I'm new to DDS: PB2017, but have fallen in love with it. I'm a longtime player of Football Manager and OOTP and am excited to see a basketball game begin to approach the level of excellence of those games.

For this Dynasty Report, I'm taking the 41 seasons of the Denver Nuggets since they joined the NBA in 1976 and playing a single-knockout tournament to determine the best Nuggets team of all time. Sure this would be more interesting if it were the Lakers or Celtics, or an all-time tournament, and I may get to those later, but I grew up with the Nuggets so I'm starting here first.

I used "adjusted winning percentage" to rank the teams, adding a bonus of .05 for every round of the playoff made (1st round .05, conference semis .10, conference finals .15) to each team's winning percentage. The Nuggets won 50+ games six times and made the Western Conference finals three times. Only two teams have done both: 2008-09 (Billups-Anthony-Hilario) and 1984-85 (Lever-English-Natt), which are the #1 and #2 seeds of the tournament. Here is are the top 10 seeds:

Season W L WPct Playoffs AdjWPct
1 2008-09 54 28 .659 Conf Final .809
2 1984-85 52 30 .634 Conf Final .784
3 1987-88 54 28 .659 Conf SF .759
4 2012-13 57 25 .695 1st Rd .745
5 1977-78 48 34 .585 Conf Final .735
6 1976-77 50 32 .610 Conf SF .710
7 2009-10 53 29 .646 1st Rd .696
8 1985-86 47 35 .573 Conf SF .673
9 2010-11 50 32 .610 1st Rd .660
10 2007-08 50 32 .610 1st Rd .660

The top 23 teams automatically qualify for the Second Round, and the bottom 18 will compete in the First Round for the last 9 spots in the round of 32.

I will post scores and summaries of each game, with progressively more detail and the tournament moves on.

Interesting concept. Looking forward to your forthcoming posts.

I neglected to mention that I am using the game's Matchup Maker function to sim the games. Also, there are only 40 seasons through 2015-16, which works out well because 24 Nuggets teams made the playoffs, and those 24 get automatic 2nd round bids. The 16 non-playoff teams face off in Round 1.

Round 1

The first four games of Round 1 went according to script, as only the 1990-91 team came close to pulling an upset. Dikembe Mutombo's 29 points and 16 rebounds was the performance of the night for the 92s.


40 1997-98 76
25 2000-01 101

Nick Van Exel led all scorers with 23 points, Antonio McDyess grabbed 11 rebounds, and the Y2K Nuggets cruised past the franchise-worst 1997 team (11-71) by 25 points.

39 2002-03 91
26 1980-81 101

Hall of Famer Dan Issel had 16 points and 16 rebounds and Alex English added 18 points to lead the 80s over the 17-65 02s.

38 1990-91 108 OT
27 2013-14 115

The 20-62 90s--led by Michael Adams' 29 points, 11 assists, and 5 steals--took the 13s to overtime, but fell short. Ty Lawson had 29 points and Randy Foye added 26 for the 13s.

37 1996-97 93
28 1992-93 119

The 92s pulled away with a 42-18 fourth quarter. HOFer Dikembe Mutombo scored 29 and grabbed 16 boards and the 92s had six players in double digits. Mark Jackson had 34 points for the 96s, but had little help.


Upcoming Games - Round 1

36 1998-99
30 1995-96

35 1991-92
29 1999-00

34 2001-02
31 2015-16

33 1979-80
32 2014-15