[Wolverine Studios] We Simmed It – 2016-17 Season Preview

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During last year’s playoffs we introduced a blog series titled “We Simmed It” where we took Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2016 and simmed out the eastern and western conference finals and the championship series as well. DDS:PB 2016 nailed both the ECF and WCF results perfectly and if it hadn’t been for an untimely suspension would have probably gotten the finals right on as well.

We decided that on the eve of a new basketball season we would put the latest beta version of Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2017 to the test for a 2016-17 basketball season preview. Now first, some parameters under which this test was run. We started with rosters as of 10/23/16 including players starting the season injured with estimated injury time frames (aka Philly gets Simmons back for half the year) and we used a new feature in the game to prevent any further injuries so that the season did not get derailed by a fluke injury. So with that said here we go…

LEAGUE CHAMPS : GOLDEN STATE def INDIANA

To the surprise of nobody DDS:PB 2017 is picking Golden State to win it all in boring fashion. In fact it predicted a 4-0 sweep over Minnesota in round 1, a 4-0 sweep of OKC in round 2 (wouldn’t that be a juicy matchup), 4-1 over Blake and LA in the WCF and another 4-0 sweep over Indy to win it all. Indy’s road goes through Philly (yes PHILLY), Atlanta and Cleveland to get mopped up in the finals.

DIVISION WINNERS AND PLAYOFF TEAMS

DDS:PB 17 is going with Boston (59-23), Indiana (58-24) and Atlanta (48-34) in the East and Golden State (a whopping 78-4), San Antonio (62-20) and OKC (51-31) to win divisions in the West. Other East playoff teams : Cleveland, Orlando, Charlotte, Philly, Chicago (the East is a hot mess really). Rounding out the playoffs out West is LA, Sacramento (we can’t sim organizational dysfunction), Houston, Portland and Minnesota (boy are they going to be fun to watch this year)

SCORING LEADERS

Because people like this stat – no surprise Harden in D’Antoni’s offense could score a bunch

INTERESTING QUESTIONS

We had a few interesting questions we wanted answers to for the upcoming season. Take a look.

QUESTION #1 : What does a spurned Westbrook look like?

Westbrook looks basically like he did anytime Durant missed time. Our sim shows him dropping 40 or more 11 times out of 82 games. The crazy thing is that number might actually be low!

QUESTION #2 : Assuming he’s allowed to play, what does Simmons do for Philly?

One of the most interesting results of the sim was that Philly made the playoffs (albeit with a losing record, again the sim feels the East is horrible). In the games without Simmons, Philly went 12-21 while going 27-22 with him available. With Saric, Embiid and Simmons in the fold Philly actually has basketball talent. Been a long time since those words were spoken.

QUESTION #3 : How does it shake out in Golden State?

Well aside from going 78-4 in the sim basically this is what we’re looking at. Total domination. Draymond less of a facilitator on offense, Klay getting alot fewer shots, Steph and KD both getting fewer shots than last season as well but the most interesting number there is Durant shooting 41% from three. Durant is a career 38% shooter from downtown but playing with this squad he’s clearly going to get more wide open looks or even more single coverage

QUESTION #5 : Misc odds and ends

Does the super team land anyone on all-league 1st team? No – not going strictly on stats anyways which is how the game does the awards. DDS:PB 2017 awards the first team all-league to Westbrook, Harden, James, Anthony Davis (remember we turned off injuries) and Cousins.

Brandon Ingram takes home ROY

Dallas wins the lottery while paying Barnes 90+ million for 13.5 PPG

Chicago shoots 45% from the floor as a team – who says Rondo, Wade and Butler would cause floor spacing issues?

Biggest disappointment in the sim – Toronto. Lowry and DeRozan put up PPG but nobody else really does. We doubt Toronto could miss the playoffs in the East but maybe this exposes their need for more scoring and to make a move during the season to get it.

Least surprising item – Houston. DDS:PB 2017 predicts Houston will give up 111.9 PPG while Harden wins the scoring title. Last year Philly and Sacramento were the bottom of the pack at 107.6 and 109.1 respectively. Harden and D’Antoni…it’s a match if there ever was one.

Well that will do it for this edition of We Simmed It – now we just need to sit back and watch it all play out for real. Don’t forget to check out our trailer announcement of DDS: Pro Basketball 2017, our first developer diary showing off some of the new improvements and to keep your eyes open for our pre-order announcement coming very soon!

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