The 1996 draft

Forty-four men are tagged with a 1996 pick. Six of them peak at 75 or better. The first pick is one of those six. The highest peak on the board is not.

What the early picks actually rate

• Allen Iverson, pick 1, Philadelphia, guard. Rookie rating 72. Peak 81 in 2004. He is a high number immediately, and the peak is eight years later. A five-year run from 1996 ends in 2000-01, before that peak, so you are drafting the climb, not the 81.
• Marcus Camby, pick 2, Toronto, centre. Rookie 68, peak 72 in 2005. A real player, and not a second Iverson.
• Shareef Abdur-Rahim, pick 3, Vancouver, forward. Rookie 67, peak 79 in 1998. The peak is inside a five-year run. Vancouver is the city the file uses for that club in 1996.
• Stephon Marbury, pick 4, Milwaukee. Rookie 65, peak 74 in 2000.
• Ray Allen, pick 5, Minnesota, guard. Rookie 61, peak 75 in 2003. The rookie year is merely good. The peak is outside a five-year window and inside a ten-year one. Length is the scouting report.
• Antoine Walker, pick 6, Boston. Rookie 66, peak 73 in 2000.

That is a strong top of a class by rookie rating. Nothing in the first six is a bust on the scale of some other second picks in these guides. The miss, if you only read the top, is lower down.

Thirteenth, fifteenth, seventeenth

• Kobe Bryant, pick 13, Charlotte, guard. Rookie rating 57. Peak 87 in 2005, which is the highest peak in this class. A 57 is a little above average for a rotation season, not a star's rookie year. The 87 is nine years later. The file stores Charlotte as the club that drafted him. A five-year run never sees the peak. A ten-year run, ending in 2005-06, includes the season the 87 belongs to.
• Peja Stojaković, pick 14, Sacramento, forward. He has no 1996 rating. His first number is 55, in 1998, and his peak is 73 in 2003. The draft-year rule puts him on the 1996 board at that 55. It does not pretend he played 1996. After the draft season he is away until the file has a real year for him.
• Steve Nash, pick 15, Phoenix, guard. His 1996 rating is 46, a low rotation season, and his peak is 79 in 2005. Same shape as Kobe, from an even quieter start: the reason to take him is not the rookie line, and a five-year run will not collect the peak. A ten-year run will.
• Jermaine O'Neal, pick 17, Portland. Rookie rating 43, peak 75 in 2002. The peak is outside a five-year run, which stops at 2000-01, and inside a ten-year run.

Six men at 75 or better, and three of them were taken 13th, 15th and 17th. Iverson, Abdur-Rahim and Allen are the other three. Camby, Marbury and Walker are good players in this file who do not clear that particular line. A redraft that "fixes" 1996 by taking Kobe first is using the peak. A redraft that takes Iverson first is using a rookie rating of 72 plus a peak of 81. Both are defensible. Taking Camby second because the real draft did, when Bryant is still on the board at 57 and you know the 87 is coming, is the consensus you are here to beat, provided your run is long enough for 2005 to matter.

The year around the class

1996 is a legal start, with room for five, ten, fifteen or twenty seasons. Twenty from 1996 ends in 2015-16, still inside a file that runs through 2025-26. The roster limit is still twelve. It becomes fifteen in 2005, which a long run from here will cross. The list you are allowed to carry gets deeper in the middle of the campaign. That is a rule change, not a reward.

1998-99, two years into a run that starts here, is a 50-game season in the real records. The game still plays 82. The grade scales the real wins up to an 82-game rate before it compares them with yours, so you do not get a free letter for surviving a lockout the simulation did not play. The same thing happens again in 2011-12 if you are still going.

Rivals cannot see 2005. A 57 on the board is a 57 to them. Your information is the later number, and your constraint is whether you will still be playing when it arrives, and whether you have a guard spot to put it in. 1984 is the same lesson with the names swapped. 2003 is the class where the second pick's rookie rating tells you the truth immediately.