NBA Showdown - 1987-1988 Season

 With a current season set on the way, and the original based in the early 2000s, I wanted to include another generation of players. This leads to a better spread of player wealth and the 1987-88 season was a historic one for its time. While the star of Michael Jordan was shining prior, this particular season he made NBA history becoming the first player to win the league MVP, defensive player of the year and the scoring title. Also in this season John Stockton led the league in assists, which we later would find out would be the first on 9 straight years leading the league in assists. Michael Cage of the Clippers won the rebounding title over Charles Oakley by .03, one of the closest statistical margin victories in NBA history. 

This project came along rather quickly and I wasn't even expecting to do something like this but, I was watching some NBA action and got the itch. During this time period there was only 23 teams in the league although 4 more would be coming in the next two seasons as in this season the NBA awarded franchises to Charlotte and Miami who would debut the following season, and Minneapolis and Orlando who would start in the 1989-90 season.

The Los Angeles Lakers won the championship over the Detroit Pistons in a seven game series. There we some iconic performances in this long series as well. Isiah Thomas scored 25 points in the third quarter of game 6, a record that still stands today. While that was impressive as is, he sustained an ankle sprain in the game prior to that, and still managed to have a 43 point effort. In game 7 "Big Game" James Worthy became the first player to record a triple double in game 7 of the NBA Finals with an impressive stat line of 36 points, 16 rebounds and 10 assists.

NBA Showdown - NBA New Season

 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. 

NBA Showdown - Re-Creating the Original Strategy Cards

     Now for all of you that play MLB Showdown with me, or have at least talked about it with me, you know that myself, along with Bob, Jeff and Peter, I do not use strategy cards when playing the MLB version of the great Showdown games. During the pandemic I purchased an NBA showdown starter set and a couple lots of commons off eBay to play some games, check the Harry Potter League I ran, so much fun. Basketball is my absolute favorite sport and with all the down time and the late start to the MLB season, I did some research in recreating NBA showdown. My first iterations are on the site, and unfortunately that iteration will not continue. The great news behind that is because I have found the formulas that I want to make the new seasons versions compatible with the old ones. It may not be 100% the same but I feel will allow them to be played together.  With that being said the 2020-2021 NBA season will bring the first official NBA Showdown set to the blogsite which I am already super excited for. Player cards along with some other variations and concepts to highlight what takes place during this upcoming season. 

Announcing the 2020 Central Division League

 Peter and I are happy to announce our plan for our Central Division league that we are going to be running. Now we came up with a pretty fun schedule where each team will play 6 games vs their in division opponents and 3 games against their opposite division opponents. When we made the 2020 set it was noticeable how close all the teams seemed to be and we wanted to watch the season play out in a 39 game season. We will be tracking full stats, and a secondary sheet was made to act as our "league website" which I am pretty excited about. With the two of us playing games, we are hoping to keep the season moving along at a decent pace and it will be fun to see how the standings shake up in the showdown world. 

6 On-Base/2 Control Challenge

Time to show some love for the poor man Showdown cards. You know, the ones you were always mad about in your booster and draft packs (still no idea what John Valentin 00 brings to the table). Everyone typically builds their teams around high ob/control guys, maybe throwing in one low guy here or there to save some money on points. For this challenge, you must construct your entire roster with lower end guys. A true chance for them to sine!

MLB SHOWDOWN --- TOP 50 BATTERS OVER THE LAST 3 YEARS COMBINED

 While many of us are getting ready to or hopefully already enjoying the 2020 set, I always find myself scratching more itches on card ideas and concepts. I was comparing all the players over the last three years and looking at who had the highest averages of points per the 3 years. It got me thinking, because each season is different, what if I took all the players stats from the last three years and combined them together to have an even deeper data set to run our numbers against. A few trips to fangraphs and back, led me to a master sheet of how these guys would look. The ultra consistent players churned out the best cards as expected. The think that really stood out to me was the fluctuations between OB % for some of the players and seeing them drop to a lower OB and guys that stayed consistent maybe even going up an OB because of where they fell in the rankings. This also gives us a 58 more cards to add to our blind drafts and games so why not look at the great three years of showdown sets, combined into one big group. 

All Decade League -- Regular Season Complete!!

Whew, now that we've cranked out the 2020 Set, I've been able to *finally* get back to the All Decade League. As you hopefully recall, with the help of Savard and his sim skills, I've been running a full 30-team league made up of each MLB franchise's "All Decade" squad to celebrate the decade of Showdown that began with Colby's great work in 2009. You can find the 90 game standings update here and each of the thirty teams under the "All Decade Teams" tab! 

2009 AL MVP Joe Mauer and 2019 NL MVP Cody Bellinger were both impact players in the All Decade league's first season

So without further ado, let's check out the final standings from season 1: