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Had a bit of a brainwave today regarding the HCA in the finals argument and it led to me thinking about how we could 'optimise' the competition formats in this game in general. I'm aware that not everyone will agree with all of these suggestions, but I'll never know which ones people are keen on until I pitch them;

Two leg aggregate series for the league finals and relegation play-off
One game at your home court, one game away. Highest combined score wins, with extra time if the combined score is a tie. It would take away some of the tactical rock-paper-scissors of a three game series, but it would ensure that the strongest team over the two leg series wins, no 'HCA' excuses.

Ideally, the team with the better regular season record would get the choice of which of the two legs is played at their home court.

A fairer B3 format?
The current B3 round robin format has a big element of luck in it, as some teams who have a shot of winning the competition might end up having to play other title contenders away from home, and end up 6-2 and just outside the final 32 through little fault of their own.

My solution is to make the round robin format a 'group stage' similar to the one used in European Football. The full format in my head is;

Qualifying round: Teams are seeded based on world ranking, and how they qualified for the tournament, with league winners seeded above cup winners, and cup winners seeded above former champions who didn't win a league or cup to qualify. The highest seeds go directly through to the group stage, and the rest play a one-game neutral venue qualifying game to get into the group stage. 128 teams will qualify for the group stage all up.

Group stage: 32 groups of four teams each will be drawn. Ideally, the seeding system used to determine which teams went directly through to the group stage will also be used to seed the group draw and ensure that there's no 'easy' or 'hard' groups. Each group will play a double round-robin; teams will play the other three teams in their group once at home and once away for a total of six games. Top two teams in each group at the end of the sixth round advance.

Round of 64: Group stage winners will be given home court advantage, and will be randomly drawn to play against group stage runners up. One game, winners go through to the round of 32 and from there, the B3 format will be the same as the current one, with the round of 32 onwards being a single elimination tournament played at neutral venues.

Are 13 week seasons an option?
If we were to scrap the all-star break that few people care about in it's current incarnation anyway, it may be possible to squeeze the season into a 13 week cycle without sacrificing anything. If we use the aforementioned two-leg aggregate system for the finals, playing the two legs on consecutive days, much like how games two and three are played on consecutive days presently, allows us to squeeze the season into a 13 week cycle. Another option is to have only two teams in each conference make the play-off rounds, which might put more empathises on getting good regular season results if you want a chance to win the championship. As for the cup, there's no country in BB right now that needs anything longer than 12 rounds to be able to fit every active team into the tournament comfortably (in fact even Spain and Italy can squeeze all of their active users into an 11 round cup right now thanks to recent user losses :()

The B3 format I mentioned above can be tweaked to fit into a 13 week schedule by removing the round of 64 and having just the group stage winners progress straight into the round of 32. And I'm sure that National Tournaments could be streamlined to fit within a 13 week schedule too, but I'm running out of character space so I won't elaborate... thoughts?

Last edited by Jay (OTT) at 07/02/2015 07:28:04

all seems worth it to me
one day ill play B3
one day

In the hopes of sparking a conversation, I will add to my previous post...

I put the 13 week season suggestion out there, because I feel that it may help convince more users to sign up, and keep them interested once they do. I opted to sign up for this game instead of other basketball managers out there because the other basketball managers had stupidly long seasons (17 and 19 weeks). The steps suggested in the previous post to make 13 week seasons possible would result in less 'down-time' throughout the season for managers, with no mid-season break and also less time to wait for teams that finish 5th, 8th, or are eliminated early in the play-off rounds. This can in theory help keep new managers interested in the game. I'm sure that training speeds and clubs earnings/expenses could be adjusted with relative ease should a change to 13 week seasons eventuate.

I believe that the two-leg aggregate finals system wouldn't necessarily make the regular season less important; obtaining the #1 seed in your conference would still net you home court advantage in the single-game conference play-off rounds. It should however increase the suspense and excitement of the finals series, as a team that loses game one but has home court advantage for game two still has a good chance of chasing down the deficit and winning, as opposed to the current system where a team losing game one away will usually go on to lose the series due to having to play game three away also.

I have other ideas also. Would anyone be interested in a Europa League inspired second tier international competition, for those who finish runners-up in league or cup, and possibly other invites to make up the numbers? What about an option to allow smaller nations to switch to a 1-2-4-8 league pyramid system, which would see both league finalists promote? I'm just throwing ideas out here and seeing what sticks...

I think smaller nations should switch to a 1-1-2-2-4 structure. Maybe that could help.

Bumping this one more time, as if a BB were to read and like one of my suggestions now they'd have time to implement it for Season 33. If I can't spark a discussion this time, I'll just give up on this thread, even though I think I have made some decent suggestions.

I'm personally not too keen on a 1-1-2-2-4 structure, but perhaps the best solution is to leave it in the hands of a representative/s for each country to decide which structure works best for them, be it the 1-4-16-64 we have now, 1-3-9-27 with the losing finalists with the best regular season record getting a wildcard promotion, 1-2-4-8 with both league finalists promoting, or something different like the format Knecht suggests.

One GE change that would have to be made should a two-leg play-off system ever materialise is to disable the late-game fouling logic and extra time in the first leg, then only apply these factors based on the aggregate score and not the game score in the second leg. Which remind's me of some minor suggestions I'd like to make;

- Give us a tactical option to turn off late game fouling if our team is losing. Often times the fouls do more harm than good and some managers might feel that just playing normal defence will give them a better chance.

- An option in PL games to count games that are tied at the end of regulation time as draws?

Finally, regarding my second-tier B3 idea, the idea in my head is to have those who lose the qualifying round of the B3 proper transfer to this second-tier competition, with the winners of a qualifying round involving league runners-up, cup runners-up, and wildcard entries based on world ranking filling out the remaining spots. Like the B3 proper, this would be a 128 team tournament using the same format as the one previously suggested...

Last edited by Jay (OTT) at 08/17/2015 07:45:16

Just over a year on from when I first posted this. This thread didn't gain a great deal of traction before, but I personally still like all of these ideas that I posted. I've decided to bump this existing thread once more, instead of making a new one, to see if there's any more support for it now as opposed to then.

I'll admit that the 13 week season idea might be tough to implement for an ultimately small gain, but the B3 and league final ideas are ones that I believe can improve the fairness and/or excitement of the respective competitions, if they can be implemented.

Last edited by Jay (OTT) at 07/09/2016 08:50:21