I hear that.
I'm kind of looking forward to moving up if only because I'll actually not feel stupid spending more money on my arena. Of course, if I were building the arena intelligently, that would be different, but I'm experimenting with just building lower tier + courtside + luxury boxes (other than the initial 100 bleachers I added when I first got the team). It is a surprise to me as well how easy it is to compete with lower salaries and now in my case even screwing up game shape for training or on weeks I forget a game and run the default lineup. Surprises me that it hasn't happened more often against you with your early start times.
I suppose had I really had something I wanted to do with this team I'd be more interested. I may have to focus more on it soon since my primary team is approaching the end of the line, and at this point I think it's either next season or the one after where I have to completely rebuild there. On that front, I know pretty much exactly what I want to do, but it's this team that I have no idea what I want to do - I'm toying with inside isolation but I didn't really pick the right starting players for that, though they're still kind of effective.
Anyway, whatever you end up doing, good luck. Even without your full attention at times you're always a challenge to play against and I respect that.