BuzzerBeater Forums

Wow...I didn't get any pops this week...
well 1 OD pop for C. Jung, but idc about that..

Yeah, well the reason Smiley improves so fast is because week in and week out in practice he always has to put up with coaches and players from last season telling him, "If Cliff Pringle were in your position, he'd be doing much better," or "When Cliff Pringle was at this point in his career, his defense was already considerably better than yours," etc., inevitably followed by, "We're paying you a higher salary than Pringle made his rookie season, and aren't you supposed to have greater potential than he does? So why the f--- aren't you better than him already?" It's a good incentive for him to get better, I think. Hence the 16 pops so far this season.

And Smiley finishes the season with a double pop from pressure training, OD and handling both to 9, for a total of 18 pops on the season with a level 4 trainer. Obviously there's a major asterisk in that 5 of those weeks were 1v1 or JS forwards, which give a lot of total pops, more than, say, single-position pressure training, but still, 18 pops is pretty darn good. Next season he and maybe the new draftee if I keep him will be doing a few weeks of JS so Smiley can be decent offensively in D.IV, enough to take some pressure off Faina and McNeill, but other than that I'm hoping to do a lot of pressure training. Expect the total number of pops to likely be way down if I can follow through on that resolution.

(naturally I'm keeping my fingers crossed that some bots don't auto-draft one or both of the players I'm looking at)

One downside is Smiley is projected to have a salary of $8371 next season, so there will likely be some roster changes coming.

Damn $8371! That's like almost Pringle's salary for next year!

Except Pringle has atrocious RB compared to awful for Smiley, which lowers his salary, and Pringle also has higher OD, which is much more cost-efficient for its usefulness compared to the salary you pay for it. Plus Smiley has higher JR, which also raises salary. He's also a year younger, but he's still not Pringle's level yet. Besides, he had better starting skills. OSU says Smiley should probably be a shooting guard in the future, because he's 6'4", so he'll be working towards that. Regardless, I'm very satisfied with him.