Sim League Nirvana

Dear SLN GMs, enthusiasts, gamers, and addicts, it is your historian’s (Nick and I) most wonderful honor to be inducted Benjamin (Big Ben like the clock tower) Wallace in the SLN Hall of Fame! Ben was the prototype “Big Butt” for this league for a long long time. A true defensive anchor and glass eater, he was one of very few.

Drafted with the last pick in the creation draft by the Mavericks, it took Big Ben a couple years to come into his own, though out of the gate he averaged 8.7 RPG his rookie year along with 2 stocks to 0.7 TOs. His third and final year with the Mavs, he averaged 3 stocks to 0.8 TOs and 10 RPG. We won’t touch much on his scoring, as he averaged only 7.6 PPG for his career, with his season high at 10.9 PPG in 2004. He had a stop in San Antonio before he went to Chicago to be the Bulls defensive stopper. In his years with the Bulls, he made two all defense teams and averaged more than 4 stocks a game while keeping those TOs around 1. He hopped to the Kings where he won his first DPOY, then back to the Bulls where he got his second and back to back DPOY. His top season was in 2004 in his reunion with the Bulls where he averaged 14.4 RPG, 2.1 APG, 1.1 steals, 3.7 blocks, and 10.9 PPG, leading him to get the third all team Center position, with the likes of Yao and Shaq. He never won a ship, but was on some pretty powerful teams.

His career stats aren’t super impressive, 7.6 PPG, 11.3 RPG, 0.9 SPG, and 2.7 BPG, with only 1.0 TPG. However, his longevity of averaging over 10 boards for 11 seasons as well as him averaging more almost 4 stocks per game during that period made him a super valuable contributor to his team, as seen by the trade packages made for him. He ended his career with the Bullets, signing a couple team friendly deals for Wes. Even in his final season, in only 25.7 MPG, he averaged 2.7 BPG, 10.5 RPG, and 0.7 SPG, showing he had some ooomf left in the tank. One of the Few A Defense A rebounding bigs for a long time.

Big Ben, congrats on your HOF nomination. Though you didn’t win the big ship, you won all of our hearts. A HOFer in real life (as an undrafted guy who had his first professional ball experience in Italy) and a HOFer in our little virtual world, we salute you! Now make sure to vote y'all, I think this vote is pretty straightforward but I'm no dictator for a guy that's hopped around a few times

history/10

Bullets

Only remember him in a Bulls uni

As someone who saw none of these players who have been up for HOF, these posts are an interesting read. TY

Ben Wallace was rarely a Bull in my tenure but his Bulls days were legendary tales

FROM SWAMPZ6 —

With labor relations at an all time low and SLN games being postponed, we survey the league and take temperatures across franchises. So spread those butts, because it’s a butt thermometer.

By Steven “Mr. Money Bags? Please, Mr. Money Bags is my father, call me Steven” Steven

“What do we think, boys? Another shared plate of the garlic honey shrimp?”

If you grew up in White Hall, Alabama, the question answers itself. A small town still deeply haunted and impoverished by the legacy of Jim Crow segregation, White Hall’s median household income is under $19,000 per the 2000 census. If you’re Ben Wallace, who in middle school was forced to take classes like “Old Testament and Sexuality” and subsisted on 2-for-1 critter crunchers at Skynyrd Lynyrd’s (a local eatery so poor it couldn’t afford to buy a vowel), well, a luxury like garlic honey shrimp was never in your wildest dreams. More appetizers is damn near compulsory now.

Inside the steely gray edifice on Dearborn and Ontario, the 31 year old is universes away from his humble beginnings. Here, he’s not “Bama Big Booty Blocc Boy Benny”or “the super tall kid who rode to school on two certified pre-owned Razr scooters, one on each foot like he’s water skiing.” He’s Ben fuckin’ Wallace, star of the SLN’s Chicago Bulls and recipient of a mega-contract that pays him a guaranteed 22 million nurse’s salaries over the next two years. He’s won the Defensive Player of the Year Award twice and is compensated accordingly. Here at Tao in Chicago’s affluent River North neighborhood, Wallace is amid the psychological two-step that straddles pride and humility, material conquest and metaphysical loneliness, the stuff Chicago’s Kanye West raps about in this year’s “Addiction” or what Bubba Sparxxx touches on in his latest single “Ms. New Booty.”

The Bulls are not a particularly winning bunch, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the plates of Wallace and a select group of his teammates. To his left sits Rasheed Wallace (editor’s note: no relation, well wait, we all come from God so yes relation ), fashioning a tuna tartar sandwich by smashing two orders together. The Wallaces are making a combined $41.5 million this season, and they are the captains of an internal club called “Appy Roots,” a nod to both the “Awnaw” song they love and the aggressive amounts of appetizers they order at every meal. Tonight at Tao, while Rasheed and Ben are making it rain sashimi on unsuspecting female patrons, Bulls point guard Tony Parker is negotiating with the waiter. “I’m happy, I’ve been here for an hour, I don’t understand how that doesn’t qualify me for cheaper pricing. This is literally why Bastille Day happened.” Parker is in the first-year of an extended contract that will pay him about $8.8 million annually. It’s certainly not money to scoff at, but such disparate compensation rates have led to bubbling tensions in the locker room, mostly because the app guys keep over-ordering and then wrecking the bathroom. Parker and Corey Maggette, who is making under $6 million for 2005-06, combine to significantly outscore the Wallaces, yet their added salaries don’t come close to matching one of theirs. Later that night, the team will head separate ways. The Wallaces are eager to burn cash, quite literally, because Sheed swears that 50s smell different and burn with this bluish flame (editor’s note: they kinda do!!). Parker and Maggette are heading to Boobz Lounge East, a strip club that’s part of the teammates’ subscription service for discounted nightlife tickets.

Issa Bull