Imagine you and nine rival general managers
are putting together basketball teams from scratch. Every current or former NBA
or ABA player
is available to draft, each in the prime of his career.How would you construct
a 12-man roster? Would Michael Jordan Replica Soccer Jersey be
the surefire No. 1 player on your draft board? If you had a full list of
centers from which to choose, how would you decide among Wilt, Russell, Shaq,
Kareem and Hakeem? Where would you slot Kobe
and LeBron? Magic and Larry? How would you balance stars and role players, or
pioneers versus today’s greats?
These were just some of the questions
facing the 10 writers — Chris Ballard, Richard Deitsch, Paul Forrester, Lee
Jenkins, Chris Mannix, Jack McCallum, Joe Posnanski, Phil Taylor Italian
League Soccer Jerseys, Ian Thomsen and Alex Wolff — who participated in
SI.com’s Ultimate Basketball Draft. Below you can see the pick-by-pick results
of the draft, which was conducted before the Mavericks won the championship and
Derrick Rose emerged as the clear front-runner in the 2010-11 MVP race. You can
view a complete analysis of each team by clicking on the writers’ pictures or
on “TEAMS” above. Disagree with the picks? Weigh in with your thoughts on the
draft’s hottest debates. Who drafted the best team? For one answer to that
question, SI.com asked Strat-O-Matic, which has been creating the best-selling
statistical-based simulations for more than 50 years, to design a realistic
representation of what might occur if these 120 players all played at the same
time in this 10-team league.
We
present the standings, league leaders and player-by-player stats from the
balanced, 72-game regular season, as well as the outcome of the four-team
postseason, which includes box scores for every game and a summary of each
series. (The winner takes a victory lap here.)Each player’s best season was the
foundation for creating the data for the simulation, but Strat-O-Matic Inter
Milan Jerseys Soccer director of development Bob Winberry and his
team then had to adjust those numbers to all-time norms; make further
modifications based on average league height and the integration of basketball
over time; and factor in the company’s own rating of players in specific
categories on offense and defense. James Williams, the top basketball researcher
at Strat-O-Matic, also had to fill in the gaps for stats that were not
officially tabulated in the early days of pro basketball.
Players are geared toward a certain number
of minutes based on the writers’ preferences, but playing time and number of starts
are handled by the automated computer coach in the simulation. (The writers
also picked real coaches for their clubs — see the individual team pages for
results — but those coaches Milito
Jersey Soccer 22 had no bearing on the simulation.) Injuries come into
play like in real life, as does the possibility that some players will have off
years or exceed their usual productivity. Now, on to the draft …