Speeding up the season cycle (rough ideas)

[KW]

Season:
Start of the season to all-star break: 122 days. (if 2 a day sims: 61 sims. if 3 a day sims: 41 sims)
Trade deadline (1 sim)
League voted All-star game (1 sim)
post all-star break to end of reg season: 48 days. (if 2 a day sims: 24 sims. if 3 a day sims: 16 sims)
play-in games: (2 sims)
playoff games: (max 29 sims). run the draft lottery somewhere in here, and immediately open up the trade office.

Offseason pre FA:
coach hire (4 sims, run concurrently with draft)
team contract options (run concurrently with draft and coach hire)
draft (one week)
sim through summer league

FA:
20 days (if 2 a day sims after RFA: 17 sims. if 2 a day sims through all of FA: 10 sims.)

Offseason post FA:
Training camp (1 sim)
Preseason (3 sims)

(I believe I captured everything, please let me know if I missed anything that we do)

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Based on this outline, it's theoretically possible to complete an entire season cycle in 108 days, that's likely the absolute bare minimum. If we decided to sim through weekends, no days off during the offseason, a season cycle can be done in just over 15 weeks (3 1/2 months) or 4 1/2 months with weekends off.

Our 2033 All-Star Game sim took place exactly 200 days ago on Jan 30th, 2025, just a little under 7 months ago. There's a lot of down time and I wanted to float a few ideas to speed things up. I do not think we should go for max speed. If the simmers don't want to burn out by simming 7 days a week, that's totally fine, but we can definitely stand to make things quicker. I also think the end of season games are important and we shouldn't do 3-game sims down the stretch of the season, but for the first two-thirds of the season? We can stand to speed some of it up.

But this is really about the offseason. Last offseason, the finals were run on 4/4/25 and the regular season did not kick off until 5/21/25. That's 47 days, with the simmer working weekends. And I'm pretty sure last offseason was actually more efficient than most offseasons.

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My official proposal for future seasons:
3 day sims till ASB
2 day sims after ASB

Jump straight into the draft after the Finals (within a day or two)

Open coach hiring with daily sims
Open up team options/contract decisions
These are completed during the draft rather than after (the draft runs an entire week, GMs can get these done)

Jump straight into FA (within a day or two). I see no reason we can't do two-day sims all the way through FA.

Open the training camp threads for weight training/positions/jersey numbers a couple days before the end of FA. Run training camp within two days of the end of FA. Minimal gap days around preseason.

If we simmed 5 days a week during the season and hurried up the offseason as outlined above, we're running a full season cycle within 160 days (5.3 months) and shaving a month and a half off the cycle, even factoring in a few days a season where we need some breaks. We drop down to about 4.5 months if there are weekend sims during the regular season.

A huge improvement from our current 200-day seasons.

Thoughts?

[bt]

I'm strongly against 3 game sims. 95% of the time you play a game and no one likes 2 game sims and this would increase it.

I think the fat can be trimmed around the off season for sure. Mostly what gets to GM's I assume is down time which makes it boring so simming is fine, active areas like draft/fa are fine but slow or boring areas like coaching can be improved. My thoughts..

- simming is fine at 2 days as like I said, most times you play a game but even if you have one off, it's fine
- coaching is boring so maybe we could find a way to speed it up or just incorporate it over something else so it's occuring simultaneously
- draft times can be improved. I know we have slots but we should have maybe change it / adapt it to a time limit after a pick. The first 8 picks are made in a row, pick 9 has a set time from there. Would stop the waiting around for a time slot when the draft occurs fast. Might not work, just an idea but the draft did flow fairly quickly last season anyway
- fa is fine. Simming one a day is how it'll work and nothing can really be done to improve that

So yeah, could probably trim the down time some. Just need to be mindful of the admin guys who do this for us (mainly the off season) as it's work to get it all organised and completed.

[drumr]

I lean towards bt and trimming the fat, as I would also be against 3 day sims.

