Oklahoma City Thunder Dynasty

Oklahoma City Thunder Dynasty

Postby brimick87 » Sun Jun 21, 2020 10:33 pm

I'm going to go the no frills route because this is simply an exercise in self accountability. I normally play Sandbox mode but I want to think out my decisions more in Challenge mode and Oklahoma City is a unique challenge.

I'm expected to make a deep playoff run AND get a 4 star player. With Chris Paul's contract and no one else on the team having better than 3 star potential, I need to find that player in the draft. Or I can stake my hopes on the deep playoff run ownership is demanding despite the fact that I don't even have an NBA level Shooting Guard or Power Forward. We're going to have to have to find some kind of happy medium where I can collect some assets and fill those gaps. This means taking on bad contracts in the hopes of putting together a team that can maybe get out of the first round or two if the other team has some injuries to key players. It's not ideal but it's the only way I can try to make a run this year and find the 4 star player ownership wants so badly.
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Re: Oklahoma City Thunder Dynasty

Postby brimick87 » Sun Jun 21, 2020 10:47 pm

I released Adel Nader (don't care if I got that right I didn't bother to double check the spelling before releasing him) who was simply taking up a roster spot. He's not even D-league level. Then I signed Kenneth Faired who's a terrific shooter, good defender, and smart player. Ideally, he'd be a supersub but we don't have that luxury. He's our starting Power Forward. I signed Carmelo Anthony to try to be that supersub, but we all know he's inefficient and this is realistically a one year rental.

Out:Nader
In:Faried/Anthony
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Re: Oklahoma City Thunder Dynasty

Postby brimick87 » Sun Jun 21, 2020 11:25 pm

I still don't have a shooting guard or any depth at small forward besides Galinari who's on the last year of his contract and making $22.6 million. He's a terrific candidate to flip to a contending team for assets and bad contracts. Bad contracts are normally bad but we have no depth and ownership expects a 4 star player AND a playoff run.

One asset I do have is Danilo Galinari's $22.6 million expiring contract and I need to flip him for something. I'm okay with taking some bad contracts back for some depth along with assets.

I needed a contending team with bad contracts and holes to fill. The Rockets are perfect trade partners. They owe Eric Gordon $68 million or $89 million if you count the fifth year team option but there's no way anyone, certainly not me, is going to pick up a $21 million dollar team option on a 35 year old who's not very good to begin with. He's going to be washed up long before then. But he's a shooting guard who's just passable enough on defense and as a shooter that maybe he can plug that gap for a year or two before that contract becomes a real burden and we can bite the bullet then. They also owe PJ Tucker $16 million over the next two years. He's 34 and not getting any younger but he's a good defender and smart player who can clearly contribute at least this year. Danuel House is owed $11 million over the next three years and I need a backup for Gordon.

The deal didn't take much time to hammer out.

Rockets Receive: Danilo Galinari
Thunder Receive: Houston 2020 first round pick, Houston 2022 first round pick, Eric Gordon, PJ Tucker, Danuel House

Houston gets the small forward they desperately need and we get close to $100 million dollars worth of bad contracts and 2 first round picks. This year's may not be worth much but the Rockets aren't deep and there's a lot of young players thinking about declaring for the draft leading me to think this may be a deeper than normal draft. Hopefully we'll a see a return on those two future first rounders. But practically the trade makes sense for this season. Gordon plugs our Shooting Guard hole and Tucker is going to fill the gap Galinari left. So the trade nets me 2 first round picks and 2 starters. House will likely feature in the rotation as well. So all in all not bad, and I think I managed to improve the team while adding future draft assets.
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Re: Oklahoma City Thunder Dynasty

Postby brimick87 » Sun Jun 21, 2020 11:47 pm

The only young player I have with real trade value is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He's third behind Schroeder and Paul at the point gaurd spot, and whether the coach ends up being Billy Donovan or not, I don't think he'll be using many 3 point gaurd lineups. Paul can't be traded for obvious reasons and Schroeder has another year on his contract after this and that's probably the time to flip him. If I'm going to find that 4 star player I need as much draft capital as possible because that's just not coming through free agency any time soon. So I worked out a deal. A deal that feels kind of like cheating. But I had to do it if I want to meet the owner goals.

