BuzzerBeater Forums

honestly? forget the age -- i look at skills and project. we all do, i suppose, except i project declines.

let us say you favor TSP as an indicator. Let us say you want a player with 120 TSP. Find a player below 30 and a TSP like that and you have a player getting maybe $5 million plus. many look at that under-30 and see perhaps more pops with intensive training, adding value. but there will be a decision to make: what to do with this player? getting back what you paid is only realistic for a season or two; after that, the player's resale value declines, sometimes precipitously. then you discover that replacing $5 million players is pretty expensive.

at 33 or 34, that player's price has fallen by more than half, say to 2 million; his TSP is probably closer to 120 than 115.. if you buy the player at that age, in addition to saving a couple of million, what have you purchased? initially, a decent starter for an NBBA team, not a big statistical achiever, certainly not a NT player, but you have a manageable team salary that provides a steady income stream that can be periodically reinvested in this kind of player for longer than people think. over time, salary of the player will drop, containing his cost. more importantly, if that 33 year old follows what i think is a general pattern, by age 35 he will be down maybe to 116 TSP, by 38, maybe dropping 6 more skills. at that point, what do you have? a player with 110 skill points, rising experience levels, and probably an exceptional FT shooter. such a player has a place on my team, a backup, a starter in easy Cup games and games i need to punt. so this player has a use for me throughout the six or seven seasons he hangs around. for me, he has the value of getting a player with 110 TSP, no matter the age.

one major downside: managing decline is a very poor route to winning an NBBA title. making the playoffs is the goal.

That's pretty impressive, but you know what's more impressive? THE US CHAMPIONSHIP BELT. Where is that thing anyway?

Thanks Hassan for your in-depth response
You're quite right of course. Probably I have to recalibrate my "value plateau" that I'm searching for to be in the early thirties instead of mid/late twenties like it used to be.

TarTeam and I got outbid earlier today on a 26yo that wound up going for $8M! He won't sell for $8M when he's 30. And if I had got him, I would have had the "privilege" of training him for three or four seasons to finish the build. Great player, but why go through all that trouble when you can get it off-the-shelf at age 33 for a fraction of the price...

exactly.

I hear what you're saying but the skill losses you're projecting over time seem really surprising to me.

as far as i know, this business of understanding the rate of decline only has anecdotal data. my experience also has some traumatic moments, but my rule of thumb is the player losing 25% of his TSP between 33 and, say, 41 or 42. But perception is also important: You see Sawyer as a negative -20 and remember his peak; i see that he is an exceptional player, even if 37.

But the larger point, for me, is developing a system for cycling new talent into the team. At the NBBA, i am convinced no one can waste valuable roster spots on training promising teenagers. That leaves the TL as the source of fresh blood. And within that TL, the least expensive talent are older players. If avoiding relegation is the goal (and it is for me), then older players are the most cost-efficient way to achieve that goal.