Hoops

Wildcats sign Erik Burdon

Honestly, the more I discuss this and think it over, the more appalling I'm coming to find the points cap system.

Desperately in need of, at a minimum, a point trading/buying system.

No, you can't simply say that if you have high points but a low salary expectation you'll get offers. Your salary expectations become very much a secondary concern. The points are the primary issue with team structure, and its rigidity is what is seeing people disappear through the cracks.

Carter sent me a reply on twitter a while back that he quite simply didn't get any offers. You can't tell me that he wasn't worth his points or that, given he was replacing Robbins who, though he had leadership skills, was no Cedric Jackson and thus was unlikely to have freed up that much cap space, was asking for too much.

No one offered because he was in that awkward points zone where its large enough to make you a difficult tetris piece to puzzle into a points cap, yet not a 10pt player where you have maximum bang for points.

Valuable in terms of their talents, yes, but their effective value get reduced by the presence of a points ceiling just a little above their head.

Not as cap friendly as college or promoted DP players, not as point-for-impact friendly as a strong 10pt player.

You get someone like a Jackson or a Lisch who if you extrapolated the point system would be a 12-15 pt player, and you getting more bang for buck by sticking with a mix of rookies and stars. Effectively free cap points.

The system is deeply flawed as anything except a blunt-force trauma method of keeping the salary cap policed to stop financial suicides. Which it does quite well. But in terms of creating competition parity or producing anything like a fair system for players, I don't like it. The arbitrary nature of the system is the chief virtue and vice.

But paul, that's the point.

They're NOT valuable players, they're 5-8pt players. Under this system, they're less valuable than 3pt players, because they don't benefit you much more than a college graduate and yet are significantly less useful than the 10pt players you can get with only a couple points more.

A system that keeps encouraging teams to recruit new players and then ditch anyone who doesn't become a star is a system that is not providing a meaningful career path to prospective Australian pro-ballers.

Anonymous -

Actually, your point # 1 is exactly what I'm saying is impossible. They CAN'T just drop their asking price, because you can't simply drop your points value. When 1 or 2 additional points can mean that you, completely independent of your own worth/value, tip the club past the space where they can hire an import, you become an intrinsically bad deal and no amount of wheeling or dealing on asking price will save you.

If every club completely rebuilt their roster each year that may not be a concern, but when you have irregular points amounts each year, it exacerbates the problem.

paul, it's not an issue of "who we want" its that there is a band of points ratings which are inherently a drag on player's value and employement prospects, because just above them is a points ceiling that makes 10pts more attractive on a points value.

Well, he said he left because he didn't get an offer.---


FORGET THIS FIXTURES RELEASED

paul, you can't simply turn around and say well that's just how you approach the system when what we're doing is following the incentives. The points system provided an incentive to leaving that guy on the shelf and no amount of contract wheedling or discounting from that guy would get him a spot on a team. The points cap produces anomalies where the jigsaw pieces don't line up comfortably.

And yes, anyone in the 5-8pt category becomes a sticky proposition when dealing with the 10 into 70 cap, in large part because the rating tops out at 10pts. Because you can have someone who, in terms of points, would otherwise be worth considerably more than 10pts, and still have him only a few points more than the likes of Carter.

A Cedric Jackson or Lisch would have been worth 15-20pts if the rating didn't cap at 10. Thus you are incentivised to go for the 10pt and squeeze out the 5-8pt player.

Means we lose a number of solid, experience players who could/should be forming the league mainstay.

paul,

It was for us - a 5pt player would have screwed all of our plans. We had the points, but it meant we dipped below 20pts for the two imports.

It's one of the little quirks of any system like this with some values arbitrary, some not. Fitting players into the points cap is like playing tetris.

A 5-pt player wouldn't have fit in with the Wildcats available points profile (one of those problems with the points cap where people who have a fiddly number or a lot of competition don't have the option of taking a cheaper contract in a crowded player market in order to just get some pro court time - but anyway).

Really good to read the responses to Burdon, hope he adds some scoring (and some watchability) to the Cats this season.

I have a lot of time for Eze and I hope he has a great season with his only "below average" games against the Sixers

"and you just know he will shoot well in Adelaide."

- I hope so, because it seems like shooting well at Perth Arena is impossible

took their time anouncing it! great for eze well deserved and great bloke. He certainly should have been at adelaide last year instead of SC and also this year instead of Teys but glad he gets his shot at it. Congrats eze

About damn time Eze got a contract. Taken far too long.

Classic example of the type of player who the league's contraction from 13 to 8 teams really hurt. Would have been a much better option than SC last year.

Dunnigan has signed on with a club from South Korea, so he's not likely to be an option anymore.

Hopefully Wagstaff will focus more on scoring and less on gamesmanship this year...

As a 1pt player he seems like a very handy pickup.

Great news.
Too bad he had to wait until 28 to get a proper gig