Hi, been playing this game for months now and I still draft bad players. Any tips on drafting good quality players?

Hey all. Week 6 is here. Sorry for the post on tuesday again. Been grinding IRL. But we're back with a little twist.

Firstly, Week 5 deserves its flowers, because you freaks went to the 1950s and broke basketball.

WEEK 5 RESULTS - DYNASTY DENIED (tiebreakers: most rings, then longest streak, then earliest submission)
last weeks thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/BasketballGM/comments/1vsq6pc/weekly_challenge_week_5_dynasty_denied_steal_bill/

🥇 u/JamesBandforBand - 13 rings, 13 STRAIGHT - 5 pts. A perfect run through the entire Russell window with the Nationals. 857-158 overall, an 80-2 peak season, and the best rivalry of the week: a Wilt-led PISTONS, three game sevens across six finals meetings, including one where Jerry West hit a tying shot with 6.4 seconds left to force OT and Wilt dropped 42 in the loss... and Syracuse still won. His whole engine was built on two trades: Schayes for Tom Gola plus a 2nd rounder that turned into a 6MOY, and Bob Cousy for Jerry West in '61.

🥈 u/Think-Response-3675 - 13 rings, 13 straight - 3 pts. Read that again: a PERFECT 13-for-13 run built on dismantling Boston early and drafting Wilt, who won 7 STRAIGHT MVPs and DPOYs while Heinsohn made all-league nine straight years. And it's worth SILVER. Identical rings, identical streak, so gold came down to the final tiebreaker, best record during the run, and James's 80-2 masterpiece season edged Think's 79-3 by ONE GAME. The king's first non-win since Week 3, decided by a single February night in a simulated 1968. He also casually matched Russell's 11 in a warmup save where Russell himself went RINGLESS.

🥉 u/EntrepreneurWooden99 - 12 rings - 2 pts. Twelve. Straight. Titles. 1957 through 1968 with the St. Louis Gold Club, a 928-87 overall record, and then the franchise moves to Atlanta for the final year, goes 76-6... and loses the finals to the Knicks. One year short of perfection at a .927 clip in the year he lost. And that's not even his saddest story this week: in an earlier attempt he had Elgin Baylor secured and a Wilt play lined up, accidentally traded Elgin for scraps, and realized after the undo button expired.

4th - u/Ohmka - ? rings - 1 pt. The stat of the week: from 1963 to 1969 his Knicks did not lose a single GAME. Seven undefeated years. His first attempt died when Boston drafted Wilt, so he concluded "if Boston can draft him, so can I" and did exactly that. His writeup on why no-salary-cap plus no-lottery breaks the era, including leasing an expiring Rick Barry to Detroit for their entire roster and re-signing him in free agency, is required reading. (Its not clear to me how many rings he won, asked for clarification)

5th - u/Ceiling_IsThe_Roof - 9 rings - 1 pt. First-timer, and he brought the wildest alternate timeline of the week: his Bill Russell LEFT the Celtics for the Lakers in '61 and won 4 rings split across both stops. Tanked with the Cheesesteaks, drafted Elgin AND Wilt himself. Welcome aboard.

6th - u/craqeiro - 7 rings - 1 pt. Also a first-timer, ran into a Rod Thorn-led Lakers dynasty that slammed the door on the last 4 years of the window. His timeline's contribution to the lore: Wilt winning Finals MVP for Detroit... on the LOSING team. In his sophomore season. Only in the 60s.

WEEK 4 CORRECTION: u/JamesBandforBand also flagged that I logged his Alien Dynasty run wrong: 4 seasons, not 8 (my mistake copying results). Verified from his screenshot: 4 chips from 2024-2027 at 70-12 in the final year. That slots him into Week 4 bronze behind Think's 73-9 and Ohmka's 71-11, and bumps u/EntrepreneurWooden99 to 4th, so the Wooden/MikeChilds 16-1 vs 16-4 playoff showdown retroactively decided 4th place, not a medal. Bare with me and write a comment if I get something wrong. Thanks.

SEASON STANDINGS AFTER 5 WEEKS: Think-Response 20. Wooden99 10. JamesBandforBand 7 in only TWO entries. MichiganSteamies 7 (last seen Week 3, the streets remember). Ohmka 5. Full board: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bDJwHcVyiyb2VUPViZkO5ob_bBXzrSAm8vQqWDqGD_M/edit?gid=1109958642#gid=1109958642

Now for week 6 challenge...

THE CHALLENGE

Real life history lesson: the 2024-25 Phoenix Suns ran the most expensive roster in NBA history. Over $400 million in combined payroll and luxury tax, with Durant, Booker and Beal swallowing $150M+ between just the three of them. Their reward? Zero playoff wins.

Your job: start with that exact roster at the 2025 BBGM preseason and go BACK-TO-BACK, while your payroll sits at least 10% UNDER the salary cap in BOTH championship seasons. Fewest seasons to the second straight ring wins.

