The Godfather
Well-known member
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Good Afternoon Mr Cloud, I would like to know a little more about you and Sim
Question #1 While you and others seem to understand the number and letter grades when scouting a player, some of us have no clue on what your talking about, so enlighten us ---How do you know a player will have volume or a lack of volume? And what 3 categories do you see as most important to the success or failure of a Big? a Wing? or a PG?
You need a good mix of athletics (jumping, strength and quickness) to have a player with scoring volume. However, there also needs to be some mix of scoring skill-set coupled with that athletic base in order to be a scorer. So if you’re looking at just ratings, I’m generally looking at handles first, followed by Inside Scoring. Strength and jumping are factored into the Inside Scoring ratings, so that’s why I’m looking there. And then quickness lays in the handles grade, so that’s why I sort by that as well. From there, I’ll cross-reference my suspicions by pulling up the given prospects basketball reference player page and look at their PER 40 adjusted stats to kind of have a decent idea as to what sort of things they might be able to do well, and what kind of things that might scare me off (mainly high TOs). The main things I’m looking for in a big man are strength, since it affects defense, rebounding and Inside Scoring. Handles, because I don’t want to waste TOs on a big man. And Jump Shot, because I don’t want a poor FT% big man dragging down my team efficiency. I view bigs as opportunities to eliminate wasted possessions, I for the most part just want them rebounding and playing defense and getting their own points of put backs and free throws. For a point guard I want passing, to get his teammates involved, as I view the PG as the engine that makes the car (the team) run. Handles, again, to eliminate unnecessary TOs and limit the amount of free possessions we give our opponents per game. And quickness, so he can put up some scoring volume and get his own game going when his teammates don’t have favorable matchups / go cold from the field. Wings I’m looking for athleticism and a balanced scoring base, ideally I have wings with at least B- inside and B outside, I like some balance out of my primary scorers. So things like strength and quickness are important for my wings to have the volume to put shots up, and then the scoring skill set to supplement that.
Question #2 We hear about the Cloud Machine and how you once dominated the league with Ship after Ship after Ship; How many Ships have you actually won? and have you lost your touch. have the GM's gotten better, or are you in a tremendously unlucky period at the moment?
I won 1 time as the warriors like 5 iterations ago, 1 time as the suns in the league that ended early after former commish CP3 quit as full time commish, 7 times as the Wizards, 6 times as the 76ers, 6 times as the Lakers. The only leagues I don’t have rings in is our very first one when I was the raptors and I came in season 9 when I took over the worst team in the league when the previous GM cutback all of his stars and moved all of his picks (before we had a steipen rule, so I legit was working with nothing for like several years) and id never played the game before so I didn’t understand all the nuances, and I refused to make big trades. I kept my backcourt of Jahii Carson and Andrew Harrison together for 15 seasons because I was all about the narrative and having a team legacy, so while we ended up having some great teams, never sealed the deal, which propelled me into being the trade monster in the future leagues and hence why I won like 20 rings after, because I would dominate every single deal. And then of course last league with the Nuggets I finished with the most wins in the league history but we only made 1 final, and we lost it in game 7. I did legitimately have major injuries in almost every single playoff series so a good deal of it was bad luck, but I also messed up by trading Giannis for Sexton and OG because I got caught up in how good the value was. Neither guy was as good as they looked and had I kept Giannis (who just kept getting better, I think I have a couple more rings there forsure). Another mistake was holding onto Bol Bol so long, despite him dying in the first TC (which set me back years) I kept believing he would break out. Also, I lost a 3 way tie breaker in the 2nd year of lotto and the 2 teams that won the tie breaker went on to jump from 6 and 7 to win the lotto and 2nd pick, while I was stuck at 8. So just a series of insanely unlucky events and a couple moves that I’d like do-overs on as far as timing goes. The other thing you have to understand tho is that given my reign of dominance, it was legit killing the leagues interest every time... we couldn’t replace GMs who would quit because of it and we kept restarting to regenerate interest, so sometimes I kinda coast and fuck around for the betterment of the league. That’s not to say I can win all the time if I want too, because there’s a ton of luck that goes into this game, but i haven’t been as cutthroat and predatory as I used to be with that in mind.
