The 2024 WNBA Season Set

 The world caught Caitlin Clark Fever this past year, whether it was the NCAA tournament or her debut season in the WNBA. I got caught up in it as well, but during the NCAA run was able to appreciate some of the great talent along the way. Most of them also made their WNBA debuts this season too, and the league is jam packed with talent. ESPN's WNBA coverage averaged 1.2 million viewers per game, up 170% versus 2023—the vast majority of those gains were generated by the Fever. While we are still waiting on the likes of Paige Bueckers to come to the W as well, this years rookie class may be what brings more spotlight to the WNBA. My WNBA excitement started last season, as a basketball junkie I was so excited to have ultra competitive basketball in September and October leading to the beginning of the NBA season. So it got me thinking how can I make a WNBA set when a lot of the data I use for the NBA isn't available. To the rescue was my guy Neil Paine, the creator of RAPTOR, which I use for offense and defensive ratings, and he started tracking it for the WNBA as well. With this data at my hands, I can now make a WNBA set at the same scale as my NBA sets, opening the door for some fun fantasy cross matchups and team ups. So lets take a look at the best players from this years season all 12 teams are represented by a 7 man roster, since games are 8 minutes less than NBA they don't play as many players. I also made these lineups based on each teams most often used lineup from this season.

I will start things off with my personal favorite player of all time, Candace Parker, and it is only fitting with this being Caitlin Clarks rookie season, in 2008 she was the first and only player to win the Rookie of the Year and League MVP in the same season. Candace is a 2x MVP, 3X WNBA Champion, 7X All-Star, Won a DPOY, 10X All-WNBA and the 2016 WNBA Finals MVP.

NBA Showdown: Custom Rules and Custom Gameplay Styles, Defensive Schemes

 With NBA Showdown only getting one actual year of play, it leaves the door open to many chances to tweak and add some custom house rules. These are the playstyles that I have come up with that work best for me. As a sim style enthusiast I keep trying to find ways to make it more like real life and less arcadey, and while I know it won't be fully achieved, these have been some nice steps in my play testing.

NBA Showdown: Building a *better* custom team

 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!!

I really, really wanted to build around Dame and Giannis, but as you'll see, I found a better option!

NBA Showdown: Building a Custom Team

Today's post is going to be a breakdown into team building. I asked the discord to give me a player to build a team around, and the first answer was Anthony Edwards. So with him as my star, I couldn't pay anyone more points than his 1080 points. Hottest topic in the league right now as he is taking the league and world by storm. So before I start going into my team build and my logic behind it lets go over the roster construction rules.

NBA Awards a Real Life vs Showdown Comparison

 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.

NBA 2024 Set : The Whole Thing

 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. 

(Back like I never left)

NBA SHOWDOWN 2023 SET - PLAYOFF TEAMS

 Part two of this three part release series. The top 6 teams in each conference that qualified for the playoffs outright. I will post the conferences in order of their top 6 teams. These teams sure are loaded compared to what we've seen so far. The best the league has to offer, including the 3 finalist for the NBA MVP award will all be included in this release. The playoffs are set to start tomorrow so what better way to celebrate then by watching the final play in games and writing this blog post. 

NBA SHOWDOWN 2023 SET -- Play-in Teams

 Here we are again, it's that time of year and the play in for the NBA Playoffs will begin tonight. So with that, comes the teams representing the play-in tournament. The overall NBA Set will be released in 3 separate parts, The Play In, The Playoffs, and the Lottery. So with the NBA Playoffs set to officially begin Saturday be on the lookout for the rest of the Playoff teams to be released by this weekend. What has showdown shown us with actual basketball and baseball? The best team doesn't always win, but some of these teams are going to be really good. 

NBA Showdown 30 for 30 -- Year 1 Regular Season Results + Playoff Preview!

This has been massively delayed due to my work schedule, but it's finally time for the NBA Showdown 30 for 30 season's results for YEAR ONE. Without further ado, let's get into the standings, stats, and a playoff preview!!

Could one of the most expensive players in the game, 2009 LeBron James,

carry his Cavaliers to an Eastern Conference playoff berth? Let's find out!

NBA Showdown 2023 Trade Deadline Set

 What a wild last week it was in the ever evolving drama that is the NBA season. From a Kyrie trade request to a final day of the deadline wake up surprise to Kevin Durant getting moved to the Phoenix suns, the NBA world was in a frenzy.

 

NBA Showdown 30 for 30: Simulation through December

 Unfortunately, I was too busy to post the update after November, but we're getting a post after the December portion. Now three months into the simulation, get ready for an update on the standings, stats and thoughts on teams!! Let's get started:

Luka led the Mavs to an 18-3 start through November and is averaging 28.9/10.8/7.1 through 39 games

NBA Showdown: 30 for 30 -- October games

 The simulation has begun!!! You can check out how the simulator runs here, as commissioner Matt explains the simulation in detail. The video shows the first 30 games played, but now we're over 100 games in -- that's right, all October games have been simulated! Of course, with teams starting play at the backend of the month, that means most teams are only 6 games into the season, but we've already had some fun results.

Now, let's get to the (early) standings!

