So far we've had 30 of last years players re-commit, and another one express interest who didnt play last season. We are still yet to hear from 18 of last season's players.

Following the promotions and relegations from last season, this is how our leagues should look this season, assuming everyone comes back:

Premier League:
@anthak @karlos @yumcha @HEAVER @stowie @costak @walesy @bgt2110 @G-Train @ddsaints @Auron @LiQuiD_SiXx

Division 1:
@Steve @rodgo @Rev @Lethal @Don_Cottagers @dabombers @Rad_E_Cool @tyze1 @Bearfly @tasho @Lano24 @smokinjoemisiti

Division 2, Conference 1:
@Mick @Belmont383 @ViQBoZ @Chris White @HargyBear @nicksnow @The Royals @wateman @Jasmine @port_leschenault @OutKast_au @maggots

Division 2, Conference 2:
@headmandude @doolz @Peaches @Sparks @Danners @Len @crossy @Trav00 @macca118 @Jmulldihno @Emes @MACCA2509

Make sure to confirm you want to keep playing in one of these threads.

We've got one new player expressed interest too:
@That KI Guy who has played previously, but not last season.

I propose we keep the promotions and relegation system the same this season. However if we end up with another league we'll need to adjust it, so we'll wait and see on that.

DRAFT
Ive set the draft for Sunday 14th October.
We usually hold it at 9:30pm on a Sunday night, however its not allowing that timeslot this season. We can have it any time of the day except between 4:45pm and 11pm. I'll set up a poll at some stage, but what are all of your initial thoughts on the best time?

SCORING
I would like to propose some minor changes to our scoring. As a SuperCoach site, I find it strange that we don't have a scoring system for NBA that more accurately reflects the impact players have on games of basketball. It has grated me for a fair while that scoring buckets (regardless of efficiency) and volume shooting has such a big influence in our system.

For our first season, back in 2010, we attempted to come up with a scoring system that reflected the impact players had on games, however there were lots of us that season who weren't happy that wings weren't as relevant as PGs and bigs. So, we adjusted the scoring setup for season 2 to reward stats that wings were getting, and the main outcome of that has been that our scoring rewards volume shooters... Often times volume shooters negatively impact their team in real life, but we value them. This doesn't sit well with me.

I would like to have a methodology for the values we place on stats, so that there is reasoning behind it all.

@Rad_E_Cool wrote some awesome comments in a thread back in 2013 about our scoring, and with Walesy's help, we've been able to find them. His comments are a fair bit to take in all at once, so Im not going to post it all here, however I'm going to now propose a new scoring system, some of which is similar to what Rad proposed back in 2013, and I will steal some of his rationale here now to explain some of the reasoning behind the values i have settled on...

Firstly, this is what our system was last season:

Field Goals Made (FGM): 1
Field Goals Missed (FGMI): -1
Free Throws Made (FTM): 1
Free Throws Missed (FTMI): -2
Three Pointers Made (3PM): 2
Offensive Rebounds (OREB): 2
Defensive Rebounds (DREB): 1
Assists (AST): 2
Steals (STL): 5
Blocks (BLK): 4
Turnovers (TO): -2
Ejections (EJ): -10
Flagrant Fouls (FF): -4
Technical Fouls (TF): -3
Disqualifications (DQ): -5
Double Doubles (DD): 4
Triple Doubles (TD): 10
Quadruple Doubles (QD): 50
Points (PTS): 1
Team Wins (TW): 1

...
My proposal is based loosely around possessions. The amount of possessions in each game is pretty similar, given the 48 minutes per game and the 24 second shot clock. The way a team wins a game of basketball is they use their possessions efficiently (shoot well), force their opponent to use them inefficiently (blocks and defense, to force bad shots), and gain more possessions than their opponent (steals, rebounds and taking care of the ball).

When you have the ball, your possession ends when you get a turnover or shoot the ball (whether you score or miss). I'll cover the shooting aspect later. Following a missed shot, it is most likely the defensive team wins the rebound. Many defensive rebounds are really soft/easy and I've allocated them just one point, however the offensive team has an opportunity to win the ball back by getting an O-board. Therefore an offensive rebound is the reverse of a turnover, one wins a possession, one finishes a possession. It is the same considering steals and turnovers. Therefore, I have allocated turnovers, steals and offensive rebounds all the same relative value, balancing each other out. Furthermore, a block with a defensive rebound has the same outcome as a steal and therefore (given a def reb =1) I have kept a block 1 point less than a steal.

