the unbalanced B3 tittle. And I dont want to sacrifize the first division tittle (which has more prestige for me than the B3) for a tournament that depends of the luck (HCA in final rounds, some monster teams from little paradises that in my opinion really unbalance the game).

The game is intentionally designed so that optimal training and optimal lineups for current games are at odds. If you could do both optimally at the same time, it would make it quite hard for teams that are behind to catch up, after all.

Quoted message: (125704.55).

I don´t think the main problem with small/large BB-countries is the B3 competition, although obviously the underlying problem is also affecting to the competitiveness of the big countries participants.
In Spain, we have the feeling that we are not playing the same game, compared to users in small countries. At least the same rules are not applying for everybody.
The economic advantage has already been addressed partially with the last changes. But there is still a difference that is frustrating many users in Spain when they try to hire a Staff member or buy a player and they have to face a bidding war against some of these users.
But there is also a training advantage which is related to the quoted BB-Charles post. They can do an optimal training at the same time of being fully competitive in their cup and league championship. In addition they can keep high their enthusiasm without problems. Game Shape is also more easily kept because they don´t need their best players to win the local matches.

Last edited by Emilio at 1/27/2010 2:46:58 PM

I agree with everything you just wrote, though I still see a great economic advantage for teams in countries with fewer teams.

I would still like to see examples of those awesome teams in paradises that compete with the top of the world and entered the game after season 4.

I don't think you can find much, if you can't the answer to the threadtitle is surely no, the advantage of playing in small leagues isn't this big compare to large leagues. The only team currently in the B3 that fits this descripion is DH, being ranked 150th or something of the world.

Sure it could be somewhat easier to play in small teams, but I don't think we have to exaggerate this much.

Last edited by BB-Patrick at 1/27/2010 2:54:13 PM

The best draftees that i got 6 seasons on the game where 2 C's 19 y/o 1 perennial allstar and the other MVP. Last season i got nothing from the draft, firing all of the players that i got.

We have only 1 player as good as my SG in Cyprus. Tell me then how i will be able to cover my guard positions that i dont train? If they give you large advantage on the income then they must arise the quality of the small countries draft. But even if that happens, and we will have the talent, if we have less money we will not be able to afford those high salaries players. So we will have to sell them, and the big boys will have plenty of talent to buy.

An other point. Even in my smalls country domestic league foreigner players are allowed. If they change it as you suggest we will not be able to get quality players.

So whats are my tools to be able to have the chance to be competitive on BBB? According your logic, we will have nothing. Financial power is really big part of this game. You have money? you can have great team. You dont? you cant. Simple as that.

Also this season Panathinaikos/Olympiacos and some other European powerhouses have 22-27M euros payroll. Thats around $35M, but the salaries of the players here are net, clear from taxes, that means that is very close to NBA salary cup, so its not that in Europe they dont invest on basketball some real money.

Last edited by JohnnyB at 1/27/2010 3:27:50 PM