Question #3 What got you started on Sim Leagues and how long you been doing this?
Random chance honestly. I had been banned from ProSportsDaily, which I was really active on and used to play the ReDrafts and do Mock Off-Seasons, so once my “home” forum was gone, I found this Chicago based forum for Bulls, Cubs and Blackhawks talk, it was called CCS I think, and I believe it may have merged with whatever site BSL was on or something, and I was scrolling the new forum post-merge and I saw the Sim league sign up thread. I knew what sims were but they always looked so complicated and confusing so I never signed up, but I figured what the hell why not. Within a couple days the raptors opened up and CP3 offered me the team and I’ve been here ever since. This was back in 2010.
Question #4 Favorite Sim League (BSL) moment and worst moment youve personally esxperienced and why?
Best moment, is hard to choose because I truly have had like every best moment in this league, I guess it’s not one specific moment but any of the dynasties with the Lakers, Wizards and 76ers where I 4-peated were pretty special. I guess if I really had to pick the coolest moment ever tho it was when my Lakers played usernames 76ers in the finals and we won in over time in game 7. It was the first time game 7 of the finals ever went to OT in any league any of us had ever seen, so to be on the right side of that one was pretty goddamn exciting. As far as the worst .... I mean honestly I really hated everything about this league once Cavs and curry and player tried to tear it all down following the FA period where donkey and I signed Webb and Barrett. It was nothing but negative energy and pettiness from guys I used to talk too a lot, and it all turned super personal with some extreme personal cheapshots directed at me once they finally left, so I mean that entire few months was pretty shitty and probably the biggest low-point in my eyes.
Question #5 This has been bugging me for 15 minutes, coming up with the idea and asking the right questions in these interview process is a lot harder than answering questions; why the $3.5mil to Donkey and only $2mil to me? Had to ask
I mean i respect the motivation to come up with the idea and ask the questions but realistically that’s a pretty simple concept and 2M felt fair to me for asking some questions and copying and pasting them as an article. It’s about the same as attending a live sim. Donkey wrote a pretty good amount in his responses, thus deserving a greater payout.
Time to get personal
Question #6 You have poured your life for all of us to experience some of your family dynamics, in an ideal world where are you in 6 months when it comes to your living situation and your interaction with your family members?
In 6 months I am living in my own house, and receiving a promotion and pay raise at work. As far as family goes I’m sure it’ll be better with time as long as aren’t living on top of each other. It’s just time to go our separate ways, they all are filled with drama and negativity so it’ll be much healthier for me to have my own space to be away from all that.
Question #7 Its Friday night and you want to go out who do you call and where do you go?
Friday night... I don’t call anyone, I don’t really hangout with anyone. I probably spend some time with the gf, and then go to the gym before it closes. If the cubs are on the road then they’ll probably be playing a night game so I’ll get home after working out and watch the rest of the game, cook some dinner, have a protein shake, shower, and just chill. Once the game is over I’ll probably watch something on Hulu or Netflix. Recently it’s the X-Files and Ancient Aliens but it could be really anything depending on what’s out at the moment. Weekends are about recovering from the long week at work, getting stronger and then just recharging my mental batteries.
Question #8 How does Cloud earn a paycheck? and do you like what you do or are you always trying to see what else is out there?
