So today I finally started spending some of the money I got from Bob Cody [player= 24740153], dropping $1.3 million to acquire Michele Bello [player= 24740926], a 7'1" 18yo ATG who unfortunately hasn't been trained so well this season, due to having a bot owner.
Now I know if anyone even stopped to think about this (Blake City Bombers, Miami Fuego), they probably had two questions:
"Why is he spending all that money on a trainee at the end of the season? That money could buy him a D.IV caliber team, and this guy hasn't even been trained well!"
"If you wanted to train a NT prospect, why not stick with the guy who was your own draftee and possibly the best draftee in the history of the game (55 skill points, ATG potential) instead of buying an inferior prospect who's missed most of his best training year?"
These are both valid questions, so I'm going to offer a little insight into my reasoning.
First, a side note: I might have been able to get him for less. But I had a Summer League Ultimate Frisbee game tonight and I knew I wouldn't be online, so I put $1.3 million and crossed my fingers that no one would outbid me. Obviously it worked.
To answer the hypothetical questions I posed earlier:
I still have $1.4 million to buy a level 5-7 trainer, build my arena, and buy a team around him and Frank Madrid, so it's not like I'm completely mortgaging my long-term future to get Bello. The trainer will likely cost a lot (maybe half a million for an affordable high level trainer) but that still leaves me with a good rainy day fund to build a team. And had he appeared on the TL earlier, I would have been interested, but he only came up now and I figured an opportunity like this is once every few seasons at best, so I went for it.
Cody might arguably have been better in terms of skill set, and all things equal, I would rather have my own draftee than another guy from the transfer list. But Cody was 6'5" and very well-rounded in his skill set, and if I'm understanding this correctly well-rounded players have a low cap number making ATG potential relatively worthless. However, if I sold him on the TL, I hoped someone might get excited and shell out the big money for him, which someone did to the tune of $2.4 million. By contrast, Bello is a big man and plenty of people have built salary monsters (there are currently 33 C/PF type players with $200K+ salary on the TL, and obviously there are many more who aren't for sale), so the potential could actually be useful and not just good to look at.
Bello also is relatively strong in ID/REB in terms of inside skills, making him a good complement for Frank Madrid, who is a defensive C/PF with 13/12 ID/REB but only 7 IS. Bello also has better passing, making him a good possibility for a defensive-minded passing center for an outside offense.
Obviously, I won't be able to train him into the player he will hopefully be, since if he turns out to be some $300K big man then I can't remotely afford that. But I can get him started, and he can be a very good player in the meantime. And from a more existential perspective, I'd like to not just play Buzzerbeater and manage a team like 46,115 other people are doing, but I'd like to leave my mark on this game before I eventually call it quits, and maybe starting Bello on the path to stardom will turn out to be the way to do that.
I tried to think this response out, and I hope it clears things up for anyone who might have been curious as to what on earth I was thinking. My visions for Bello might be misguided, and time will tell on that account, but I do at least have a plan and now we'll see if I can actually follow through on it.