NBA Showdown: 30 for 30 League -- PREVIEW

 If you enjoyed the MLB Showdown 30 for 30 league, then I'm hoping you'll enjoy the NBA Showdown 30 for 30 league!! Same basic premise -- all thirty NBA franchises are in the league, drafting players from the last thirty years. "Governors" could only draft cards from players ON their team. So the Wizards could have selected Michael Jordan, but they could only have used his cards from when MJ was on the Wizards.  

Available to Bulls only!

Available to Wizards only!

Eurobasket 2022

 For me basketball is my favorite season, and since the season ended I spend more time thinking about the upcoming season. I started watching the Eurobasket as multiple of my favorite players are participating in this tournament. So as I kept getting more locked in to this incredible tournament, and making cards, I thought I should honor these players in showdown form. So I made cards of the NBA players that are participating in the Eurobasket. As a basketball fan I highly recommend to any of you with an ESPN plus subscription and some free time to watch some games to tune in when you have a chance.

2 Time EuroBasket MVP Pau Gasol

NBA Showdown -- GREATEST TEAM OF ALL-TIME TOURNAMENT, part II

The greatest team tournament isn't going to exclude worthy contenders simply because they didn't finish strong in the postseason -- so hold onto your hats, we've got some STRONG teams coming that didn't win it all for various reasons: injury, key player suspensions, the way the cookie crumbled, and/or running into a team with hot markers rolling straight 20s ;) 

I didn't include them, but the '97 Rockets were one of the first "want-to-be superteams" that didn't pan out *cough the Nets cough*

However, I'm not going to give them equal love as the champions - fair is fair in a "greatest ever" bracket -- so these teams are going to have to earn their spots in the final bracket via a play-in tournament. But we'll get to the logistics later, let's see the teams!

NBA Showdown -- New Style, GREATEST TEAM OF ALL-TIME Tournament

 So if you've been following the NBA Showdown posts on the blog, you either saw (or should see) this amazing post by Matt announcing and explaining his revamped style of NBA Showdown. As you can see in the example below, it swaps out the nebulous/often nonsensical "Speed/Power" for the straightforward and objective "Offense/Defense" methodology.

Everything else about the game is the same, but now (i) player values/ratings make more sense; (ii) give defensive players their proper value and (iii) gameplay is a simple "offensive players offense - defender's defense + roll" instead of choosing speed or power. 

NBA Showdown: Best teams of the 2020s

 Thanks to help with the formulas and calculations from Matt, my main card creator buddy and the undisputed master of bringing NBA Showdown into the modern age (including his awesome re-imagining of the game with offense/defense rather than speed/power), I went on a bit of a card creating binge. Like, a lot of cards from a lot of teams. And I want to share them with y'all!

I'm going to start with 234 cards from the 2020s -- I made 8 players per team, plus some scattered superstar cards here and there that seemed fitting from the past few years. I hope you enjoy, and let me know which teams were better/worse than you anticipated!

2020 Los Angeles Lakers (52-19, #1 Seed in West, NBA Champions)

NBA Showdown - 2022 Finals New Style

 Its been a long time since I have posted some NBA stuff on the blog, been doing most things on my own, and showing glimpses on twitter and in the discord. But here I am back, as I am slowly working on the 2022 NBA Showdown Set. Now since last time, some thing have changed, and I know my formulas have changed multiple times, but while the original game was fun, I could never pinpoint exact calculations in the speed and power area, and found some flaws and exploitations in how they rated players. So I went back to my original style, and that is an offensive and defensive rating. To me it plays better in a team building style, as you decide do I take the offensive guy who is a defensive liability, or do I build with a more balanced player. In my opinion it can lead to more versatility in team building. So as the Finals are about to begin I figured I would kick it off with the two final teams standing in the NBA. This should give you an idea of what to expect from this set. I will try to give more explanations as I go along about the changes in the game as well. 

NBA TRADE DEADLINE - 2021-2022

 Today is one of my favorite days in sports, especially for the NBA, outside of Opening Night, the playoffs, and the NBA Finals the trade deadline is so exciting, and today lived up to the hype. New beginnings for players and teams, as well as the fans can try to imagine the way their favorite team or least favorite team, will now look after a roster shakeup. If you're a big NBA fan like me, Woj and Shams were blowing your phone up today and the few days leading up to the deadline with notifications. So what I did was take my NBA Showdown format and much like the MLB Trade Deadline set, I tried to make cards for the players that I believe were the most impactful of those moved this past week. Lets go over the trades

The 2020-2021 NBA Showdown Set

 Hello everyone, and today is the day we are releasing the full NBA Showdown set, with a little (big) bonus at the very end for everyone to enjoy if they so choose. This was a lot of work as I said in the last post, over me battling my own thoughts before coming to a consistent method to created these cards. I had a ton of fun making the rare cards, adding a color filter on them to make them stand out a little more, and each team received at least one. I can't state this enough that the cards are based on regular season performances and stats so some players that have stepped up in the playoffs, didn't make the cut or their card just isn't that good.

Lets meet the Conference Finalists, starting in the Eastern Conference, The Milwaukee Bucks. Led by Giannis, and his two very talented teammates Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday, the Bucks are a very good team in showdown terms. Multi-positional flexibility from their three stars and some decent role players, Losing Divincenzo for the playoffs was a big blow to their defense and outside shooting but the team held strong, and now look to head to the NBA Finals if they can get past the Atlanta Hawks.