So if you missed it, the NBA Showdown master Matt built a Showdown team around Anthony Edwards earlier this week, which you can read here!
Matt challenged me to build my own team around my favorite player, GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO!!
So if you missed it, the NBA Showdown master Matt built a Showdown team around Anthony Edwards earlier this week, which you can read here!
In this post I am going to look at the award winner for each award, and compare it to who my point system would favor, for some like clutch player, I don't have a comparison, but for MVP, DPOY, Rookie of the Year, 6th man, Most Improved and the All NBA/All Defensive teams, it should be a fun thing to look at. For them to win in showdown terms, they must meet all the qualifications they would need in real life to receive a vote.
NBA Most Improved Player: The award for the player that is deemed to have improved the most from the previous season.
NBA Winner : Tyrese Maxey
NBA Showdown Says: Isaiah Hartenstein
In NBA Showdown card terms, I look at what their 2023 card was point wise and what their 2024 card is point wise and who had the greatest leap. That was Jalen Johnson of the Atlanta Hawks. Going from a 130 point card to a 850 point card, but he didn't play the 65 games to qualify. While Tyrese Maxey isn't a bad choice by no means, his role went from 3rd option to second, while also being the 1st option while Embiid was out with an injury, he went from a 790 point card to a 1010 point card. Biggest change in point difference was Isaiah Harternstein going from a 220 point card to a 670 point card. For those looking for a more impactful player, Coby White went from a 430 point card to a 750 point card. But Isaiah was huge for the Knicks who lost Julius Randle and Mitchell Robinson to injury this season, he filled in and stepped up to help the Knicks claim the 2nd best record in the Eastern Conference.
It is that time of year again, I have finished the 2024 set for the NBA season. I will be starting the release out with the whole collection at once. In what was an incredible regular season of NBA basketball, as usual the Eastern conference is looked at as the weaker of the conferences, but for the first time in its history, 8 teams won over 45 games. On top of that, it was the first time in NBA history that 18 teams!!! won 45 games or more. The best record in the NBA this season comes from the Eastern Conference and it is the conference winning favorite Boston Celtics. On top of some incredible cards, for the first time ever, I made full 12 man rosters, so there will be a ton of content in this posts. In regular gameplay many would not use a full team, but as I expand gameplay, it makes for some fun coaching decisions as the game goes on. For how long it would take me to upload them one by one to make rosters and teams, I am just dropping the whole set here as one, in mostly alphabetical order. I know this is a ton of images, 360 to be exact, so be on the lookout for some more personal posts. I didn't want to wait any longer to get the card out, but I will have a few more things in the coming weeks to dive a little deeper into everything that is here. While some may have noticed cards can now go up to 7 rolls, I expanded my charts, and calculation process to try to reward the more consistent players, and the punish the inconsistent. in previous iterations, a role player that isn't very good could have had a 40 point game, and it make his chart star like. Now they will more resemble the 6 OB 15-20 HR boom or bust kind of chart which I love.
So to those that follow me on twitter/discord, you know that I celebrated my birthday in the spring with a little "Showdown" battle between the Expos and Nationals at a random small town library, hiding from the hail on a solo hiking adventure:
Well, that quickly changed into me playing out a 31 team league --> 18 man rosters, teams with salary caps of 8000 or 8250 points, depending on how big or small market the team was, since I wanted to play with the best-of-the-best from the previous 20ish years... I made the teams out of players from the original set to the present, with a special little tweak allowing cards of players from before 1999 if they had a card in the original set (so the Royals could use Saberhagen, Yankees/A's used Rickey Henderson, etc.)... because of the massive amount of games I had to play, I didn't keep stats this time beyond the wins and losses, but it made the simulation much less of a chore (and much more of a reward at the end of a hard day on the road). I thought the "big market" squads may dominate because of the small salary cap advantage, but it turns out that at a certain level, the teams are just so incredible that it really just feels like a "who's getting the lucky rolls this time" match up (just like I drew it up ;)).
Rather than just previewing it and forcing y'all to wait months and months on the simulation, I just jumped right into the games and now, I've got all the regular season results for you! Enjoy!!