I spent about 15 hours with the game already..... yep, I'm obsessed. Still think it's awesome. Have lots of suggestions, but thought I'd share some thoughts about the first year with the actual rosters. Obviously you need to do way more than one sim to make assumptions, but there were a few things that I think we can glean from the stats.
Why it took me 15 hours? Well, I managed every team, more or less. I kept monitoring depth charts, performance, gaps, etc. and made trades that made sense for both teams. I personally was managing my Nuggets, but I still was fair to each team in the league; my goal wasn't to make the Nuggets win more than any other team (although it was fun rooting for them and managing injuries, etc.). I do wish that there was a way to truly control all teams; maybe I missed that setting up front? I'll see if I can do that next time, because I'd make changes to depth charts and then the next day the CPU changed them right back.
Fun Storylines
The Grizzlies were a mess. They constantly had Ja coming off of the bench, the morale of the team was awful, and while I think Ja is not rated properly, I had fun with it and decided to have them trade Ja right before the trade deadline to.... San Antonio! The Spurs were teetering on making the play-in and Ja is a great complement to Wemby, I think it made sense. They traded salaries (Paul, Barnes, Jones) and two 1sts and a 2nd round pick. The game thought only one 1st round pick was enough.... it felt like to land Ja I needed to add more. The Spurs ended up not gelling after the trade deadline and didn't make the play-in, but it's fun to think about their future makeup now.
The Rockets were the #2 seed in the West! The team makeup just seemed perfect, and at the trade deadline I had them trade for Dennis Schroder to add a little depth. And then the CPU made two trades! In whole, the AI only made 4 trades all year (obviously SUPER light and we'll want to increase that). But the Rockets traded for Marcus Smart and Brandon Ingram at the trade deadline! They had to trade Jalen Green to the Pelicans but somehow they received a 1st round pick AND Brandon Ingram? And then in the Smart trade they traded Whitmore and Sheppard for Smart AND A FIRST ROUND PICK? Not only did they get better, they were the ones receiving draft picks. Crazy. The other two AI deadline deals were the Cavs adding Cam Johnson from Brooklyn and the Kings adding Jordan Clarkson. Both of those trades were decent.
The other big trades I made were trading Myles Turner to the Thunder, which was the final deal that pushed the Thunder to win the title. It honestly wasn't even close. The Thunder annihilated everyone, won 67 games in the regular season and then went 16-2 in the playoffs (sweeping the Pelicans, losing one to the Mavs, sweeping the Nuggets, losing one to the Celtics in the finals). SGA was nuts with a 37.4 PER (just barely better than 2023-24); his FG% was 54.6%, highest ever, his 3-point % was 39%, he had 204 steals and 101 blocks (both by far career highs). He averaged 28.4/9.0/6.6. So in short, scoring was down for him but otherwise he was amazing. He would've been the MVP if it wasn't for....
Jokic is just too good. No seriously, he needs to be toned down, ha. 36.9/14.8/7.2. His assist numbers were down, but his PPG jumped from 26.4 last year to 36.9? That's not Jokic's game. He took 2,156 field goal attempts, which is 700 more than last year. His defensive rebounds went up almost 200. His PER was 43.6. The Nuggets overall weren't a match for the crazy Thunder, and while he's my favorite athlete of all time, he'd often have 50 and 60 point games, which is just silly.
Other quick hitters....
The Knicks struggled to a 7 seed, going 38-44. Brunson was injured for 14 games, but the team just didn't work for whatever reason. Brunson's FGA per game was way down (17.6) as Kat needed to get his too (15.4 FGA per game). They were 25th in PPG as a team and 30th in APG. Their defense was amazing (2nd in the league). Was odd.
The Hornets started super hot and ended up making the 8th seed. I traded them Jerami Grant and Brandon Miller took a leap. They even took the #1 seed Cavs to 7 games in the first round! Yes, the #1 seed Cavs.... Jarrett Allen had 19.4 points a game as he eclipsed his season high in shots by over 200. Mitchell being healthy most of the season (72 games) helped... his stats were pretty much spot on, although his FG% was maybe a tad high (49%) and he shot 40.4% from three.
The other big overperforming team was the Hawks.... They got the 4th seed and but were tied with Philly for the 3rd record-wise. They were the 2nd seed for much of the season but the Celtics caught fire and they declined a bit. Unfortunately for them the Bucks were the 5th seed and Trae Young injured his wrist in the last game of the regular season so they were dispatched quickly. Despite winning 51 games their morale was awful and Trae Young was demanding a trade? Odd. Risacher had a good rookie year with 8.9 PPG. Okongwu was the biggest leap as he scored 17.4 points per game as the starting PF.
Pacers and Magic both didn't make the playoffs.... in general it just seemed that Orlando's ratings weren't great. No idea what happened with the Pacers honestly. The Timberwolves were the 9th seed and missed the playoffs. The AI didn't know what to do with their team (Naz Reid with 23 min per game), stats were wonky (Gobert shot 57% fron the field.... he should be around 65% at least, Julius Randle led them in PPG (21), Anthony Edwards only shot 16 shots per game and scored 20.9 per game and his FG% was 43%). Divincenzo only had 12 PPG. Lauri Markkanen was nuts for the Jazz.... 38 MPG, 33/9/3, took 1800 shots and shot 44% from three. They still sucked overall and didn't make the play-in.
League-wide Ratings Feedback
The things that I focused on here were real outliers across the system.
