every party needs a pooper . . .
i forgot if i had my revelation in a cave or on a mountaintop, but sometime last week in the depths of total despair, an angel came to me with a vision of the BB future. i kinda didn't catch everything, 'cause this angel wasn't all robed up, actually, just the opposite, so in between the blinding light, the beautiful voice, and her godly nakedness, i remember these points:
1) teams in the future will have much less talent than today. or, to put it another way, people simply can not afford to buy young, good talent these days.
2) the moneyed teams will gradually run through their piles of cash, and their dominance will peak. from what i can tell, these moneyed teams are not in the USA. but teams with 10, 15, or 20 million in the bank will only be able to translate that into two, three, maybe four good players.
3) i can see the possibility at DII, and even maybe the NBBA of having a trainee and still being competitive. i don't mean polishing off some 26 year old, but a 21 year old.
4) i can see the structure of teams in the NBBA changing, so that squads will have one, two, maybe three top tier players, and a solid group of bench / rotation players. salary levels will drop; in my time in the NBBA, i would say salary levels for competitive teams has fallen by $100,000 or more. i expect that trend to continue.
5) training is going to be much, much more important.
some specifics: A-Dubs purchased the heart of his team (Hunt, Bowens, and Bello) for $12 million. today, $15 million+, especially because player value skyrockets under 32. A-Dubs has a very sharp eye for talent, and basically trained his guards, so he may have a run of another three seasons or more. but at $900,000, his salary range is very high; even factoring $150,000 for merchandise, that means around $2 million in profit for a given season (plus playoffs). Over three seasons, he may reach $6 - $7 million (i'm really guessing here) which may buy one Bowens.
i see the bonus for advancing to the NBBA next season will be $1.5 million. unless the four squads have prepared well, that amount of money to compete with Upsyndrome is a joke. but i can see in three, four seasons, that the game will have changed sufficiently so that $1.5 million may plug a hole in a squad that otherwise has been trained for many seasons, like Hrudey's.