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I think in terms of total economic costs/benefits, "blowing it up" only pays out if there are external circumstances, or if you wind up in an untenable position like what TUG found himself in. Otherwise, the rest of us are condemned to incremental upgrades/rolling roster changes.

I think in terms of total economic costs/benefits, "blowing it up" only pays out if there are external circumstances, or if you wind up in an untenable position like what TUG found himself in. Otherwise, the rest of us are condemned to incremental upgrades/rolling roster changes.

For the most part, you're right, but I'm looking at it from the perspective of no plan whatsoever of being competitive for a minimum of 4 seasons. It's the only way a team purge really makes sense.

I'll try to give a synopsis of my notes without being too lengthy here.

1. Sell all current players. Probably best done right before the POs or at the beginning of the season. I made the assumption that most teams in II have a team value of ~$20M-$30M+ on the TL, and used a safe estimate of ~$25M.

2. Buy 4 18yo trainees. Assuming ~$2.5M per trainee (which I feel is a high estimate, but you should be buying some pimps here, I estimated $5k/wk salaries on these guys), that leaves us with ~$15M. (I'm also assuming 2-position training, as I didn't bother to calculate 1-position training.)

3. Fill out the rest of the team with absolute scrubs, the worst and cheapest players you can find on the TL (or better, via the draft); the lower the salary, the better. The skills of the scrubs are unimportant, as you plan to lose anyway, and the more you save on their salary each week, the more cash goes in your team coffers. There are plenty of 1k salary players in the game right after the draft, and five of them should be plenty. These, combined with your 18yo trainees, put your team's weekly player wage bill at around $25k, but let's say $30k/week just to be on the safe side.

4. Downgrade staff. Basic doctor & PR guy, and depending on the level of trainer you have and his salary, either keep or replace, but in the interest of keeping your wages as low as possible, I budgeted $1M (which should be much more than necessary) over the course of the first 4 seasons to keep your trainer lvl decent and his salary relative to his trainer level. Calculating his wages (and the doc/PR, who simply get fired/replaced when their salary gets sily) into the 4 seasons, subtract ~$3M (including the $1M from above) over the course of the 4 seasons. That leaves us with ~12M.

5. Train and lose. A lot of both. This involves a drop of divisions, probably to at least IV, if not V.

6. Move and repeat. Whether training guards or big men, keep your best two, sell the other two (~$3.5M each, to be safe*), move the trained 22yos to SF, and do the whole process over again (4 more trainees @ ~$2.5M each, leaving us a net loss of ~$3M here, putting our total bank at around $9M), this time for 5 seasons.


That was longer than I thought, and sadly, I'm not done. Around step 6, your player salaries start to mean something, but a couple of seasons into it, you should be winning games here and there, and by the fourth or fifth season, right before switching (either from big men to guards or vice versa), your team will actually have a pretty massive strength in one sector that opponents will need to address to beat you.

What I haven't mentioned yet is that even though you're sucking pole in the standings and your fans hate you throughout this, you're making a profit every week whether or not you have a home game. If you start in II, your TV contract alone will be worth about double your total outlay on salaries, and you'll still get some form of attendance and merch no matter how much you lose. This also assumes zero Cup revenue.

Stopping here to leave room for my footnote. Make any sense?

*-assuming the economy doesn't take a giant crap. If it's at a pivotal moment, like when trainees are turning over for fresh 18yos, it's a wash, as the kids will be cheaper. I've also neglected to add that while falling thru divisions, you might pick up a great draft pick along the way for free.

Oh, I agree it makes sense, mostly. I'd take issue with the $20M+ team value assumption, but my players don't have TPE within a few weeks of me training them anyway, and rarely have TPEs when I buy them (I'm one of those wierdos that insist on defense and side skills *gasp*), so I may not have a great grasp of what my team's really worth -- and this is my inaugural d.II season anyway.

If you're going to 2-position train and lose, why not 6-man training? 48-ing a player isn't that hard, and you don't get messed up that often, especially if you don't actually care about winning.

I wouldn't go basic on the doctor -- 5 week injuries can vaporate a LOT of trainee value. My assumption when I first switched to single position training was that the value of training 18yos with extreme height was somewhere in the neighborhood of $75k-$100k/week in their "formative" (under-22) years. Now, granted, my analysis back then wound up settling on low potential trainees because I was assuming there was no potential premium by 22 years old, so I didn't want to pay through the nose for trainees that I wasn't going to train more than 3-4 seasons. So if you're going with high potential training, you might wind up with more of a $50k-$75k weekly return to training, or even less. But is saving 10-15k/week on the doctor worth the significantly higher risk of +5 injuries?

