BuzzerBeater Forums

Yeah right. For 150k and more you can by a 30-33 year old guy with a salary of around 20k.
Whereas to train a youngster up to 20k salary would take 3-4 seasons.

Easiest recipe for winning: Sell all players and buy cheap old farts, as the choice is plentiful really. And then train game shape all season, oh and can also buy a trainer with career extension.

So you can either train a player for 4 seasons that would hold his skills for another 10 seasons, and benefit from the associated merchandising from having some roster consistency, or spend the 150k every couple of seasons to recycle through another old fart.

Of course, it mostly depends on how picky you are on side skills, too. If you just want X ID/IS/REB and don't care for instance if there's pitiful passing, inept handling and so forth, the veteran cycle is great. There's no need to bother training that type of inside donkey because there are other donkey lovers more than willing to do that and flooding the market constantly.

Well, the question was not whether it was better to buy and recycle old farts versus training youngsters. The question was whether or not training is profitable. It is still profitable to train and sell guys, just not the crazy profits that it used to be.

And if people want to do the old fart recycling dance, that doesn't bother me. It can be successful, but I wouldn't call it any more successful than a well run training program. I've seen it work, but I've also seen that when it goes bad, it goes bad quickly. That leaves those managers in a tough position, cause they get stuck with a bunch of crappy old farts whom they can't sell for enough to get to the next cycle, but then don't have any younger players of value to build from.

But really, if people want to think that training isn't useful, and want to buy crappy old players, trained by managers who have a now antiquated view of what skills are important for what position, then that's fine by me. I'll happily accept the competitive advantage.

The thing is that old players depreciate less. Buy for 200k sell for 150k. Whereas buying say a 25 year old allstar costs at least twice as much, in addition he will probably have less experience, less FT etc. And after a few seasons you end up selling him for what I see as a miserably low price (on of the reasons being free agency).

So as I see it, at least older players (30+) could be left out of becoming free agents.

Wow, yeah. If the only alternatives are "buy 30 year old, sell in a few seasons" or "buy 25 year old, sell in a few seasons" then I imagine it would be quite wise indeed to only buy the 30 year olds. I keep forgetting nobody is allowed to buy/train players to actually keep on their team for a long period of time here.

but if you sell him at 32 or 33, won't you get back the same amount that you would get from a similar old fart you bought?

So, depending on how you acquired your player, you might end up with a net profit when selling your now old fart. plus you would save on all the price differences between the old fart you sell and the slighty younger, but still old fart that you replaced him with. Add up all those cost differentials over the ~10 seasons you could keep your home trained guy and you have money for higher average salaries, more arena, buying some younger guys.

Could you please not use the term "old fart" like twice in every sentence?

I could, but I'm not going to.

I could, but I'm not going to.

Well, but you're an elderly flatulence yourself!

Sadly, I have no retort. Other than to release that flatulence in your general direction!

Sadly, I have no retort. Other than to release that flatulence in your general direction!

That's not the free agents we're looking for!