Chris2K

The 1987 season is in the books, and the Trail Blazers repeat thanks to another fine performance from Hakeem Olajuwon. The final four were the same as 1986, with the Trail Blazers beating the Lakers again, but this time the Pacers overcame the 76ers to make the finals, and even won the first game, only to lose in 5. The Pacers have gone from worst record (getting the #1 pick to draft MJ) to first round of playoffs, to eastern conference finals, to NBA finals in four seasons. Only one step left to go...

The biggest improvements were the Hawks going from #1 pick to the fourth seed in the playoffs, and the Kings going from second pick to sixth seed. Not so much luck for Bullets who had the worst record for the second season in a row, and the SuperSonics have now finished in the lowest four teams for all four seasons.

Olajuwon was also regular season MVP and Defensive Player of the Year to add to the Finals MVP, Mark Price of the Spurs won Rookie of the Year despite the success the Hawks had with Brad Daugherty, Wes Matthews was 6th Man of the Year, and Tony Campbell of the Suns won Most Improved.

The only noteworthy retirement was Bob Lanier of the Pistons.

Again the Bullets fell to a worse pick in the lottery, with the Knicks getting the #1 pick (CONSPIRACY~!), the Spurs #2, Bullets #3, Nets #4 and the Bulls #5 thanks to a trade with the Nuggets. Draft is below, spoilered for your convenience:

I introduced bidding wars for free agents, still allowing teams to keep 1 player rather than sign a free agent immediately (so all the 1984 draft big names stayed with their teams), wackiness ensued when Ennis Whatley chose the Bullets over the Celtics, and Chris Mullin opted for the Warriors instead of staying with the Rockets. The Celtics then lost out at Darnell Valentine to the Pacers (they like losing to the Pacers), and ended up with Maurice Cheeks. The 76ers grabbed Derek Harper to take advantage of the Mavericks not being able to keep two players, but the biggest player to move talent wise may be George Gervin, leaving the Spurs to join the Hawks.

Can David Robinson be the man to revitalise the Knicks?

Bonus content: Here's a guide to each team's best three players just to give an overview of what the NBA world is like:

In what I guess you could call "don't trust what the F1 graphics say", it turns our Russell was screaming for a red flag in the cockpit in fear of being hit as he was on his side, with the weakest part of the chassis facing where the cars would be coming around the corner blind. Plus for extra danger, Lance Stroll was the first on scene.

The TV graphic showed the usual Team Radio inset with George saying "I'm OK" - which he didn't say at any point.

I'm trying not to like John Robins, but when he namedrops David Boon, Ayrton Senna and Andre the Giant in the space of five minutes, it gets more difficult.

Well it seems I should sleep instead of watching races more often.

VAMOS!

So many injuries in the men's competition, to the extent that we've ended up with a replacement facing a fastest loser in the final, in a rematch of a quarter final.

Wesley was already my favourite, but his Eddie Guerrero homage at the end sealed the deal.

Got to respect the social media team for just carrying on like nothing happened.

I have no particularly love or hate for Sargeant, but this feels like a really shitty decision. I realise Albon is more likely to score points, but under no circumstances should a driver be literally told "give up your car to your teammate" in 2024. I don't see why Sargeant should suffer for both Albon's and Williams' mistakes, and if this was a more popular driver then the reaction would be a lot more hostile.

Maybe it's just his portrayal in Drive to Survive making him look like a bumbling, data-obsessed bore, but I'm getting the feeling that James Vowles was excellent at Mercedes but has now found himself in a position where he's out of his depth.

So the Trail Blazers are the 1986 NBA champions, knocking out the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals, and then the 76ers in the NBA finals. The combination of scoring from Fat Lever and Clyde Drexler alongside the defence of Hakeem Olajuwon made for an unstoppable force.