The other thing you wind up implicitly doing with that plan is playing a market game rather than a basketball manager game. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people that thing the transfer market should be regulated to the point where day trading or carry trading is impossible, or greatly laments inflation/deflation/etc in the player market -- I just know that personally I don't come here to play the stock market. If I wanted to do that, I'd go over to Yahoo Finance or something. Each his own, I suppose, but it seems to me that the basic premise of this is that player transfer prices will remain flat or drop while you're banking cash. If player transfer prices move higher, then your banked capital is being eroded and you're not getting the returns of higher income from being in a higher division.

I can say for certain that there's a big financial gap between even just II and III -- my player salaries are 30-odd percent higher than last season and I'm still clearing almost four times the typical weekly profit (salaries from ~180k last season in III to ~250k this season; typical weekly profit from ~40k to ~150k). Granted, I won't make a deep playoff run here, but if I were to burn the team and deliberately relegate, my gross receipts would probably be cut by 50% or more for each league level I dropped.

Well, come end of the next season to beginning of the one after, I'll be changing over my team a whole helluva lot. I can see 1 player surviving the purge. Will my team survive in Div II? I doubt it considering how long it'll take me to find the pieces I want. I'm going to be patient and make sure I bring in the players that fit the profile I want perfectly. This will surely cost me a lot of games.

And I will also be switching over to pure SF training. I plan on starting slow. As of now, I'm looking at buying 1 SF 18 yo, then buy another 1 season later, than a third one a season after that. There is 0 chance of surviving in Div II training up 3 18 yo trainees in ID/OD/whatever else, so I plan to stagger it a bit in a futile effort to survive. This will also allow me to buy players who are relatively young (trainable age still) at other positions and train them up. Big guys that lack a little D, guards that lack a little D. Also some Rebs and JS/HN/DR. It other words they won't have to necessarily be finished products, for the first season or 2 they'd get training half the season.

I considered buying a 20 yo, 19 yo, and a 18 yo SF trainee, but everytime I look for what I'd want, there is nada. So I'm going with the aforementioned route. And of course, I'm going to do my damnedest to stay American, home grown. Not sure I"ll be able to however.

This will most likely be the last bit of training I do considering the timeline I expect it to take in order to train up the SFs to the levels that I want. Many moons will shine before this is done, and knowing my past (taking into account HT), I'll be burnt and done. But it should be interesting, if not painful, if not fun.

So, in summation, enjoy my presence while you can because I don't expect to be around much longer than another season or 2. And things won't be looking up, so to speak. But at least it'll keep me entertained, can't say the same for anyone else ;)

your analysis is good but partly flawed. i originally thought like you, but you can't deny the game income is tempting, and keeping an arena semi-full depends upon some decent performances.

so in that sense. my goal is to keep 6 decent players.

greer is staying as he is my franchise player, was my autoassign when i signed up and im sticking with him till i can put him in the hof

bolden is staying with me because the market on him sucked (I shoulda waited to unload clement till the last week, because he was better than howell but got a lower price by far).

arreola is staying with me because hes still trainable with his height and skill-set. (age kinda sucks but oh well)

santiago is now staying with me because i need a decentish bigman, and hes prominent/prolific for a low wage.

durschlag is staying with me because hes my frankenstein.

and paiva might have to stay too if i cant sell him.


the rest of my team will suck. early in the season ill poop on a few cup parades, mostly lose games in d3, but starting around week 4-5, i should win at least one game a week of my choosing with my top lineup playing heavy minutes. i also expect a stud draftee, (though jelme is closing in on me!), and can thus finish with 8-12 wins in d3, which is semi-competitive. god forbid i make the playoffs, i can run small ball, and for one game i could be tough in d3 with a legit 30k sg and 28k pg flanked by my stud draftee at sf and maybe bolden backing up all 3 slots.

the salary struture for this team should only be 150k a week in wages, but will have ok performance, and more importantly i will be profitable even in d3 (d2 money is nice)

i have just shy of 8 mil now, would love to upgrade my over-salaried level 5 trainer to a 6 or 7, if i can find the right price point im so in.

once ortega goes and i get a coach i have 9 mil. if i expect prices to tank i sit on the money until they do. if i see a sudden increase coming, i will blow 4 mil on a dominant PF age 22-23, and 5 mil on a top top center, and look to flip soonish.if i see prices in a holding pattern ill keep stockpilng cash waiting for my run.

anyway thats the thought for now.

Good luck with the whole stud draftee thing.

In other news I went from being in last place to tied for second! Whoop.

Hmm.

Well, good luck with all that.

On an aside, does a level 6 or 7 trainer make a real difference? From last I read, and I admit that it was a while ago, but lvl 6/7s were not all worth it in the end. If I'm wrong in this, I may have to check into this after next season.

I also wonder if their salaries go up more quickly than a 5. That would be a downer for sure.

Last edited by Toonces at 5/26/2010 2:16:27 AM

the 6/7's are marginally better. but still, it matters, and its alot easier to manage minutes when you arent playing to win.

the salaries are always a fixed 2% increase a week. so you look at carrying costs, and replacement costs, and the math isnt too too difficult from there in terms of ok prices to upgrade at etc etc

the salaries are always a fixed 2% increase a week. so you look at carrying costs, and replacement costs, and the math isnt too too difficult from there in terms of ok prices to upgrade at etc etc

Incorrect.

Salary increases by week:
Level 2 - 1.25%
Level 3 - 1.5%
Level 4 - 1.75%
Level 5 - 2%
Level 6 - 2.25%
Level 7 - 2.5%

heh, shows i always carry level 5's

thanks for that!

Oh, I agree it makes sense, mostly. I'd take issue with the $20M+ team value assumption, but my players don't have TPE within a few weeks of me training them anyway, and rarely have TPEs when I buy them (I'm one of those wierdos that insist on defense and side skills *gasp*), so I may not have a great grasp of what my team's really worth -- and this is my inaugural d.II season anyway.

The $20M figure came from a 10 player team with an average player value of $2M.

If you're going to 2-position train and lose, why not 6-man training? 48-ing a player isn't that hard, and you don't get messed up that often, especially if you don't actually care about winning.

There just wasn't enough data available for 3-position training (or 1-position, for that matter) when crunched the numbers. Not to mention some things, like RB and DR, can only be trained 2-position (or Team).

I wouldn't go basic on the doctor -- 5 week injuries can vaporate a LOT of trainee value. [...] But is saving 10-15k/week on the doctor worth the significantly higher risk of +5 injuries?

You could always sell an injured trainee and replace him, though you're right, there is a lot of loss there. I don't have a whole lot of faith in the doctor portion of the team staff. If anyone has any figures on whether my lvl 6 doc is any better than, say, a lvl 3, I'd love to see them. I keep the lvl 6 around for piece of mind.

I can say for certain that there's a big financial gap between even just II and III -- my player salaries are 30-odd percent higher than last season and I'm still clearing almost four times the typical weekly profit (salaries from ~180k last season in III to ~250k this season; typical weekly profit from ~40k to ~150k). Granted, I won't make a deep playoff run here, but if I were to burn the team and deliberately relegate, my gross receipts would probably be cut by 50% or more for each league level I dropped.

One of the things that got me thinking on this was mostly the attendance factor. Jelme and TUG are still selling seats while their teams suck phallus, and some of my data came from Postal last season (she'd lost something like 9 straight, had 3 consecutive walkovers in competitive games (one of those a TV game, iirc), and was still selling ~7k tickets per game). What I couldn't really factor into my numbers were things like STH, as I have no idea what type of STH loss could be expected while falling through divisions, how much a team of such tiny value would hurt the TV money for an entire league, what sort of merch revenue to expect, etc.

The other thing you wind up implicitly doing with that plan is playing a market game rather than a basketball manager game. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people that thing the transfer market should be regulated to the point where day trading or carry trading is impossible, or greatly laments inflation/deflation/etc in the player market -- I just know that personally I don't come here to play the stock market. If I wanted to do that, I'd go over to Yahoo Finance or something. Each his own, I suppose, but it seems to me that the basic premise of this is that player transfer prices will remain flat or drop while you're banking cash. If player transfer prices move higher, then your banked capital is being eroded and you're not getting the returns of higher income from being in a higher division.

You're absolutely right here, and preaching to the choir a bit. However, if you're in a higher division paying $350k-$450k/week on player wages while making a profit, how much profit do you think could be made if you suddenly cut $300k+ in wages?

Even if I still think my idea could be done, I seriously doubt my ability to follow through with it; mostly because I like the winning part of this game more than I like the training part.