The cloud man does analytics for finish line at the corporate home office. More so on the supply chain / inventory management side of things but I do a lot of work with IT, Finance and other parts of the supply chain. My degree in college was a double major in finance and supply chain operations, so it’s not what I thought I’d end up doing, but it was the highest paying job I could get coming out of college. I wouldn’t say I like it, but I don’t hate it either, I’d like more responsibility and a bigger featured role pretty soon here. My dream job has always been to be a general manager of an MLB or NBA team, but working in analytics in the front office of a pro sports team and working my way up the hierarchy would be awesome too. I probably should’ve just been a lawyer or a doctor but I got a good degree from a top business school so I don’t regret it or anything but I do get sick of databases, spreadsheets and the corporate politicking sometimes.
Question #9 The wife and I come out to visit you, how do you entertain us for the weekend?
I prefer spending most of my time alone so I can just do whatever I want tbh, so that would be an interesting dynamic. I’d probably suggest we go out to a nice restaurant and have a good meal, while I ask targeted questions angling at getting one of the two of you to reveal embarrassing information / stories about yourselves. After that I guess we could hangout with my dogs, but I really don’t do anything for entertainment outside of go to the gym every night, hangout with my dogs and gf, cook dinner, and watch sports. I’m very low-key so you could do better than coming to visit me.
Question #10 Have you ever hang out or met a fellow Sim League GM? Who? What did you guys do or talk about? If you haven't which 3 would you like to meet with and where? If you have which other 3 would you like to meet with?
Yeah Beats was arguably my best friend for several years back when I used to maintain a social life, that’s how he knows about the sim league. We used to party pretty much non-stop and or watch sports and listen to whatever new music had just come out. Think we went to an escape room one time, went to the movies a few times, idk normal shit you’d do in a group. I think I’d have to meet Henny just to see if the online persona matches up in real life. I guess ebbs would be my next choice so I could emasculate him in any given athletic competition and then long-con him into doing a podcast with me that’s better than his current podcast and becomes a nice side hustle for us. And last but not least I’d probably have to go panic right ? Meet the man who goes to great lengths to protect his identity and finally know for once and for all whether he’s a troll or if he’s just really fucking weird. I can also just give him like $50 and make him the richest and most powerful man in his country and liberate him from his oppressors.
Well there you have it Folks... a look at LA Clippers GM Cloud.
Question #1 While you and others seem to understand the number and letter grades when scouting a player, some of us have no clue on what your talking about, so enlighten us ---How do you know a player will have volume or a lack of volume? And what 3 categories do you see as most important to the success or failure of a Big? a Wing? or a PG?
You need a good mix of athletics (jumping, strength and quickness) to have a player with scoring volume. However, there also needs to be some mix of scoring skill-set coupled with that athletic base in order to be a scorer. So if you’re looking at just ratings, I’m generally looking at handles first, followed by Inside Scoring. Strength and jumping are factored into the Inside Scoring ratings, so that’s why I’m looking there. And then quickness lays in the handles grade, so that’s why I sort by that as well. From there, I’ll cross-reference my suspicions by pulling up the given prospects basketball reference player page and look at their PER 40 adjusted stats to kind of have a decent idea as to what sort of things they might be able to do well, and what kind of things that might scare me off (mainly high TOs). The main things I’m looking for in a big man are strength, since it affects defense, rebounding and Inside Scoring. Handles, because I don’t want to waste TOs on a big man. And Jump Shot, because I don’t want a poor FT% big man dragging down my team efficiency. I view bigs as opportunities to eliminate wasted possessions, I for the most part just want them rebounding and playing defense and getting their own points of put backs and free throws. For a point guard I want passing, to get his teammates involved, as I view the PG as the engine that makes the car (the team) run. Handles, again, to eliminate unnecessary TOs and limit the amount of free possessions we give our opponents per game. And quickness, so he can put up some scoring volume and get his own game going when his teammates don’t have favorable matchups / go cold from the field. Wings I’m looking for athleticism and a balanced scoring base, ideally I have wings with at least B- inside and B outside, I like some balance out of my primary scorers. So things like strength and quickness are important for my wings to have the volume to put shots up, and then the scoring skill set to supplement that.