To be honest, the 76ers did well to get there after losing Julius Erving halfway through the Eastern Conference Finals against the Pacers, but Moses Malone kept them going, only to fall two games short. The game even suggested giving Malone the Finals MVP award (he averaged 35.7 points and 19.5 rebounds in 6 games), but I overruled that for realism reasons and gave it to Olajuwon.

The Pacers did well themselves, getting past the Celtics in 6, and have gone from having the worst record in 1984 to the conference final in 1986. This Michael Jordan guy might have a future.

Someone who doesn't have an NBA future is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who retires after 17 years in the league, naturally going straight into the Hall of Fame and having #33 retired by both the Bucks and the Lakers. Joining him in the retirement pool is Elvin Hayes, Spencer Haywood, Wes Unseld, Pete Marovich and Phil Jackson. Hayes also heads into the Hall of Fame with Kareem.

The regular season awards were MVP to Magic Johnson, Rookie of the Year to Karl Malone of the Chicago Bulls, 6th Man of the year to Mitchell Wiggins of the Cavaliers, and Defensive Player of the Year to Hakeem Olajuwon. 

It's not a great draft line-up this year so the 11 win Washington Bullets probably won't be as annoyed as they could be that the draft lottery resulted in them picking 4th. The Hawks end up with the #1 pick, whilst the Knicks fall from the second worst record to the 6th pick.

The #1 pick stays the same but to a different team, as the Hawks select Brad Daugherty. The Sacramento Kings select Ron Harper #2, the Spurs select Mark Price at #3, and the Bullets select Chuck Person at #4. At #5 the Houston Rockets add Kenny Walker to their young core, whilst the Knicks select some guy called Dennis Rodman, who I'm sure will have no distractions in New York City. The Seattle SuperSonics select Dell Curry, and will be hoping the city will be a good home for any future kids he might have, and the Jazz select Arvydas Sabonis at #8. The 9th pick sees Kevin Duckworth go to the Suns, and the Bulls take Buck Johnson at #10. The Cavaliers pick #11 instead of #1 as they did in reality, and select Chris Washburn, the New Jersey Nets select Scott Skiles at #12, and the Golden Stae Warriors choose John Williams at #13.

The Mavericks go for Jeff Hornacek at #14, and the Cavaliers are back at #15 for Drazen Petrovic. The Bucks select John Salley at #16, whilst the Pacers bring in Nate McMillan at #17, followed by Mark Alarie going to the Nuggets at #18. The Celtics add William Bedford at #10, whilst the 76ers take Harold Pressley at #20, and the Nuggets pick again with Billy Thompson at #21. The Lakers pick Johnny Newman at #22, and the final pick of the first round is Kenny Gattison to the Trail Blazers. I'll spare you the 2nd round.

The major free agency pickups were James Edwards to the Knicks, Jamaal Wilkes to the Kings, Mark Eaton to the Rockets, Butch Carter to the Spurs and Buck Williams to the Nets. My plans for free agency to be a big deal with lots of available players to "draft" isn't quite working out as planned so far.

On to 1986-87 we go...

Good to see how seriously the clamping down on betting sponsorships is being taken.

It seems he went on TV and said the first thing (Ohtani knew and was helping him) and then released a statement afterwards to say the second thing (that Ohtani didn't know). I have to think it has to be the former, and they tried to completely remove Ohtani from the situation afterwards.

On 17/02/2024 at 18:49, Chris2K said:

- Apparently there's a rule that says you can just decide not to do an event if you don't want to, which is new to me. Amazing how you can close an 11 second gap in the Eliminator when you have the extra energy from not doing the previous event.

Finlay, the contender who did this (who is now in the final) did an AMA on Reddit, and because I am unable to let things drop, I wrote a four paragraph question to him regarding this, asking how it happened and if it was a difficult decision.

I was under the impression that the producers made the suggestion based on the rule, but apparently not. According to his answer, he's the one who approached the production team and asked if he could skip the event, and there was no rule to say that he couldn't because it had never happened before. He took on my point that other contenders could try that on other events like Duel, where your opponent is also unlikely to score points, but was adamant that he did it due to fear of injury. I'm sure it was, but the answer hasn't helped my annoyance at this being allowed.