[*]Rebounding is off holistically. In 2023-24, 24.2% of rebounds were offensive rebounds. In DDS, only 20.5% of rebounds were offensive rebounds. The BEST team in my replay at offensive rebounds (Portland, with 915) was at 23.3%. So in other words, the best offensive rebounding team in DDS is worse than the average offensive rebounding teams in real life.
[*]3-point shooting is off for individuals. It seems that the overall 3-pt percentages league-wide are fine, but there are too many GREAT 3-point shooters. I think this may just be a standard deviation thing (or maybe how your engine works in terms of corner threes vs. others, I'm not sure). Stephon Castle shot 55% from three on 152 attempts. Jamal Murray hit 51% from three on 265 attempts. Jalen Williams shot 51% from three on 244 attempts. In total there were 10 qualified players that shot higher than Grayson Allen's league-leading 46.1% last year. There were 41 qualified players in the 2023-24 season that shot 40% or better. In DDS there were 70. On the flip side, of qualified players in the NBA, only three players had a 3-point % under 31.1%. In DDS there were 12 (including Vucevic who shot 25%, poor guy). So something is off here.
[*]Turnovers were maybe slightly high or distributed a bit too much to the extremes? In DDS 24 players had 200+ turnovers... that number was just 14 in the NBA. Not a huge difference.
[*]Triple doubles were down (the top 5 players, Doncic/Jokic/Giannis/Sabonis/SGA) accounted for 66 in DDS. The top 5 had 88 in the NBA. Not sure what could be done here though as this is dependent on other things
[*]Wembanyama had 337 blocks, lol. Not Mark Eaton numbers but a ton in today's NBA. I'm fine with it, just thought I'd call it out
[*]Steals have some distribution problems. In DDS there were 35 players with 100+ steals. In the NBA there were 14. SGA led in that category with 204 in DDS, the top in the NBA was 150 and no one has eclipsed 200 steals in the NBA since Chris Paul.
Individual Ratings and Team Feedback
I know that one sim is not enough to really give concrete feedback here. I just want to discuss a couple things I noticed and anything I felt was glaring:
[*] The Gobert issue. In DDS he took 9 threes and tons of midrange. In the NBA, Gobert last year has 95.2% of his shots within 0-10 feet (76% of his shots were 0-3 feet). In DDS 54% of his shots were 0-3A, 19% were 3-10A and then 26% were 10+ feet away. This is obviously going to really hurt the value of a player like Gobert. Zubac had the same issue (he only shot 55% in the replay.... he's shot over 60% for the last five years including 65% last year.) Daniel Gafford had the opposite good problem in the replay... he shot 79% from the field. Almost all of his shots were RA. The odd thing is that Gobert killed it in the offensive rebound category too (most in the league)... he didn't do many putbacks I guess? I'm not sure what's causing this in the system.... Gafford has a higher midrange shooting rating than Gobert but better inside shooting (10 vs. 8). I've literally been in your system for a day and a half now so I likely don't understand how the backend is working.
[*] Anthony Edwards just needs to be better IMO. Lower overall than Trae doesn't make sense to me. He was one superstar outlier that seemed off.
[*] Jokic is taking too many shots and not passing enough. Huge increase in shots attempted and huge decrease in assists vs. IRL.
[*] Shot distribution was a bit wonky on certain teams. Jaylen Brown shot only 906 field goals (he shot 1383 and 1256 the last two years). Tatum - 19.3, Porzingis 14.0, Brown 13.1, Horford 11.4, Holiday 10.2, White 9.3 in the replay. In real life last year, Tatum - 19.3, Brown 17.9, Porzingis 13.2, White 11.5, Holiday 10.0. On the Timberwolves Randle shot more than Edwards (17.8 vs. 16.2).
[*] I spent a lot of time in depth charts/blocking charts. I'll try to succinctly sum this up by saying this: The AI is not willing to have bigger players (namely Centers) play "down". The Wolves are an example but I'll use another one too. In the Wolves play-in game against the Condors, Edwards was injured. So the AI started Conley/DiVincenzo/Randle/McDaniels/Gobert. Naz Reid played 15 minutes. Alexander-Walker played 24, Miller played 21, Dillingham 17. Naz is a 64-rated player, NAW is a 50 overall, Miller a 41. Randle, because he's a forward (power forward), is easily shifted to the small-forward role. But the AI looks at Reid and doesn't see the benefit or option of playing Randle, Reid and Gobert together. The Lakers had some of the same issues with Lebron/David/Wood/Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt played SHOOTING GUARD tons because it didn't want to move Hachimura or James to SG. James never even played SF, always PF. Russell/Hachimua/James/Wood/Davis is a perfectly reasonable lineup. And for whatever reason it never used Cam Reddish as a SG ever, even though he's much more qualified to play SG than Vanderbilt. The 4th most played lineup for them was Russell/Vanderbilt/Hachimura/James/Davis. Oh, and while I'm on the Lakers... Bronny is too good.
[*] Ja should be rated higher. He averaged 22.5 minutes per game with the Grizzlies.
Summary
I mean I LOVED getting to do a season replay the first time. The Thunder feel ridiculously good.... but I think maybe they just are. I wish I had a tad more control in-game, but honestly with how robust the team management is I didn't mind it. I'm going to sim a couple more seasons on this attempt and then do it again and see if the results change. Hope this is helpful!
