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Over 35 years ago, a group of inspired individuals
decided to kick off the inaugural American Association Basketball
League season. Through the mail, they each drafted teams of NBA
players to play against each other. They would use board, dice, and
card type games for their play, games which took the player
statistics and made ratings to simulate the players abilities and
reproduce those statistics. Games like PTG, Big League Manager,
Negamco, Statis-Pro, Strat-o-Matic, APBA, and, my favorite, Mickeys
Fastbreak were used. Every year, a full season was played and
playoffs determined a league champion. Every year, the team owners
made trades of players and draft picks in an attempt to improve
their lot. The rosters remained constant except for these trades, so
the owners knew to plan for the future.
Thats
what the AABL is . . . a simulation of the NBA where the team owners
run their teams, make their trades, set up their player rotations,
etc., just like the real thing. We play an 80 game season, have
playoffs, and rookie/free agent drafts every year. Unlike fantasy
leagues, which take todays NBA results and statistics and
manipulates them through formulas to determine winners, we
use basketball game software and play basketball games against each
other. The league has been around for almost 30 years, and will be
around as long as theres an NBA to simulate.
OK,
tell me more about the games . . .
Glad
you asked that question. Ill start with the simplest of
all, simulating the free throw percentage, and build on it. Say your
favorite player shoots 75% from the free throw line. In order to
simulate this ability accurately, you can get yourself a standard
deck of playing cards, and assign that for hearts, clubs, and
diamonds, 3 of the 4 suits, the player will sink the free throw, and
for spades he misses it. Shuffle the deck to make it a truly random
process. But as you draw the cards and record how the player
performs, youll find that he hits his 75% of the free
throws. You have accurately simulated this players ability to hit
free throws. Use dice, make your own set of 1000 numbered cards,
make yourself a roulette wheel with 1000 numbers on it, any true
random number generator, and youre in business. Computers
can do better, generating random numbers to several decimal points
to further improve the accuracy of the simulation.
Thats
the concept of the games. The board games mentioned above that we
used in the early years (up until about 1988) used combinations of
cards, dice, even spinners to produce the random numbers. The player
ratings were on cards, and the results recorded by hand on
scoresheets.
Of
course, free throw accuracy is only one of a players performance
categories. In order to fully simulate a players abilities, it is
necessary to take all of his statistics, and somehow rate him for
shooting, passing, defending, rebounding, fouling, etc., until you
have a good model of him as a player..
OK,
Ive got the game stuff down, tell me a little more about
the AABL . . .
As
stated before, the AABL is about to enter its 37th season of play.
37 years ago, a group of "gamers" drafted their
own teams from the players in the NBA. After trading players around
and finalizing their roster, they played their home games and sent
the results and statistics to Mike Trautman, then league
commisioner, who totalled them up and issued newsletters to show the
scores and standings. The statistics were kept by hand, the math
done by hand, the newsletters typed on carbon paper. After the
season, playoffs were conducted amongst the top teams to determine
the league champion. The new rookies and other players who were not
on any AABL team were then put into a draft pool, with selections in
order of worst team records. More trades, more play, more
statistics, more carbon paper.
Each
team owner played his home games using detailed instructions from
the opposing coaches to run the opposing team. The instructions were
sent through the mail, thus the term play-by-mail league. Several of
this type of league were in existence at the time, most of which
were organized through a publication called All Sports Digest, a
magazine published in the 70s for sports gaming
enthusiasts. The AABL is a survivor of this era, as most all of
these leagues died off as the original hobbiests got older and
interest declined. We survived primarily because of dedicated
membership and mainly through the efforts of Mr. Trautman, who would
play games for teams who could not finish in time and continued the
rigorous manual process of recording the stats and mailing the
newsletters.
I
got back into the league in 1981, after getting married and getting
almost all the way through college. I tracked down Mike and was
pleased to find a team open. The failure of our favorite game at the
time, Mickeys Fastbreak, to maintain profitability and
fold threatened the survival of the league in the late 80s,
but BBALL came to the rescue. Mikes time became more
limited at this time, and the league was on the brink of failure
again, but Jim Battin would not let it fail, stepped in, and rescued
the league again, running it for two years. The computer was now in
play to keep the statistics and make up the newsletters. Around
1990, Jim asked me to take over running the league, as his computer
had dumped the league statistics and his own time had become
limited. I was happy to help, since it was a favorite hobby of mine,
and Ive been doing it ever since. The thing that makes the
league click, however, is the dedication of its members. Our members
have been on board now for 5 years with no changes. Mike Trautman
has been with the league for all 29 seasons, Jim Battin, Fred Roen,
Gordon Baier, and Rick Dean have been around since the 70s,
I joined in the 70s, dropped out and rejoined in
1981, Kreis Selvidge has been here since the 80s,
most of the rest since the early 90s. We feed on
the competition, as theres no prizes and not much glory to
win.
The
process continues. We continue our league play, playoffs, drafts,
and trading. The drafts are conducted on the phone and in internet
chat rooms. The newsletters have almost been replaced by this home
page, with the exception of a few who have no internet access . . .
yet. We have rules to keep us in line, but theres an honor
amongst us to do right by our fellow members.
Are
you up to the AABL? Do you know your NBA player abilities and
statistics well enough to build a winner? Should you go for the
proven veterans and try to win now or go for the young talent and
build a monster for the future?
Want
to know more? E-mail league commissioner and web-master Ed
Freeman
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