2K24 kept the original years, but added a LeBron era in 2010 to fill the gap from Kobe to modern day.

I download a specific user's draft class every time (I think it's called HuffHoops), it has about 25-30 players to draft (including all the 2K holdouts like Barkley, Reggie Miller and Rasheed Wallace to name just a few) and the rest are just fake players at 50 OVR who fade into irrelevance straight away. 

I've always liked how they completely re-designed the graphics for each era, especially the older eras with an overlay that really looks like a 1980s TV picture.

9 hours ago, Vamp said:

I really like the current showcase format of mixing the original footage with gameplay but I get the impression that a lot of players hate it. I do think it's badly implemented sometimes though. I'd like to feel like I'm at least triggering the finishes. 

I ignore the blurring because I feel like they'd just AI generic faces onto people otherwise. 

 

 

I've only done up to WM6 so far, but some of the video footage chosen is just... weird. During both Savage/Hogan and Warrior/Hogan they have at least of minute's footage of a resthold. Just Hogan sat in a chinlock for WM5, or in a bearhug for WM6. I guess it's to build excitement for when the player takes control again?

The blurred faces and re-recorded audio lines are quite annoying, the worst being Fink because I'm sure his family would have no problem with them using his likeness, and the company should be willing to pay a little bit of money to the family of someone who was such a loyal and well-loved employee.

On the flip side, Trump's face is blurred at WM5, which is wonderful.

I'm so glad the NBA doesn't have the same play-off entry system as the NFL. As the Wolves continue their slide we are now on 47 wins, still the 4th best record in the league, and 3rd in the Western Conference, but also 3rd in the Northwest division because of the Thunder and Nuggets.

So if this was the NFL, instead of being the 3rd seed in the West, we'd be the 2nd wildcard.

Here's the England one in proper colour, if, like me, you couldn't figure out what colour it was due to their bizarre decision to use partial sepia tone in the tweet.

I admire their courage to move away from the standard red away kit, as if playing in red had some sort of magical power drawn from 1966.

And that Germany one is magnificent. Adidas have done a fine job with this batch.

For the first time in what must be a decade, I've decided to not watch a race live when I have the means to do so. I'm not getting up at 4am on a Sunday for, based on the majority of the last 25 races, will be a procession.

Thanks F1! Great job making the racing more exciting.

Not a franchise so much, but I have a save file on NBA2K24 that I'm simulating a rewritten NBA landscape thanks to MyNBA going back to 1982-83. Basically it's a controlled simulation, I have control over every team and deal with free agency, drafting, contract renewals and occasionally step in to change some rotations I don't think are right. I also have it set for the CPU to make trade scenarios which I judge to accept or decline depending on if I think they're fair.

For free agency I allow every team to re-sign one player during the season, and every other player is made available for teams to sign. Free agency itself is a draft, the order based on the previous season's standings (no lottery), but before it starts a team can choose to give up their free agency pick in order to re-sign a second player.

All the regular season games are simulated, then I put the first playoff game of every series and the potential series-deciding game of a series on a CPU v CPU game, which is mainly to grind VC whilst I play something else.

This is my second go-around, the first time I got to 1992 but found that I had been trying too hard to keep things as true to history as possible, to the extent that I traded away a first overall pick from the Bullets to the Spurs so they got David Robinson. So I started again, this time with a blank slate and telling myself to pretend reality never existed.