Raptors Receive : Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
Thunder Receive : Toronto 2020 First Round Pick, Toronto 2022 First Round Pick, Toronto 2020 Second Round pick, Toronto 2021 Second round pick, Patrick McGraw

The Raptors won the title last season but their best player opted out and we have no idea how good they'll be. I'm aware this is taking advantage of the trade AI. But I'm desperate to meet ownership's completely unreasonable demands. We give up a quality young player but he wasn't going to start for us or even be the sixth man. The champions are getting a decent young player who's a known commodity and giving up what they hope won't be much trade capital. But it could be A LOT. This may or may not get us a 4 star guy but Shai was never going to be anything close to that anyway so we didn't give up much and I preferred trading him to let him setting on the bench behind Paul for the next 3 years. Schroeder is in front of him on the depth chart anyway so he was a luxury we couldn't afford.
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Re: Oklahoma City Thunder Dynasty

Postby brimick87 » Mon Jun 22, 2020 12:06 am

I released Patrick McGraw and Andre Roberson to cut the roster down to 15.

I decided to fire the coaching staff and bring in new people :

Head Coach : Fred Hoiberg
1st Assistant : Randy Wittman
2nd Assistant : Rick Brunson
3rd Assistant : RJ Adelson

I hired Hoiberg as a 1st assistant and then promoted him to head coach. I can't afford head coach salaries with the budget I have, so with his track record he should be happy he's an NBA head coach. Wittman is cheap and very good with strategy. The other two are the best talent evaluators I could find that would take the jobs. Not saying much, but it's something.

I feel like a playoff run would have been more likely with Wittman as head coach but Hoiberg is by far better at evaluating talent and we can still use Wittman's knowledge as the 1st assistant.
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Re: Oklahoma City Thunder Dynasty

Postby brimick87 » Mon Jun 22, 2020 12:11 am

Coach Hoiberg is indicating that his preferred lineup this season is : Paul-Gordon-Tucker-Faried-Adams with Schroeder as the sixth man and Anthony, Danuel House and Justin Patton also in the rotation. Everyone else is just a warm body.
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Re: Oklahoma City Thunder Dynasty

Postby brimick87 » Mon Jun 22, 2020 3:42 pm

I quick simmed the first season and we went 52-30 and had home court advantage in the first round. Of course we drew the Clippers who had a disappointing regular season not to finish in the top4 in the west. They did however win 51 games. And even with Paul George missing the first two games in OKC, we still got swept. The Clippers went on to win the title.

Ownership was LIVID at me. I understand they didn't actually get the playoff run they wanted. But for a team predicted to finish last in the season preview to go 52-30 and lose in the first round to the eventual champions, this is just insanity. I think unless I made the conference finals ownership would have been mad at me. Which is crazy. And I think this is internal logic in the engine that needs to be worked on. If Gary is reading this, I'm interested in his opinion. Especially because after the season when I told ownership that it was going to be an average year, they still insisted on making the playoffs. My job security was way down. I drafted a 4 star potential guy who's already at 3 1/2. He went up to 4 1/2 during the season in potential but he didn't achieve a 4 star rating in his rookie season. We went 35-47 and ownership fired me despite me begging for my job.

This is absurd. If the Thunder get knocked in the first round this year, go 35-47 next season after drafting a complete stud who's obviously going to be the face of the franchise, Sam Presti is not going to begging for his job. Because not only was I docked for the teams performance (which again at least in the first season exceed any reasonable expectation), but I was also docked for not finding a 4 star player even though I had drafted a guy who was clearly going to develop into one after Training Camp.

It would be one thing if the engine was unforgiving. But I actually achieved all reasonable goals and didn't even get credit for something I actually did (finding a Superstar.)

This doesn't feel realistic. I knew this was going to be hard, but I stayed within budgets, won 52 games the first season, and drafted the superstar ownership wanted.
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Re: Oklahoma City Thunder Dynasty

Postby Gary Gorski » Mon Jun 22, 2020 4:59 pm

Per your request I looked at this thread but I need some more information to go on here. First, what are the owner's ratings. Is he super impatient or something?

Second you said that two of the ownership demands were a deep playoff run and a 4 star player and the ownership call conversation takes place prior to the new year activities beginning so at that point in time you failed on both of those goals. You didn't mention the exact player and coach budgets but when you fired the coaches didn't it say you would be responsible for a certain portion of the contract and then on top of that you had to hire an entire staff so I would have to think you were over the staff budget after all that. If the contracts matched the 19-20 start OKC would have been at over $130 million and you added Faried and Melo so that's a few million more...was your team salary budget really more than $135 million? It would have seemed like you would have been over the player salary budget as well potentially making you 0/4 on ownership demands in year one.

On top of that from a realism standpoint I think ownership would be livid with at least the Gallinari deal. You traded an expiring contract for $70 million worth of Eric Gordon (plus Tucker and House) for what will be two very late (more than likely) 1st round picks which will also be guaranteed money for players who most likely will never be impactful players.