Question #2 We hear about the Cloud Machine and how you once dominated the league with Ship after Ship after Ship; How many Ships have you actually won? and have you lost your touch. have the GM's gotten better, or are you in a tremendously unlucky period at the moment?
I won 1 time as the warriors like 5 iterations ago, 1 time as the suns in the league that ended early after former commish CP3 quit as full time commish, 7 times as the Wizards, 6 times as the 76ers, 6 times as the Lakers. The only leagues I don’t have rings in is our very first one when I was the raptors and I came in season 9 when I took over the worst team in the league when the previous GM cutback all of his stars and moved all of his picks (before we had a steipen rule, so I legit was working with nothing for like several years) and id never played the game before so I didn’t understand all the nuances, and I refused to make big trades. I kept my backcourt of Jahii Carson and Andrew Harrison together for 15 seasons because I was all about the narrative and having a team legacy, so while we ended up having some great teams, never sealed the deal, which propelled me into being the trade monster in the future leagues and hence why I won like 20 rings after, because I would dominate every single deal. And then of course last league with the Nuggets I finished with the most wins in the league history but we only made 1 final, and we lost it in game 7. I did legitimately have major injuries in almost every single playoff series so a good deal of it was bad luck, but I also messed up by trading Giannis for Sexton and OG because I got caught up in how good the value was. Neither guy was as good as they looked and had I kept Giannis (who just kept getting better, I think I have a couple more rings there forsure). Another mistake was holding onto Bol Bol so long, despite him dying in the first TC (which set me back years) I kept believing he would break out. Also, I lost a 3 way tie breaker in the 2nd year of lotto and the 2 teams that won the tie breaker went on to jump from 6 and 7 to win the lotto and 2nd pick, while I was stuck at 8. So just a series of insanely unlucky events and a couple moves that I’d like do-overs on as far as timing goes. The other thing you have to understand tho is that given my reign of dominance, it was legit killing the leagues interest every time... we couldn’t replace GMs who would quit because of it and we kept restarting to regenerate interest, so sometimes I kinda coast and fuck around for the betterment of the league. That’s not to say I can win all the time if I want too, because there’s a ton of luck that goes into this game, but i haven’t been as cutthroat and predatory as I used to be with that in mind.
Question #3 What got you started on Sim Leagues and how long you been doing this?
Random chance honestly. I had been banned from ProSportsDaily, which I was really active on and used to play the ReDrafts and do Mock Off-Seasons, so once my “home” forum was gone, I found this Chicago based forum for Bulls, Cubs and Blackhawks talk, it was called CCS I think, and I believe it may have merged with whatever site BSL was on or something, and I was scrolling the new forum post-merge and I saw the Sim league sign up thread. I knew what sims were but they always looked so complicated and confusing so I never signed up, but I figured what the hell why not. Within a couple days the raptors opened up and CP3 offered me the team and I’ve been here ever since. This was back in 2010.
Question #4 Favorite Sim League (BSL) moment and worst moment youve personally esxperienced and why?
Best moment, is hard to choose because I truly have had like every best moment in this league, I guess it’s not one specific moment but any of the dynasties with the Lakers, Wizards and 76ers where I 4-peated were pretty special. I guess if I really had to pick the coolest moment ever tho it was when my Lakers played usernames 76ers in the finals and we won in over time in game 7. It was the first time game 7 of the finals ever went to OT in any league any of us had ever seen, so to be on the right side of that one was pretty goddamn exciting. As far as the worst .... I mean honestly I really hated everything about this league once Cavs and curry and player tried to tear it all down following the FA period where donkey and I signed Webb and Barrett. It was nothing but negative energy and pettiness from guys I used to talk too a lot, and it all turned super personal with some extreme personal cheapshots directed at me once they finally left, so I mean that entire few months was pretty shitty and probably the biggest low-point in my eyes.
