1)  I've yet to see a "10 pt team" do exceptionally well in the sim.  Beyond that I can't say as I don't have a ton of experience.  I will just say this from my experience.  I find that when buliding a team it is quite a challenge to get as low as the "10 pt" says you should and I rarely see any teams that aren't over that do well.  I concede limited experience but just commenting based on what I have seen.

2)  As I have said in this thread over and over.  I'm not saying that Dennis Rodman wasn't a good player.  I'm saying the fact that Rodman is far and away the best player in the sim doesn't reflect reality.  Added to that I said that he the stats of his career as combined into one "unit" (aka player) in this game is broken.  He is just too strong at multiple positions and restricts open league format just because of his existence.  If you understand the way the sim functions and don't take Rodman in most cases that is because you are challenging yourself rather than because you want to build the best possible team.

As to point #2 I have seen both Ash and Malone post similar comments in regards to Rodman.  I don't know why you challenge me now on this point.  It is obvious that Rodman is the most overly strong player in the sim based on the current formant.  Regardless of what you think of the real life player he isn't even in the top 5 of all time.  Definitely not the #1 most dominate player of all time even though he is in the sim.

Or do you argue in an open league format against knowledgeable players that Rodman wouldn't be the most chosen player overall counting clones from the teams submitted?

Rodman is not the 'best' player in the sim, nor most dominant - that would be Wilt or Lebron

Rodman is the most useful player in the sim for the price

^ What he said!

I'm not challenging that Rodman is one of the best values in the SIM (someone has to be don't they?), nor that he is under-priced (this is the problem).    But if Rodman wins all the time, then the sim is actually working correctly.  The prices for rebounds just need to be adjusted.

Dennis' numbers reflect guys like Russell and Ben Wallace (minus the blocks).  Those guys also went to the Finals frequently.   Look what Tyson Chandler did for the Mavs last year.  Phil Jackson called Dennis the best athlete he ever coached.
I haven't enetered an OL team in years, but that is where you go to exploit sim glitches, not challenge yourself (unless you enjoy losing).    There are currently many 60+ win OL teams without Rodman including a 68-win team.   
Now Damon Jones?  THAT'S a glitch.

Re:usage- I think we agree.  A 10 point team won't win a damn thing.

Re:double teaming- double-double teaming can be very effective if the opponent only has 2 guys that can handle high usage.  I've used and had it used against me with good results.

Lots of us clamored for a while for the cost of rebounds to be increased.  That did happen with the most recent big overhaul.  Unfortunately the cost of virtually everything else inexplicably went up at the same time and so the bump was meaningless.

Posted by felonius on 8/9/2011 9:03:00 AM (view original):
Rodman is not the 'best' player in the sim, nor most dominant - that would be Wilt or Lebron

Rodman is the most useful player in the sim for the price

Not really trying to get into a semantics debate about it.  Call it what you want but Rodman is the #1 player in the sim.  There is no replacement for him and the value you get by using him.  For the purposes of this as a game that is boring and is a problem.  I can build a team with no Lebron or no Wilt and not feel like I'm missing something.  If I build a team with no Rodman there is an obvious huge hole missing.

no he's not - go look at the last umpteen 52m+ draft theme leagues - all these seasoned owners picking at a high cap - does Rodman get picked #1? ever?

no - last 3 NCIH (formerly funky 52)  Rodman went 7, 3, 8 - Wilt was #1 everytime


I didnt bother going further back than that but pretty much: QED

Rodman is pretty useful but 67 Wilt is almost as good in his areas of strength and does about 85 other also useful things better and for longer

Posted by badja on 8/9/2011 9:47:00 AM (view original):
Re:usage- I think we agree.  A 10 point team won't win a damn thing.

Re:double teaming- double-double teaming can be very effective if the opponent only has 2 guys that can handle high usage.  I've used and had it used against me with good results.

If you mean a team that only has 10 usage tier points on the floor most of the time, I disagree.  My last OL team (which won the league) usually only had 10 or 11 usage tier points on the floor at once.

Posted by felonius on 8/9/2011 12:57:00 PM (view original):
no he's not - go look at the last umpteen 52m+ draft theme leagues - all these seasoned owners picking at a high cap - does Rodman get picked #1? ever?

no - last 3 NCIH (formerly funky 52)  Rodman went 7, 3, 8 - Wilt was #1 everytime


I didnt bother going further back than that but pretty much: QED

Rodman is pretty useful but 67 Wilt is almost as good in his areas of strength and does about 85 other also useful things better and for longer

I haven't done a $52mil league.  As I have mentioned in the thread I am talking about open leagues.

1) refer to question #1 at the beginning of the thread

2) you said 'best player in the sim' which implies something different than what you are saying now which is still debatable - Is Rodman more 'valuable' than Jason Kidd?

I won 69 games + a 'ship in an OL with only 10.5 usage points on the floor through my entire line-up (starters and their subs had the same usage).

To further incite this debate, I would like to establish that I had 3 Worms on that team.

mccheech, I'm not arguing that Rodman isn't the best player in the sim (because he's not).  IRL you build around a super star player.  The sim is not different.  What is more ideal than a guy that takes almost no shots, gets tons of boards and plays defense to compliment said super star?

Your two chief complaints are contradictory to one another.  The reason Rodman is so good is because he is so cheap.  He's cheap because he has such low usage (bottom tier in all the most useful seasons.  Maybe all of his seasons...).  His cost effectiveness is what makes him so good. 

