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.
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.
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 ;)
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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!
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.
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)
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.
The NBA All Star game is upon us this weekend, and I have been working hard to get my files ready for the end of the 20-21 season to make my set for NBA Showdown cards. In between then I have also been trying to finish my original NBA Showdown set, only 24 more cards needed, that has been a fun chase trying to find some of the ultimate rares. If anyone is trapped in the house this weekend looking for some fun, I have made the two all star teams that we will be seeing this weekend, so why not print these off and play out the all star game for some fun.
Team Durant: Sadly KD won't be able to participate in the game, but the good news is that he is here in showdown form to lead his team.
It feels like the season just ended for the NBA and the bubble was a success. This is a pro sports record for the shortest offseason among the 4 major sports. 71 days since the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA Championship, and they are partaking in the festivities tonight. I am excited for a new season, as I had said in a previous post, that I will be making the 2020-2021 set for the blog. I figured why not show off some of my early work from last season as a preview of what is to come once this new season comes to an end. So I figured lets start where we left off, and I am going to post the two teams that made the NBA Finals last season, the Miami Heat and the Los Angeles Lakers. Hopefully some out there are going to play some games, and if you do please let me know on some feedback, I love hearing results.