So far I'm in the third season, and the major things are:

The Lakers have won both championships so far, beating the 76ers in 1984 and the Celtics in 1985.
The Pacers got the #1 pick in 1984 and have Michael Jordan, and have made the play-offs as the 2nd seed in just his second season.
The Rockets have a decent frontcourt core of Ralph Sampson, Chris Mullin and Charles Barkley, but are still unable to get into the play-offs.
The Trail Blazers managed to get a #2 pick in 1984 despite getting into the play-offs thanks to a trade that I don't even remember, so they have a solid team of Fat Lever, Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon which you'd think would be enough to challenge a soon-to-be Kareem-less Lakers.
The Spurs have Patrick Ewing from the #1 pick in 1985 but don't have much around him in their aging line-up.

The 1986 free agency is likely to be the most notable one so far as the Celtics haven't been able to keep Parrish, McHale and Bird, so its likely either Parrish or McHale is going to be available to sign depending on who I think is the better option at the time.

I'll throw some more in when I get home.

And more:

I was right about the Trail Blazers, but I'd forgotten they'd surpassed the Lakers and got the #1 seed in the West for the 1986 playoffs.

The Nuggets are the #2 seed because Alex English has just gone nuclear, he's up to a 96 OVR and averages 25/6/6.

Philly are dominating the East behind Erving and Malone, they've gone through to the conference finals with two sweeps against the Bulls (with Karl Malone) and the Cavaliers (who in real life would have had the #1 pick in 1986).

The Mole was so good, way ahead of its time in many respects, and unfortunately on a UK channel that had a poor reputation and at that point was only available in 75% of the country. The amount of thought that went into the clues, most of which were far too intricate for anyone to actually work out, was amazing. 

My favourite part will always be Glen (aka the Banker) being borderline schizophrenic in the way he spoke to the contestants, alternating between being best mates and brutal army drill sergeant at a moment's notice.

I had no reason to buy it, I don't know whether I even want to play it much, but I keep seeing things about how good it is, so I bought it.

I'll probably play MyFaction mostly, but I've given Showcase a try, and, blurring aside, it's really fun to watch the rendered cut-scene turn into archive footage, then back into the game render again. It's a shame that there's not something from every WM, but I guess there's only so much you can do with the image likenesses available.

(OK, blurring Fink's face is one thing, re-recording his announcements is both annoying, and unnecessary. Just mute the audio.)

I want to do some Royal Rumbles as well, I was thinking of doing a diary in the Cube (maybe letters of the alphabet or active years for each Rumble) but I don't think it would transfer well to a diary format.

More news than opinion, but Bruno Mars is reportedly $50 million in debt to the MGM Grand due to his gambling addiction. He works as an artist-in-residence there and is paying off the debt with the money he would be earning for doing so.

Firstly - shame on anyone associated with him who didn't stop him from getting to this point, granted I am the son of a gambling addict and am fully aware that it can be impossible to stop even a normal person let alone a megastar, but surely someone could have done something more.

Secondly, shame on the casino for not showing just the slightest bit of humanity for their artist-in-residence and not protecting him from himself, instead just allowing him to build up an insurmountable debt that they can use as leverage against him.

Now THIS I can get on board with. Wilson feels like a good mentor for Fields (on the field at least) and I think Fields has a lot of untapped potential that Chicago didn't have the patience or coach to get to.

And for a 6th round pick? That's insane.

I feel like this is the last chance for the series, the reduced price speaks to the lack of sales for the last game (which is mainly on them for offering so few new features).

Personally I simply can't get into it despite my love of F1, I really enjoy watching streams of it, but the amount of time and concentration it requires just isn't something I can muster.

Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name: Done

On to Infinite Wealth which I have just bought, so expect to see it for free on GamePass next month.

I can't believe it's been another decade already.

3 hours ago, LL! said:

lol Steelers

 

Yikes, I knew we'd pretty much given up on him, but I didn't see us giving up on him to this extent. It sounds like he wanted the trade, probably because he felt betrayed by the organisation signing Wilson as a starter, but he's just going to be a back-up in Philly too.

For the first time in nearly 20 years I've been a Steelers fan this really feels like we don't have a coherent plan on what's going on. For example, our current #2 quarterback is former WWE Champion - Vacant.