I have reduced the value for double doubles and triple doubles because they dont really mean anything. The stat that wins the double/triple double is no more valuable than any of the other stats and if a player is good enough to get a double/triple double then they are getting good points for the game anyway, even without the bonus. I have halved their values. The main reasons I propose to keep them at all are because they are widely regarded milestones denoting a good game, and it is fun to watch your player hoping they get to the milestone. I have kept quad dubs at 50 though! because it would be friggin awesome if anyone got there again...

Fouls are mostly the same. I have reduced the penalty for ejections because I feel -10 was too harsh for a player already getting negative points for the techs/flagrants and missing out on stats from not playing the remainder of the game. In saying that, I do still think there should be a points penalty for getting kicked out of the stadium. Ive increased the penalty for flagrant fouls, mainly because they're far worse than techs. Both are basically for unsportsmanlike conduct not in the spirit of the game, however techs only result in one FT to the opposition, whereas flagrants result in two free throws as well as possession to the opposition, and thus should receive a greater points penalty.

Before I move onto shooting efficiency, I havent mentioned assists or team wins. I propose to keep assists at 2, they help your team win and are worth less than scoring the basket, so I think its fair. Team wins, I propose to move up to a value of 2. There isnt any other way to measure the players on the winning team who have contributed to the win without any counting stats. Even if they have played poorly, their team has still won, which is the aim of the game, and who knows, maybe they didnt look to play well, but their talk on D helped create a crucial stop that helped win the game... We will never know for sure, but a value of 2 isnt huge anyway.

Assigning values for shooting was very difficult and took me so long to work out. I tried many different variations of values for attempts, misses, makes and points and have settled somewhere that isnt perfect but is as close as I can get it in my view.

Last season, league averages for shooting %s were: FG%: 46%, 3P%: 36.2%, FT%: 76.7%, which is all fairly similar to previous seasons too.

In my proposal, I have set it up so that a player will score 1 fantasy point per actual point at the following %s: 50%2FG, 33.3%3FG, & 75%FT. If they shoot worse than those %s they will score less than 1 fantasy point per point; and if they shoot better then these %s they will score more than 1 fantasy point per point. They will score 0 fantasy points per point at the following %s: 25%2FG, 16.6%3FG, & 60%FT. If they shoot worse than those percentages, they will score negative fantasy points. All of that, I'm fairly happy with, however I couldnt balance it out for if they shoot up near 100%. 100% 2 pointers will score 1.5 fpts per point, 100% 3 pointers will score 1.66 fpts per point, & 100% FTs will score 2 fpts per point. All in all, its actually not that different to how we had it, however I think this will be better. It still benefits 3 point shooters, however not as much.

Ive ended up going with a system that definitely rewards the more efficient scorers and doesn't suit volume chuckers as much as we had it in previous seasons, but its also still fairly similar. With the increase to offensive rebounds and more harsh penalty for turnovers, it all balances out nicely.

Here is my proposed scoring system:

Field Goals Made (FGM): 1
Field Goals Missed (FGMI): -1
Free Throws Made (FTM): 1
Free Throws Missed (FTMI): -3
Three Pointers Made (3PM): 1
Offensive Rebounds (OREB): 4
Defensive Rebounds (DREB): 1
Assists (AST): 2
Steals (STL): 4
Blocks (BLK): 3
Turnovers (TO): -4
Ejections (EJ): -5
Flagrant Fouls (FF): -5
Technical Fouls (TF): -3
Disqualifications (DQ): -5
Double Doubles (DD): 2
Triple Doubles (TD): 5
Quadruple Doubles (QD): 50
Points (PTS): 1
Team Wins (TW): 2

.......
Here is a list of the top 15 players, based on last season's stats and this new scoring system, ranked by average fpts:
Davis, LeBron, Harden, Giannis, KAT, Russ, AD, Jokic, Curry, LMA, DMC, KD, Lillard, Butler, CP.


I'm hoping we can just agree on this quickly and move onto setting up the leagues etc, however please all let us know your thoughts and please speak up if you object in any way.

I have set up a poll, which will only be open for the next three days, until midnight on Wednesday night.