Could someone tell me what Athleticism actually impacts? Is it stamina or is it more then that?

It is not stamina. Best way I can explain is it is how often a guy can create his own shot. Such as speed, jumping and lateral quickness. I believe the rating applies differently to each player depending on his position and height-weight.
So if you have a guy with High scoring and athleticism rating and he will score more than a guy with high scoring but low athleticism as he cannot get open for his shot. A lot of other ratings tie in with this such as Drive and Basketball IQ all work together to create many style players.

Interesting. I’ve always assumed athleticism was more important for defense, personally.


And while it’s definitely not stamina, in my experience it seems to correlate with stamina quite a bit.

Stamina is definitely incorporated into the athleticism rating.

There is a separate hidden rating in the players database called endurance that is the stamina rating. There may be some correlation but I do not know that as fact.
And yes I would believe that athleticism also applies some to the defensive rating some as well. There are a lot of ratings that work in coordination with others.

So if it affects basically everything like you guys are saying. Is Athleticism single most important attribute in the game?

Depends on how you are going to run your team. If you want to play fast and press then it would be the first thing I look for then scoring and steals, defense, drive and and on down thru ratings.
It you are not playing fast and pressing then I usually only care that my PG is athletic and play a slower offense and only press late in games when behind. But with slower offense I want good scorers, ball handlers, defenders, passing and on down thru the ratings. If I play slow I even want guys that draw a lot of fouls, especially my big's.
But high athleticism is no help if you don't have some other good ratings to go along with it but it might affect how you want to play. Remember what happen to an athletic #2 seed Kentucky team in the tournament against #15 seed St Peters nowhere near as athletic but ran good offense sets and played excellent defense. So athleticism is not the single most important rating depending on how you want play on the court.