[cb4raptorscb4]

Thanks Kyrus for all these thoughts and feedback.

We've been talking about some of these changes in the background as well. Three day sims probably won't happen, but we are leaning towards doing weekend sims and keeping all sims at 2-days.

Clearly there's a lot of opportunity to speed up the offseason and we could implement those as early as this upcoming offseason.

[Marcos_Beck]

My two cents

I’m not a fan of 3 day sims either. I think ONE extra sim during the weekend, with the simmer being able to choose between Saturday night and Sunday morning at his disposal, that’s what can work the best as we would speed the season by a few weeks while keeping it slow enough for those who likes to adjust DCs for every game. For the playoffs, daily sims as usual.
Also, there should be two GAME DAYS simmed at every sim except for trade deadline. For example, this season there were no games planned for 11/23 so just sim 11/22 and 11/24 instead in a single sim.

Every cicle of 6 sims would mean a week, and for example, this season it would mean

10/17 to 10/28
10/29 to 11/09
11/10 to 11/21
11/22 to 12/04 (no games on 11/23)
12/05 to 12/16
12/17 to 12/29 (no CSL games on 12/19)
12/30 to 01/10
01/11 to 01/22
01/23 to 02/03
02/04 to 02/13 (trade deadline sim)
02/14 to 03/03 (ASG break from 16th to 21st)
03/04 to 03/15
03/16 to 03/27
03/28 to 04/09 (no CSL games on 04/02)
04/10 to 04/11 + 2 play in sims + 3 playoff sims
7 playoff sims
7 playoff sims (1 if necessary)
7 playoff sims (if necessary)
5 playoff sims (if necessary)

85 sims + 2 play in sims + 16-29 playoff sims
A bit more than 14 weeks for regular season, and 17 to 19 weeks overall.
Around 4 months per season

Then offseason just put all you can together (run draft together with coach hiring and contract decisions), jump to the start of FA which should run 1 day until QOs then 2 days like we already do it, TC and preseason for another week and we’re ready to roll again.
That would give us a 4 week offseason and back to business basically. 5 months a season, that’s perfect IMO.

[andrei]

I'm neutral as to 2 day or 3 day sims. Whatever the majority decides.

Weekend sims would be great though and we can recruit extra simmers if needed to lighten the load. I can volunteer

Off-season can be sped up absolutely and I'd fully support the suggestions from Kyrus and Ryan and Marcos. Though I think we can sim the first few days in FA to start with some action. Very few sign initially and they will equally sign if we sim through a few boring FA days. Perhaps 2 day FA sims for the first in game week?

[rh0xxy]

Weekend sims! Yay!

[bt]

Weekend or like Marcos said, even one weekend sim could be an idea.

It would only shave a few days off but I guess you could just skip the first 2-3 days of FA and start on day 3-4. No one will sign if there are no bids and then the games begin probably straight away.

[Marcos_Beck]

Having single or double FA sims would only grant us an extra week really. We can realistically have it both ways if we manage to cut like 2 months or so with the non necessary stuff, speed coach hire and contract decisions and have one weekend sim.

[bt]

Yeah and honestly, FA needs to be that daily anyway and for as long as it does allow time for any sign and trades to eventuate. Later 2 days a sim is fine for lesser players but need all the days available early on.

[hardenwithnod]

Anything to speed the current timeline up will be great. 8 months season is just way too long of a grind.

[Marcos_Beck]

Yeah and honestly, FA needs to be that daily anyway and for as long as it does allow time for any sign and trades to eventuate. Later 2 days a sim is fine for lesser players but need all the days available early on.

That's not an issue really since we'd still follow our rules, not game rules, so S&Ts would still be doable in the first 48 hours after signing no matter how many days are simmed, and for example, offer sheets can be matched in that period as well.

[cb4raptorscb4]

We will assess all of this feedback and come back shortly with an updated plan. Regardless of the decisions, I can assure that we will speed things up!

[Stockton12]

auto the coaching selections ..to much of a drag