Trust me, it's easy to build a team with only 10 usage points.  I don't know where you get that you can't.  It's hard to build a team with enough talent that has 14-16 usage points AND enough minutes.  That's why so many teams you see out there only have 17k minutes and rely on rookies.

Posted by mccheech on 8/8/2011 4:31:00 PM (view original):
I only have experience with Open Leagues so far but Rodman is by far the most broken player.  I guess it's possible to build a championship team without him but it sure does make you work a lot harder.  I would vote to flat out remove Rodman from the pool if we could.

Here is my first post Fel.  From the start I pointed out I was talking about Open Leagues because that is the only experience I have.

Posted by ashamael on 8/9/2011 8:02:00 PM (view original):
I won 69 games + a 'ship in an OL with only 10.5 usage points on the floor through my entire line-up (starters and their subs had the same usage).

To further incite this debate, I would like to establish that I had 3 Worms on that team.

mccheech, I'm not arguing that Rodman isn't the best player in the sim (because he's not).  IRL you build around a super star player.  The sim is not different.  What is more ideal than a guy that takes almost no shots, gets tons of boards and plays defense to compliment said super star?

Your two chief complaints are contradictory to one another.  The reason Rodman is so good is because he is so cheap.  He's cheap because he has such low usage (bottom tier in all the most useful seasons.  Maybe all of his seasons...).  His cost effectiveness is what makes him so good. 

Trust me, it's easy to build a team with only 10 usage points.  I don't know where you get that you can't.  It's hard to build a team with enough talent that has 14-16 usage points AND enough minutes.  That's why so many teams you see out there only have 17k minutes and rely on rookies.

I'll say that I'm a very new player.  Maybe I will look back on this some day and laugh.  I would usually concede to the more experienced but here I just strongly hold that Rodman is far and away the best player in Open League format. 

Much of my early success comes because of the help of more experienced players (phunke1 is a RL friend) and those sharing knowledge on the forums, league chat, and sitemail so I don't mean any disrespect by my comments.

That said the only contradiction I see is stating all the reasons that Rodman is the perfect player and then arguing against him being the perfect player.  It seems people are arguing that his "cheapness" is the issue in that he should cost more.  However that isn't the issue.  Any player could be raised or lowered just on the $ cost.  The $4.9mil Wilt is undervalued as well and should cost more.  If he cost $7mil he would be a terrible choice.  That is not the issue I was getting at. 

My point was that Rodman perfectly fits the sim engine.  Rebounds are your #1 priority and he gives you lots of both (and even from SF).  He plays good defense.  He plays multiple positions.  He has VERY low Usage.  These are all traits you look for and they are all in one package.

Search SF 100% over 4mil and sort by DReb%.  Notice who is at the top and what he costs compared to those around him.  You can say that it's the cost of Rodman that makes him #1 but I don't see how you argue against him being #1.  The money he frees up and the flexibility in where else you get your rebounds is just huge on a $42mil budget.  Even lower rebound PF & C players have decent rebounds comparatively.  The same cannot always be said at other positions.

We're arguing for the same thing.

It's not an issue with Rodman.  It's an issue with the salary structure.  Of course the best rebounder in NBA history (arguably, but hey, advanced stats are pretty strong indicator) is going to be dominant in the sim (or should be). The fact that he is so cheap is the problem.  And that's because *usage* and *minutes* are too expensive while *rebounding* is still too cheap.

Also one big issue you're running into is that you're talking about OLs, which are by very definition flawed.  Yes, in OLs, your team probably isn't as good as it could be if you don't have some form of the Worm on your team.  But it isn't the only way to win.  In fact, neither team in the Finals of an OL I was just in had Rodman on their squads.

The answer is to play in more themes.  I play OLs to stay in touch with what's going on and to experiment with things I have questions about.  I use that knowledge to build better teams in theme leagues.

Just built a new OL team.  Still using 2 Worms (in rotation).  Love 3500+ minutes of 50%+ creb% for about $8.6M.  The 90 defense is nice, too.  I chose to forgo the third Worm (the one at SF) in favor of Donyell Marshall's 2580 season.  More expensive, less boards, but I wanted the usage, and the threes, and the lower tov% is very nice (all of those Rodmen have scary tov%).  Anyway... Team is 13.5 usage points with SL... can go as high as 15.5 and as low as 10.5 with subs in.  

I think the (slightly) higher usage will help with individual possession penalty (killed my last team's fg%... only Wilt & Shaq were at or above their RL fg%... and I spent money on guys over 60% efg%, so it was very disappointing).  Weird that I ran 10.5%-11% before and was fine, but the last attempt fell so far short of what I wanted out of the squad. 

team specs:

45.2 orb / 106.8 drb (152% creb... and this is low for this particular style of team) in the starting line-up
that drops a tad when back-ups come in... not much drop off at the C, PF, SG or PG spots, but there will be a significant drop at SF.

tov% is excellent for my high usage guys... starter is 11.6%, backup is 11.0% ... the tier 2 guys are both 11% or lower.  My pg is high (21%) but that's not bad for a low usage point guard.  The Worms are atrocious but have extremely low usage so, again...

efg% is lower than I normally go (50%/57.4%, 57%/48.5%, 53.5%, 53.5%, 55.4%/55.6%), but I favored getting guys a couple of percentage points lower in favor of higher defense (80/60-90/90-86-70-82/72, with all three guards being interchangeable).  Almost 600 threes (will most likely translate into 800+).  Only 17.6k minutes, with most of the room at the 2/3 positions (most scrubs are 100% at either, so surely one of my rookies can fill in at one spot or the other).  Low fouls.

I have high expectations for this squad... but then I usually do with OL teams.