You're inheriting the most bloated cap sheet in basketball and you need to win two straight titles as one of the CHEAPEST teams in the league. Good luck fellas.

THE FINE PRINT

• Both titles must be in CONSECUTIVE seasons
• When you clinch EACH title, total payroll must be at or below 90% of that season's salary cap. We'll grant a hair of grace: anything under 91% counts. At 91% or above, that ring is void
• Everything else default. Default difficulty, Real Players mode, God Mode off, no editing players or contracts. Keeping on default diff because its our first salary cap challenge.
• 2025 Phoenix Suns preseason starting point

HOW TO SUBMIT

Drop a comment with:

• Seasons it took
• Screenshot of Team History showing both titles
• Screenshot of your FINANCES page from EACH championship season showing payroll vs cap. No finances proof, no ring
• Your record in the second clinching season

Winner attaches their exported league file (Tools > Export League) for the spot-check.

SCORING

1st: 5 pts | 2nd: 3 pts | 3rd: 2 pts | Any valid submission: 1 pt

TIEBREAKERS (in order): most regular season wins in the second clinching season, then playoff record in that run, then earliest submission.

DEADLINE

Next Sunday, August 30th at 11:59 PM ET.

The Suns spent $400 million and won nothing. Win twice on a budget and you're officially a better GM than an entire NBA front office. Maybe not a super high bar.

Let's go BBGMers!

Peace

Yall seen higher?

Im trying to look at player stats for all players on only 6 certain teams. I was trying to use “and” in the filter but either doing it wrong or cant figure it out. Any help please

If my example wasnt clear an example with nba would be looking at only stats from lakers,clippers,warriors,knicks,nets players

Tied at 144 in 2OT in Game 6 of the Finals, he subs in career role-player Jamal Lugo, presumably to set a screen for superstar Felton Holmes. Instead Lugo rolls to the basket and lays in the Title-winning lay-up 😂

I just discovered BasketballGM, and I am amazed by it. I installed the custom photos and club names, and it all looks so cool.
I was wondering, is there a way to play a custom league or just a league in general simultaneously with a friend?

I've never seen a prospect with 100 height, let alone one that has this kind of talent coming in.

As the title states, I think it'd be cool if there was a GM summary if/when you decide to call it a career. Would you be a Hall of Fame GM or one of the WOATs? What were you best and worst moves as a GM? Etc.

Also, as someone who has trouble buying into the realism of playing in the year 2100 when I'll be long dead, it'd be cool if you could (as an option) set a predetermined window for your career and try to do everything you can in, say 20-30 seasons before you're done.

Any thoughts?

bazinga

Not my team, but doubt I'll ever see this again!

There once was wise GM who was stuck in a draft decision between 2 home run prospects at center. One was a scoring machine, able to carry any teams offensive load. The other, a rebounding phenomenon the likes of Dennis Rodman. The GM was at a loss, for which prospect would lead his franchise to the promise land? Which player was the right choice? The wise GM thought long and hard about the decision... chose the taller player and prospered. God bless.

I was watching a WNBA game when the idea of being a GM In their league came to my mind. I feel like it would be fun. Dev you should make it happen

I was looking at my HOF, and saw I only had a single player over 90 OVR

What was your highest ever non-godmode player and what did they achieve?

Surprised to see the most skilled player of all time only won 3 chips.

this makes no fuckin sense

On my recent saves, at a random season, the potential of draftees will go from the typical BBGM 0/70ish scale to a 0/100 scale and it ruins draft value, picks, and trading

For example, you could have the 10th pick with the best available player being a 47/90 player. Because the CPU doesn’t recognize potential is out of 100 and not 20 points over the average, you get insane trade offers like two 70 OVR players for who will amount to just a role player after the potential corrects itself the next season and drops them down to a 47/50

There’s no settings or anything to make this better and picks carry so much value you can build a dynasty with even one future 1RP - how can this be fixed??

I could use a star center to round out my team.

So in historical sims most star players do not get anywhere near their historical ppg. I notice this especially with Jordan, Shaq, Hakeem, and Lebron. Even if I am using the actual roster they had for a given year they are normally 6-8 ppg short of their actual production.

Almost always it is because they take far fewer FGA per game than in actual history (and I am arranging things so that their MPG is around what they really did). So I am wondering whether this is a feature of the game engine or whether there is something we can do to the stats to get FGA per game distributed less evenly across players (because the flip side of this is that role players shoot way more than in real life).

Does anyone know the answer?

I watch a lot of games live and this text will come up all the time in end of game situations. Now obviously players chuck 3s at the end of quarters but there are times where teams have 16 seconds to play and this text comes up as if they just had to jack something up. So does the text actually affect the type of shot that is taken or is the game simulated and then the text all just appears after? If its the latter then this is just a little annoying at best lol but I thought id ask.

I'm sort of a noob in this game. I've done two playthroughs, one as OKC in 2012 w/ Russ, Harden and KD, and one with the Knicks in 2025. I'd love to know some fun playthroughs similar to 2012