Question #5 This has been bugging me for 15 minutes, coming up with the idea and asking the right questions in these interview process is a lot harder than answering questions; why the $3.5mil to Donkey and only $2mil to me? Had to ask
I mean i respect the motivation to come up with the idea and ask the questions but realistically that’s a pretty simple concept and 2M felt fair to me for asking some questions and copying and pasting them as an article. It’s about the same as attending a live sim. Donkey wrote a pretty good amount in his responses, thus deserving a greater payout.
Time to get personal
Question #6 You have poured your life for all of us to experience some of your family dynamics, in an ideal world where are you in 6 months when it comes to your living situation and your interaction with your family members?
In 6 months I am living in my own house, and receiving a promotion and pay raise at work. As far as family goes I’m sure it’ll be better with time as long as aren’t living on top of each other. It’s just time to go our separate ways, they all are filled with drama and negativity so it’ll be much healthier for me to have my own space to be away from all that.
Question #7 Its Friday night and you want to go out who do you call and where do you go?
Friday night... I don’t call anyone, I don’t really hangout with anyone. I probably spend some time with the gf, and then go to the gym before it closes. If the cubs are on the road then they’ll probably be playing a night game so I’ll get home after working out and watch the rest of the game, cook some dinner, have a protein shake, shower, and just chill. Once the game is over I’ll probably watch something on Hulu or Netflix. Recently it’s the X-Files and Ancient Aliens but it could be really anything depending on what’s out at the moment. Weekends are about recovering from the long week at work, getting stronger and then just recharging my mental batteries.
Question #8 How does Cloud earn a paycheck? and do you like what you do or are you always trying to see what else is out there?
The cloud man does analytics for finish line at the corporate home office. More so on the supply chain / inventory management side of things but I do a lot of work with IT, Finance and other parts of the supply chain. My degree in college was a double major in finance and supply chain operations, so it’s not what I thought I’d end up doing, but it was the highest paying job I could get coming out of college. I wouldn’t say I like it, but I don’t hate it either, I’d like more responsibility and a bigger featured role pretty soon here. My dream job has always been to be a general manager of an MLB or NBA team, but working in analytics in the front office of a pro sports team and working my way up the hierarchy would be awesome too. I probably should’ve just been a lawyer or a doctor but I got a good degree from a top business school so I don’t regret it or anything but I do get sick of databases, spreadsheets and the corporate politicking sometimes.
Question #9 The wife and I come out to visit you, how do you entertain us for the weekend?
I prefer spending most of my time alone so I can just do whatever I want tbh, so that would be an interesting dynamic. I’d probably suggest we go out to a nice restaurant and have a good meal, while I ask targeted questions angling at getting one of the two of you to reveal embarrassing information / stories about yourselves. After that I guess we could hangout with my dogs, but I really don’t do anything for entertainment outside of go to the gym every night, hangout with my dogs and gf, cook dinner, and watch sports. I’m very low-key so you could do better than coming to visit me.
Question #10 Have you ever hang out or met a fellow Sim League GM? Who? What did you guys do or talk about? If you haven't which 3 would you like to meet with and where? If you have which other 3 would you like to meet with?
Yeah Beats was arguably my best friend for several years back when I used to maintain a social life, that’s how he knows about the sim league. We used to party pretty much non-stop and or watch sports and listen to whatever new music had just come out. Think we went to an escape room one time, went to the movies a few times, idk normal shit you’d do in a group. I think I’d have to meet Henny just to see if the online persona matches up in real life. I guess ebbs would be my next choice so I could emasculate him in any given athletic competition and then long-con him into doing a podcast with me that’s better than his current podcast and becomes a nice side hustle for us. And last but not least I’d probably have to go panic right ? Meet the man who goes to great lengths to protect his identity and finally know for once and for all whether he’s a troll or if he’s just really fucking weird. I can also just give him like $50 and make him the richest and most powerful man in his country and liberate him from his oppressors.
Well there you have it Folks... a look at LA Clippers GM Cloud.