So after all that in year 1 especially if the ownership's patience is low I can totally see you being on the ropes after year one. Then in year two you did not make the playoffs and still didn't have the 4 star player. Maybe you were under the salary budget with CP3, Adams, Gordon and Schroeder plus whatever else happened in year 2 and I assume you were under the coaching budget but even so after two seasons with an owner who clearly wants a strong playoff team and a legit star you haven't produced either. That rookie might turn into a 4 or 4.5 star player but maybe he won't - ownership's demand wasn't someone who might be good down the road, it was they want that player today (well yesterday actually since they wanted it for two seasons)

What would happen with Presti has no bearing on this - the ownership of the real OKC team may be more patient than your owner so really the only things that matter are what the stated goals were and how much pressure ownership puts on you meeting them. Whether those goals were fair or realistic is irrelevant also and that is the point of challenge mode. Every situation is different and maybe this particular one was very difficult to deal with. You might try another one where the owner is super lax and you could do whatever you want. In fact I have been doing a dynasty on Twitch and the Orlando team I was running was an excellent team - I met the star player requirement and the staff budget but I chose to overspend to try and make a deep playoff run which never materialized. I had three winning seasons near the top of the conference (an excellent regular season team) and ownership finally decided after 3 years that I had to go because I could not deliver on the demands.

The point of challenge mode is meeting the demands put in front of you today. If you don't have a 4 star player then you don't have a 4 star player. If he wants to win then you shouldn't trade Gallinari and SGA for a bunch of future firsts. That owner did not want "The Process" - he wanted to win. Your moves might make OKC better 5 years down the road but that was not his timeline. His timeline was now and you didn't meet his demands - in fact you went from 52 wins to 35 and appear to be doing things to rebuild which is not what ownership asked for. Hope that explanation makes sense.
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Re: Oklahoma City Thunder Dynasty

Postby brimick87 » Mon Jun 22, 2020 7:34 pm

Per your request I looked at this thread but I need some more information to go on here. First, what are the owner's ratings. Is he super impatient or something?


He has average ratings for desire to win and patience (yellow). And higher (light green) for desire superstars and spending.

Second you said that two of the ownership demands were a deep playoff run and a 4 star player and the ownership call conversation takes place prior to the new year activities beginning so at that point in time you failed on both of those goals. You didn't mention the exact player and coach budgets but when you fired the coaches didn't it say you would be responsible for a certain portion of the contract and then on top of that you had to hire an entire staff so I would have to think you were over the staff budget after all that. If the contracts matched the 19-20 start OKC would have been at over $130 million and you added Faried and Melo so that's a few million more...was your team salary budget really more than $135 million? It would have seemed like you would have been over the player salary budget as well potentially making you 0/4 on ownership demands in year one.


This sounds right. I probably shouldn't have fired Donovan right away and let that play out. That's how I messed up the staff budget I think. And yes I was over the player budget, hadn't thought about that too much. I understand being docked for not making the playoff run which is why I was willing to take on so much bad salary. Makes sense ownership would be mad about that.

The point of challenge mode is meeting the demands put in front of you today. If you don't have a 4 star player then you don't have a 4 star player. If he wants to win then you shouldn't trade Gallinari and SGA for a bunch of future firsts. That owner did not want "The Process" - he wanted to win. Your moves might make OKC better 5 years down the road but that was not his timeline. His timeline was now and you didn't meet his demands - in fact you went from 52 wins to 35 and appear to be doing things to rebuild which is not what ownership asked for. Hope that explanation makes sense.


I think the key for me here is if I had provided ownership with their 4 star player, I still messed up on 3/4.

The staff budget is very low of course it seems for every team, but I can see where firing an entire coaching staff and not meeting expectations anyway is considered a failure.

I also may have screwed up by promising an average season instead of a rebuilding one, when average was my absolute best case scenario and that got me stuck with the expectation of making the playoffs. Maybe they would have settled for a medicore team if I had promised worse.
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Re: Oklahoma City Thunder Dynasty

Postby brimick87 » Mon Jun 22, 2020 7:42 pm

I forgot/didn't save the game after I was fired. My auto save had me at the start of the playoffs so I quick simmed (Spurs won the championship defeating defending champ Clippers in the conference finals and repeat eastern conference champions 76ers) I ran the lottery (I ended up with the 4 pick) and had the meeting with ownership again and on this occasion I got to keep my job but with a very short leash.

My job security is 20%. BUT the news isn't all bad. I'm going to meet the staff budget just fine, I can see what can be done with the player budget, ownership is going to get the star they want because Donatas Zukauskas my prized small forward from Lithuiana is no doubt headed to 4 stars after training camp, and ownership only excepts me to work towards the playoffs not actually make them.
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