BuzzerBeater Forums

Your idea sounds very nice and I like it. Actually I think I'm applying it, but not at the scale you are describing it. I use it only on my bigs : i'm trying to develop big guys with inside def skills, and outside attack skills. But the rest of the roster is rather based on a "classic" scheme.
This strategy of "Hybrid players" leading to an optimal roster costs is realistic, but becomes harder to implement on the entire roster of a team.
10-12 average height players with inverted attack/defense skills will take time and energy to develop.

Still you can start with focusing on those who will be your 3 inside guys and developping them for X seasons (i took 3 guys for the 1 position training which is the most efficient). The rest of the roster should be kept "classic" so your team stays competitive. Once their training gets slower (around 23 to 25 y.o.), then go for the guards. Develop 3 PG/SG, (1+2 pr 2+1)... all this would last for approx. 12 seasons ! During this time, you should have made enough money to buy 2/3 all around SFs to complete the roster (we have 9 players out of 12). The last 3 ones will come at last, from your market or from the next drafts ...
"Working" with other teams and exchanging players is a bit hard to control : a player on the TL will be available for all the managers. How can you be sure the traded player will go at the price you and your "partners" will decide ? And even working with partner teams, it will last more than 12 years to get your ideal roster anyway...

The result of it will become a roster of "cheap" players with great skills ... is the salary difference worth a 10 season work ? how long will it take before it becomes more efficient financially than a more "classic" approach ? (I ask those questions and will try to figure it out, because as I said before, i'm quite interested in this kind of approaches !)

Thanks for your reply. I'm just putting the idea forward hoping others agree, and maybe help trying. Maybe more and more managers will see the benefit and we can bring forth a shift in strategy. As more managers train these type of players, completing your roster will become easier. It sounds a little like a utopia, but I like out of the box ideas.

I think the bigs are easier/faster to train, because you only need high levels of IS and OD, and then some RB and a little of the other skills. If you can get them to finish training at age 23, you'll be approaching an ideal starting 5 pretty quickly.

About trading the players with partners, what if both put a player on the wire, and bid on eachother's players? As you bid, the other guy gets more cash available allowing him to bid more on yours, so you can do the same. Basically you can big 5 million on eachother's player. I don't think that high a price is desirable for the transfer market and possibly forbidden, but seeing as the players won't fit very well in regular teams, I don't think other managers will want to spend a lot on these players. If you bid at the high part of the market value, I don't think regular managers are gonna outbid you.

And wether it's worth it? I don't know, that depends on what you want. For me, I think it would be worth it to be succesful with my own strategy that no-one else uses. Also, to be the best you gotta have a real good advantage (or real good luck), and having a roster that only costs you 1/3rd to 1/2 of the salary of competitors, I'd say you'd have that kind of advantage. If you want to win it all, you need to put in a lot of work, so if you aim high I think it's worth a shot!

Thank you, I think if more managers see the benefit of this setup, it will be easier to put together a team like this. And you need to view things in perspective; for the level of skills I portrayed here, you'll need a PAS/Superstar trainee yes, but if you compare it to a traditional player with the same skill level you'll need a lower potential because your player will have 1/3rd to half of the salary of the traditional player. If that's a problem you can start with a lower level of skill as your goal.

Actually I think finding trainees will be easier than finding them for a traditional build, because you'll be training big and small skills, so overall the training speed will be about the same wether it's a 6'3", 6'6" or 6'9" player. Also having holes in the skills of the player will not matter that much; a big with ID below 5 won't be a problem for this type of player, and since it's not ideal for the traditional player build, the trainee might even be cheaper.

Reading the topic about B3, I see that any effort towards trying to win on the high levels is a big one. And since money is such a bottleneck on the high level, can't this idea be a solution for them?

This timeout on login is killing me, wrote a message as long as yours, hit sent and was just 0,5s too late to copy my text because I realized I would be logged out... Lost it =/

First of all thank you for your thorough reply, it's much appreciated. I'll respond to problem #4 right away, as it's part of why I do this. I like to use creative thinking and solution finding to find exploits and weaknesses in a system, prove it so others can learn from it and the system can be improved. I like basketball as much and in as many ways as you do, and I'll like Buzzerbeater better as it becomes more realistic, and I do hope my efforts will help achieving that. I don't aim for my idea to be a long term succesful one, I just want to prove it works and bring positive change to the game.

I think problems #1 and #2 are addressed quite well in my example roster. There's RB and JS across the board, and though maybe not as high on the traditional places, but overall I think it's the same level (15, 10, 10, 15, 17 RB and 14, 15, 14, 14, 10 JS). You could argue that having RB spread isntead of concentrated isn't as good, but I don't think it has that much of a negative impact, if any. The C still has 17 RB which is the highest skill level of the build, and the guards have higher than normal RB. In any case, with these skill levels the salary is still way below the salary of comparable traditional players, so even if the levels are too low, there's room to make them higher. Maybe my view on traditional players on the 14-17 skill levels is wrong, but I think they costs about 150k in salary, and then my 75k guards and 60-55k bigs are a lot cheaper with comparable skills (if any of this isn't true, please let me know).

Problem #3 is something I indeed haven't thought about. I've used balanced models for my players; G's with both IS and JR and bigs with both IS and JS. On defense, I forgot to put reasonable OD on my guards (what traditional bigs would have), but I think there's room to put it there. Otherwise they have the same defensive qualities, albeit inversed. I think with the current skill levels the players are pretty suitable for either outside or inside offense and defense, but it can be adjusted to do either in a better way, while keeping the salaries low.

In short, if you want please take another look at my example roster (which is really just a first draft and could use some tweaks), and see what is missing compared to traditional players of the same skill level (14-17). I don't think there's all that much missing, and if there is my players are so much cheaper than normal that a little extra salary woudln't hurt. If you could find some time to reply again that would be great, then I can work out the skills to be effective, and focus on them being trainable next

Thanks again!

Great! Thanks for the effort. How would you say this kind of lineup compares to traditional lineups? How much cheaper is it compared to a traditional lineup with the same skills, or how much better is it compared to one with the same salary?

The PG is hard indeed because it needs something of everything, and the OD still inflates the salary even if you keep it at 9. However, you'll have RB and SB across the board, and you can pimp your bigs greatly. I mean 20 OD, and then you could even choose to make IS 19 if you keep SB at 5 and ID at 7 for the Center (a traditional PG doesn't need that much ID right?)

If you want a commited PG with the same skills but regular OD and 1 RB, you can still only get OD to 15 for 101k. We could try to work out something else, but I think the PG we have currently isn't that bad.

If we make a LI team like everyone else does, the JS won't be much of a problem right? Or is it too low for LI as well? Even so, I don't think we should aim for the perfect solution with this build, that would be unrealistic. I think we can live with some minor flaws (the PG, the lack of high JS) if we get other big benefits: much lower salary and high RB, PA and SB across the boards.