I'm fairly new around here, so I'm still figuring out what makes a good team and what doesn't. One way I've done that is test out prospective teams in exhibition seasons, and see how they do. Is that an effective way to test the merits of a team? I know that there are major differences between exhibition and pay leagues (like being able to use 64-65 Wilt as your star), but do the differences make it a bad way to see if a team designed for an 82-game season is good?

I found them to be pretty useful as long as you draft "real" minutes (17.5k for OL, 19.5k for non-rookie leagues).   If you win like 2-3 games, your team likely sucks.  If you win 7-10, you might have a playoff contender.  Take into consideration the other teams you play against.

Thanks. The best team I've had finished 7-3 in an exhibition league. It's currently 32-16 in an OL, which is by far my best team to date. I was also able to make some improvements to the team, not only in the rookies, but improving the bench of my team, knowing that the rookies would eat some minutes and I wouldn't need to play 5 non-rookies off the bench.

I play a lot of exhibition games for fun, and it shows you what can and can not work.

Using SimMatchup is a much better way to test teams.  Import/Draft a DreamTeam and then you can sim that team against other active teams by searching by owner.

Posted by mccheech on 6/28/2011 2:11:00 AM (view original):
Using SimMatchup is a much better way to test teams.  Import/Draft a DreamTeam and then you can sim that team against other active teams by searching by owner.

not really.  simmatchup uses a different engine than the one that real leagues use.

The best way is to just make a team. The more you know about statistics, probability and math and the less you know about actual basketball, the better.

Sim Matchup uses a different engine? WHY WHY WHY 

wow...i never knew that either...every time i make a new team i test it out against other teams in sim matchup to see how they do before i enter the actual league...i guess thats all for nothing?

I found sim matchup very unreliable. Sometimes one team would win 5 in a row, then the other team would win 5 in a row.