Guides

These pages read the same player file the game plays with. They are not a preview of a result. A simulated season still depends on the club you took, the picks you make, and the randomness in a night's score.

How to read a number

A pick number is where the file says he was drafted. The city is the club stored against that pick, shown the way the game shows clubs: the city that year, not a nickname. Where two clubs share a city, the screen uses LAL, LAC, NYK or NYN. These pages do the same when they have to name one of those clubs.

A rookie rating is his number in the draft year, if he has one. A peak is the highest season rating anywhere in his file, and the year named next to it is the season that number belongs to. Peaks are not a promise about your run. A man can peak outside the years you chose to play. Ratings run from 15 to 99 and are scaled inside each season, so a 75 in 1984 and a 75 in 2018 are both "well above that year's average," not the same box score. The method is on the ratings page.

If he has no rating in the draft year, the board still lists him, at his earliest later number, for that one season. The guides flag those men. They are not given a fake rookie line.

The file currently holds 3,979 rated players. 2,861 have a draft pick. You can start a run in any season from 1976 through 2020. The five pages below are a sample of that span, chosen because the board and the peaks tell different stories, not because they are the only classes worth playing.

The pages

• Starting in 1976. Twenty-two clubs, a twelve-man limit, four clubs with no previous season in this league, and a draft list whose pick numbers collide. The useful names are the ones who got better later: Alex English, Robert Parish, Adrian Dantley.
• The 1984 draft. Forty-four men. Jordan goes third, at 78, and peaks at 89. Olajuwon goes first and peaks at 84. Bowie goes second and peaks at 66. Stockton goes 16th, at 54, and peaks at 75.
• The 1996 draft. Iverson is the first name and a real peak, at 81. Kobe is 13th and peaks at 87. Nash is 15th and peaks at 79. Peja Stojaković has no 1996 rating at all.
• The 2003 draft. LeBron's rookie number is 70 and his peak is 90, across 23 rated seasons. The second pick's rookie number is 33. Wade, at five, peaks at 87.
• The 2018 draft. Fifty-six men, and a short runway: a run started here can be one season or five, not ten, because the file ends in 2025-26. Dončić, Young and Gilgeous-Alexander are not the first two names. Brunson is 33rd.

What a guide will not tell you

It will not tell you the right club to take over. The grade is against that club's own real record, so a famous list is often a harder target, not an easier one. It will not rank sleepers for you beyond what the peaks already show. Knowing the peak and drafting him are different jobs: he has to be good in the seasons your run actually includes, and he has to fit a spot. How to play covers the roster math. The FAQ covers the questions that are really rules questions.