BuzzerBeater Forums

I suck at drafting? Funny boy you are. There´s 4 people worth money in the average draft, and honestly, it´s great that most players can be 4th and 5th division starters, but any team who has the aim to play in 4th of 5th division is either stuck in a huge country or lost.

In the average draft I´ve seen over recent years, there´s like 10 out of 48 players who can by potential contribute in the league level I´m currently in AFTER at least 3-4 years of training, BUT out of those about 50-66% drop out because of bad or bad distributed starting skills and / or age. So that´s at best 5 out of 48 players (~10%) who CAN at some point be useful for the league level I´m playing at.

This is a point where I somehow agree with Pini - this is not balanced.

Pinis solution of making higher league drafts better would create a HUGE imbalance between the leagues and can hardly be a solution. So I´m trying to propose a different approach: erase the potential, or at least RAISE the average potential to a point where most players at least HAVE A SHOT of making the league.

Still, most of the players will end up beeing fired because of their initial skillset, but it would be nice to have like 20% of the players drafted around for some time. Won´t happen with the current system, and for sure not in higher league (happy celebrating your 4th and 5th league comparison, but that´s not a valid point for the discussion, because anybody´s aim should be to compete in a higher league AND because I do by no means ask for a higher skill level of the original draftees, so the impact rookies will have stays the same at the beginning of their career).

20% of the players staying in a league or contributing at some point of their career would mean it´s like 10 guys, which is roughly 2/3rds of the first round. Even bad classes in the NBA somehow manage that number.

It´s not about those 20% players beeing top-stars, which they should not be, but at least useful role players.

The overall league talent level will balance itself by the income of the players.

I don´t see your point about the transfer list at all. You still buy a player by his skills. If you are interested in a player because of his skillset and size and age, throw a scouting point or two at him to gather information. Maybe the scouting point systems needs to be adjusted so you can gain more than those points you mentioned, but honestly, I´d rather scout a player I´m interested in buying than using it on a rookie draft where I pull 7th or 8th, because at this point there will be nothing left but end of the bench guys at my league level. Drafting becomes more and more of a useless lottery the higher you play, just because the chance of getting anything useful if you´re trying to stay in the league is close to none, and the tanking and dropping teams or even the premature newbies get the good guys anyways, collecting money in their higher division stint, getting a high profile rookie, and then, two seasons later, coming back richer and stronger than you have ever been.

(Some data: in the last draft in my div II, there were 12 players all-star or above (I think 4-5 of them beeing exactly all star) - in division II in germany you should be an all-star to have a shot at beeing a rotation guy at some point (we might have a role player with a potential less here and there, but I guess most teams would accept my assumption here), with three of them beeing true money players who sold or can be sold for 500k+. Three "real stars" at this league level is perfectly fine (two of them were on teams relegated), but out of the remaining 9 players I don´t see more than 2 or maybe 3 becoming rotation guys at this league level, most are just end of the bench roster filles on their teams because of age, size or skill distribution they willl never have a shot at developing in anything useful). That´s a big lousy, won´t you agree?


Last edited by LA-seelenjaeger at 12/7/2011 7:05:37 PM

Maybe I should have been more precise in my steps ...

Step I : Raise the average potential to Star / All Star (roughly)
Step II: Hide it
Step III: Invent a new hidden skill "learnability"
Step IV: Make scouting points available to scout real players aswell as rookies.
Step V: (new) Rework the scouting points system.
Step VI: New "Speciality" for some skills
Step VII: New "Special dumbness" for some skills (both related to initial drafting position)

I´m for the whole package, while Crazy for example is against III, VI and VII if I understood him right.

The problem is simply the ratios are wrong at the moment.

This is wild speculation based on my observations only in India (where I have studied every draft for the last few seasons) and Australia but the current breakdown is something like this.

announcer 2/48
bench warmer 6/48
role player 6/48
6th man 6/48
starter 6/48
star 6/48
allstar 6/48
perennial allstar 5/48
superstar 3/48
MVP 2/48
hall of famer 1/100
all-time great 1/1000

Consdiering that all players with potential of announcer to starter are really just varying degrees of useless that all get fired within a week of the draft there is half the draft gone already. Then consider the one or two MVPs you get in the draft can be a $2,000 salary 18 year old and a $4,000 19 year old 7'0" PG with atrocious ID and IS then you can start to see how few useful players we really get per draft. The figure of 10% has been often raised and I think that is a good ballpark figure.

I would suggest a MUCH better distribution of potential would be something like

announcer 2/48
bench warmer 2/48
role player 2/48
6th man 2/48
starter 2/48
star 10/48
allstar 10/48
perennial allstar 10/48
superstar 6/48
MVP 2/48
hall of famer 1/100
all-time great 1/1000

So no change to the top three potentials at all but a lot more players that can be trained and at least become useful players in decent leagues.

