2025 RBA Recap
Share
2025 RBA Regular Season Recap
The RBA was founded in 2023, and has been using Stratomatic Basketball (with some in-house rules to add some realism). I love the ebb and flow of Strat Hoops, and each game is a story I have just finished the 2025 regular season. Here is how the league shaped up this year.
League Setup - The RBA is an eight team league with two four team conference. There are 22 games in the regular season
- Eastern Conference - Philadelphia 76ers / Texas Longhorns / Virgina Cavaliers / Washington Huskies
- Western Conference - Hawaii Islanders / Kansas Jayhawks / Luthadel Allomancers (my vested team) / Nevada Gamblers
Player Pool - From the 2024-25 NBA season, I pulled all the players who were born outside of the US. I also included the Philadelphia 76eres (and randomly added players to make them competitive). For the starting pool of players for my vested team, Luthadel, the older players were alumni from an old Strat Basketball league I was part of. From there, I randomly assigned players to teams until rosters were filled. Players who were not assigned to a team are marked as Free Agents and can be claimed to replace a player who has run out of usage (Philly and Luthadel can only use free agency if they do not have enough active player to fill out a roster. This is one of the limitations to being a 'vested' team)
Player Limitations - Skaters are limited to 50% of the minutes they played in real life. Full injuries are in effect (Please note this goes across all my leagues... I may be easy going with certain aspects of my leagues, but I am downright ruthless when it comes to injuries. I enjoy having that random element to my league play)
Schedule Setup - One week will consist of each squad playing two matches. They will play against the same team in a 'home and home' format.
Final Regular Season Standings
| Eastern Conference | W | L | Pct | GB | |
| x - Virgina Cavaliers | 17 | - | 5 | .773 | - |
| x - Texas Longhorns | 12 | - | 10 | .545 | 5.0 |
| Washington Huskies | 10 | - | 12 | .455 | 7.0 |
| Philadelphia 76ers | 8 | - | 14 | .364 | 9.0 |
| Western Conference | W | L | OTL-T | Pts | |
| x -Nevada Gamblers | 14 | - | 8 | .636 | - |
| x - Luthadel Allomancers | 11 | - | 11 | .500 | 3.0 |
| Kansas Jayhawks | 11 | - | 11 | .500 | 3.0 |
| Hawaii Islanders | 5 | - | 17 | .227 | 9.0 |
x = Clinched Playoff Spot
The Cavaliers owned the best record of the regular season at 17-5 and will be the #1 seed for the RBA Playoffs. Nevada, Texas, and Luthadel round out the playoff teams (more on that in the next post). Luthadel wins the tiebreaker over Kansas to clinch the final playoff spot (I can go into tiebreakers in a later post)
Regular Season Award Winners
Jordan Trophy (League MVP) - Giannis Antetokounmpo, Vir: My preseson pick for MVP was SGA. However, Giannis stayed healthy enough to claim the award for himself (for the second consecutive season). Nikola Jokic from Luthadel finished second, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander from Texas finished third.
Sixth Man of the Year - Kristaps Porzingis, Nev: This was a close race until the end. Kristaps pulled ahead for good when he became the temporary starter when Nevada's #1 center, Wemby, ran out of minutes to play. Shaedon Sharpe from Texas finished second. Jonas Valanciunas from Washington finished third.
Rookie of the Year - Alex Sarr, Haw: Not the biggest list of top level talent from rookies this year. However, Sarr did have a strong finish having started the last few games for the Islanders. Justin Edwards from Philadelphia finished second. Kyle Filipkowski from Luthadel finished third.
Defensive Player of the Year - Giannis Antetokounmpo, Vir: All due respect, this is essentially Wemby's award to win every year. However, this year, he was unable to log enough minutes to qualify. More hardware for Giannis. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander from Texas finished second. Alperen Sengun from Virginia finished third.
Next up, a Playoff Preview for the 2025 RBA Playoffs!
Rob Lennon - Diggin Dep Sports