Chris2K

SCREW YOU, PLAY IN GAMES! 

1988 season done, and the Trail Blazers dynasty continues as they win their third NBA championship in a row, with Hakeem Olajuwon picking up Finals MVP once again. MVP went to Magic Johnson, Rookie of the Year to David Robinson of the Knicks, 6th Man to Paul Pressey, Defensive Player of the Year to Michael Jordan of the Pacers, and Hot Rod Williams was the Most Improved.

Whilst the Blazers were dominating, the rest of the league went a little crazy. The Knicks, after four seasons not making the play-offs, went all the way to the NBA Finals (although did get swept), and the Nuggets, 3rd worst record in 1987, made it to the Western Conference Finals, despite not really improving their team in the off-season. Not such great news for the Clippers who went from 4 straight play-offs to the worst record, and the Nets and Bullets continued to struggle, with the Bullets losing Reggie Miller for the season after just 21 games.

Perhaps the most shocking news is that Doc Rivers, at the age of 26, has been forced to retire after a devastating ACL injury, leaving the Hawks without their All-Star Point Guard, and inflicting his coaching and commentary on the league earlier than in reality. Artis Gilmore was the only major retirement due to age, and he didn't even get his jersey retired.

We welcome the Miami Heat and the Charlotte Hornets to the league, meaning we have an Expansion Draft to deal with. We also get the hilarity of the Heat being allocated to the Western Conference, because they're more geographically west than Charlotte. I'll just give you the top 5 picks for each.

TL;DR - Both teams are terrible.

The #1 pick went to the Spurs thanks to the lottery, the Bullets finally got a high pick with #2, the Suns #3, and the Clippers fell to #6 behind the expansion teams. First round is below:

Major Free Agent moves:
Dennis Rodman to the Clippers
Terry Porter to the Nuggets
Hot Rod Williams to the Lakers
Mychal Thompson to the Warriors
Kelly Tripucka to the Celtics

Sebastian Vettel confirms "conversations" with Toto Wolff regarding the available Mercedes seat for 2025.

Because this hadn't quite got crazy enough already.

It seemed obvious that Finlay would win no matter what, he's an army guy who excels at assault courses so the Eliminator is a formality for him. It's a shame because Wesley is great, loved the Spinarooni this time around.

I've done the whole series of stats now, including a "best Gladiator" ranking. Viper does not win that.

I really like Nick, he seems genuinely happy to be there and I'm glad he's not doing an act other than the costume.

It's also been pointed out that the Taskmaster editors are all-in on Nick's outfit too - during the river task they edited out his reflection.

I'm up to Chapter 4 in Infinite Wealth, plenty of spoilers ahead.

What puts 0 ahead of 6 for me, other than Majima, is the villains. The 0 villains are so recognisable and borderline iconic, whereas 6's villains are an old man who can't move, a businessman, a coward, and the biggest villain of all, 2 hours of cutscenes about a boat.

It's kind of a shame that they're going back to Sheffield Arena because it's lack of size really limits some of the events, but I guess it's cheaper than a bigger arena.

They've made the contender application more public this year as well, which should open up more places for people outside of the M1 corridor and Ireland. 

I just hope they get a few more episodes so they can do away with the constant need for fastest losers.

I love 0, but Like A Dragon is probably my favourite, I think I just prefer the turn-based combat in general. I'm enjoying Infinite Wealth as well, but I'm taking my time with it because I want to keep it going as long as possible.

It's quite a gulf between my feelings for the games using the Dragon engine and the middle games that don't. 3 in particular I found very jarring after playing Kiwami 2, and 5 just goes on, and on, and on without really achieving much story-wise. Then back to 6 with the Dragon engine and I'm in love again.

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.