Still, most of the players will end up beeing fired because of their initial skillset, but it would be nice to have like 20% of the players drafted around for some time. Won´t happen with the current system, and for sure not in higher league (happy celebrating your 4th and 5th league comparison, but that´s not a valid point for the discussion, because anybody´s aim should be to compete in a higher league AND because I do by no means ask for a higher skill level of the original draftees, so the impact rookies will have stays the same at the beginning of their career).

but a lot of player get stopped anyway before reaching allstar potential, and when you get your upper league player when you are still in lower league you often also loose your money. And i saw a lot of stars whoo could be still backup for my team.

Also i beleive the main reason for just using the top 5 per cent of draftee is, that we simple doesn't need more. We had to face, that we nearly don't loose player, when a team goes bot most trained player stayed a lived and the new team produce some talent too, before they reach the point where they could use the old talents.

And most upper division teams train, and also sacrifice a lot for training like the low leagues dudes ok they ain't 18 year old anymore but it is still training.

Edit: I miss all the threads, with there a no players worth to train out there, from people who are looking for trainees. Only think i see is that people want draft where they could train or sell 2-3 of them ... But the market already is filled, with players who fit in your criterias that you get one of them easily if you like.

Last edited by CrazyEye at 12/8/2011 1:59:23 AM

The problem is not that you can't buy a player to train who is good enough for your team. I could do that for less than one weeks scouting cost easily. Even restricting myself to just Australia (600 managers) I have little difficulty in finding great trainees. The issue is that it is almost impossible to draft one yourself. Bumping a ton of players potential from roleplayer or 6th man to allstar or pallstar probably wont make trainees even cheaper, they are already almost free at that potential level unless they have very high starting skills and are aged 18, but it will make it possible for people to train their own draft picks.

I have spent $20,000 a week every single week since I started early in season 10 and yet I still have all three of my trainees bought from other teams.

but this wouldn't be different through raising the quality in the draft, this would be more making the player more the same. So that you keep him or fire him, cause the other most likely don't want to buy cause they have the same.

With higher quality, the player you keep to train get better, but most of your self drafted dudes will be still to weak considering the circumstances.

And getting an ideal trainee through draft is complicated, cause he had to fit in your programm to so even when you find a solid one you often sell him cause he don't fit into your training plan since you maybe had to fight other weaknesses then with your trainees. Maybe there more details about the draft could help.

Once you were relegating from divII. You were drafting 4-th. Drafted a pretty good guy, but sold him for 1mil. Why did you not train him? You expect to keep drafting the best guy, even if you are one of the strongest teams in the league?

Actually I have drafted some brilliant players and could field a solid team from my ex-draft picks but the problem is that they have mostly been very unsuitable for me to train. From my early days I was committed to training SGs so while the money was great from drafting and selling brilliant 6'9"and 6'7" players keeping and training them wasn't really an option for me.

Training SFs is a cruel and thankless task, after being trained every week for five seasons here is that draft pick.

Peni Lucas (14843945)
Point Guard
Owner: Yarra Park Bears
Weekly salary: $ 17 613
Age: 23
Height: 6'7" / 201 cm
Potential: superstar

Nope I don't expect to keep on drafting the best guy but I would hope to draft someone great for me to train at some stage.

I laughed when i read this

This is a point where I somehow agree with Pin

*sorry Pini*

yer look, i think its a good thinking outside the square kind of idea. so you get a ball for that. But i think its trying to use a sledge hammer to crack a walnut.

I do kind of like the idea of hiding potential, but then that would TOTALLY stuff up the transfer market.
I know people whinge about low potential players. But i was just recently bidding on a guy with 6th-man potential. OK so im in Div III but im 10-0 and my starting SF is injured. point being is that a) Somebody trained this guy and b) i was prepared to buy him.
Ironically, so was someone else, because they outbid me.

fact is ive used star and starter potential players in the past, because there is no pressure to constantly train them. They have reached their cap, so now they become the player that i dont care about training minutes for.

So, what im saying is, is that i feel that there actually is a valid place for these kinds of potential players.
yoda hit the nail on the head with the dispersion stats. I actually think the problem is the salary of the players. why have a 19 year old MVP PF with atrocious rebounding. its just not cricket.

anyways, good ideas, but too much change for me. think smaller :)

If he's been training him for 5 seasons, then obviously he is doing something wrong.
So you chose not to train your great draftees. I rest my case...

He was a great draftee but at 6'7" with more inside skills than outside he wasn't for me training SGs. Do you really win this case just because I don't totally change my entire team around get rid of all my old big guys and replace them with young ones and stop training all my established guards just because I draft someone great but totally unsuitable for my current plans?

In another season I drafted a brilliant high $ player who was perfect except for the minor fact that he was a 6'6" PG with atrocious JS. Should I have spent an entire season training JS just to get him to the starting line by age 19 and then watch him train very slowly ever after?

Last edited by yodabig at 12/8/2011 8:27:47 AM