BuzzerBeater Forums

Since I’m now an expert at finishing in 5th place and want to try doing better next season, I want to officially suggest the following change (read: improvement) that will make 5th place far less attractive than 4th place since it would keep people like me from gaming the system.

Current Situation: The Transfer List closes at 9:00am server time (east coast USA) on the Sunday two days before postseason games start, which is the morning after the final regular season games end.

Proposed Change: The Transfer List closes at 11:00am server time (east coast USA) on the Friday 11 days before postseason games start, which is after 19 (of 22) games into the season.

Reasons for the Proposed Changes:

1. As many other forum posts have pointed out, the current situation allows for a team to buy players for the playoffs that had not played a single regular season game for the team. Aside from making many managers resentful of teams that have more cash stored up (sometimes from tanking in a previous season) or teams that see an opportunity to make a playoff push because a league favorite suffers a late-season injury, allowing teams to buy players right before the playoffs detracts from efforts to simulate real basketball since in real life it would some time for a new player to develop chemistry with a new team and, therefore, without changing the way the game engine handles new additions to a team, efforts should be at least be made to discourage the practice of allowing new players to jump right into the playoffs for a new team.

2. All playoff-bound teams (and playoff contenders) need to strategize their approach to the postseason. Presently, since other teams can make roster changes up to only 2 days before the first playoff games, managers who might be a little busier in real life right in the last week of the regular season are at a disadvantage. It would be preferable for teams to have their playoff rosters set before the regular season ends so playoff teams can have a little more time to navigate through the last week (focusing on enthusiasm and GS, prioritizing match ups, scouting, etc.). It is reasonable that all players should have been on a roster for at least the last 10% of the season (rounded up to 3 games) to be considered part of the team when the season ends.

3. Once a team is virtually locked into 5th place, the obvious time to put players on the TL from just after 72 hours before the last regular game (so that the player can still be on the team for that game) and before the TL playoff deadline (when playoff teams are looking for last minute roster upgrades and will typically overpay for the players). Since the deadline is on a Sunday, that means the selling teams get to benefit from the player’s game on Saturday but not have to pay the player’s salary on Monday. By moving the TL deadline up by 9 days, teams will be less sure about clinching 5th place before the TL deadline and will be less inclined to sell their players and benefit from their safe 5th place standing, thus eliminating a motivation for teams to fall into 5th place. This is probably the biggest short-term benefit of the proposed change.

4. The TL deadline time should be at a time that maximizes the accessibility of the TL for the most number of BB managers. 9:00am is fine for people like me in New York City, it’s best for managers in Europe and Africa, and it’s also really good for managers in most of Asia, but it’s really early for the North American west coast. Moving the time back by 2 hours will allow a lot of managers to wake up and hit the TL before the deadline, but should still be within an acceptable time range for mot of Asia (though it may be pushing it in Japan). Sorry, this doesn’t really help Australia or Hawaii, but at least the weather is really nice in Hawaii, which more than makes up for this. And Australia has all those really cute kangaroos and koala bears.

[edit: typos]

Last edited by chihorn at 08/07/2012 12:35:48

Poll:  Do you support the proposed change?

I think this is a great suggestion. Not over the top (3 weeks before playoffs for example :O) and promotes some roster stability before playoffs. +1 and 1'st choise!

great suggestion +1

I am for solution as Kukoc said, that transfer deadline will be 3 weeks before first play off match

A great and reasonable suggestion. I would also say, that even 5 games before the PO's would be ok. But even if they change it to your suggestion that would be marvelous.

The trade deadline absolutely needs to be earlier. A team that doubles up on their salary for the playoffs is ridiculous. Although I am willing to bet that the team often does not fair so well the next season.

Thanks for adding that point I forgot to add. By moving up the deadline, it becomes a lot more costly for a team to add salary just for a playoff run since that team will have to bear the weight of those extra salaries for an extra couple of weeks. For, say, a D.II team to suddenly add more than $100k of salary (I've seen that happen), that would translate into an additional $200k of expenses. If that gets factored in to the investment, another side affect is that the pre-playoff TL market won't get quite as hot as it does not when 5th place teams can clean up by dumping salary right then. (Believe me, I know this is a motivation for finishing in 5th since I was intentionally trying to take advantage of this myself as a 5th place team!)

I have been supporting that idea for a while. It would be so easy to implement whilst having such large of an impact.
Does your 11 day span accumulate to paying two additional salaries in comparison to now? I haven't checked that aginst the schedule. I think two additional salaries is great insofar as it balances the interests. You can still add or replace players late if you so choose. At the same time it discourages playoff tanking. Everyone doing so will have to think twice before paying 100k+ players for more weeks than just the playoffs.

Yes, the buying teams right at the deadline would pay for two weeks of regular season salary for the benefit of 3 regular season games, instead of one week of regular season salary for zero regular season games as they do now.

I think it should be even further back. It would promote deeper benches and more strategy.

To me, the transfer deadline before the playoffs isn't the problem. The problem is that there is no CUP transfer deadline. This season and last, three teams had rosters over 1.2 million just in Japan. People find it easier to buy a CUP and a BB3 ticket. In fact one team added 700K of salary 2 hours before the cup final...that is just stupid. The Cup transfer deadline should be from the final 8.