[Wolverine Studios] A Fan’s Look at Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 2016

[GM Games 252]

This post was copied with permission by the original author, TroyF. The original post can be found at http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showpost.php?p=3089352&postcount=91

After spending a ridiculous amount of time with this game, I’m going to write a quick review here for anyone who is either on the fence or is curious about purchasing it.

I’m going to start this off by saying, if you want to cheat the game, you can. You can rerun the lottery 20 times until you get the #1 pick. (and I did this on occasion as I was testing the game) You get really good with drafting and you can take second rounders and develop them into players some teams will give a #1 pick for. Some of those teams end up in the lottery. The one dynasty I built started with some cheating (I’m going to get the #1 pick no matter what) and continued because I got very lucky with trading very good players for lottery picks. Some of those lotteries I won by luck and ended up with a high pick. That helped stock my team up and I never had to deal a ton of salary cap issues because of it. Keep in mind, I cheated to get there and abused the game AI in ways Gary could not have foreseen to do this. If you get good and want to trade your 8th player in your rotation for a potential lottery pick, enjoy. This review is for the FOFCers who want a challenge.

The first thing I’ll say about this game is that if you play with none of the fail safes (you allow yourself to get fired, you only GM the game and hire the coaches, etc) it is brutal.

Take a mediocre team where the owner is impatient and a spend thrift and see if you can survive three years. I’m betting most of you won’t until you learn the mechanics of the game. Even then, you will be challenged. Let’s say you try to rebuild your first season and you get to the draft and find it is a weak draft with no superstar available. Without hitting the lottery in free agency, you will end up being crappy again. You hire a high priced coach to help you win a few close games. The next year you do get lucky and draft an amazing PF who posts up to the basket 65% of the time. Your second best player likes to post up 60% of the time and your PG loves to drive the lane. That high priced coach you hired loves to play fast. Ummmmm. . . good luck with that.

Team building in this game matters. I’ve said it in earlier posts, but changing the chemistry of the team can have very bad consequences. One year I had a dream team. A dominant PG who could score and pass. A SF who was one of the best all around players I have ever seen in the game. (he averaged 24.6 points, 7.8 assists and 8.4 rebounds a game at the age of 23) A low post guy who excelled at offensive rebounding. A PF/SG who were top level defenders and had low ratings in scoring, but good ratings in shooting. Perfect complimentary players.

Leading the second group, was a mid first round pick who was a major steal in the draft for me. Scoring rating of 7 and good numbers across the board. I was slowly working him in with the idea of him earning a starting spot the following year. Well, my starting PF went down with an injury. At the time I was 15-3. The kid moved into the starting lineup. Instead of coming on as a scoring option when one of my three stars was out, he was now playing WITH those three stars. Instead of having a defensive, unselfish PF, I had an offensive guy who wanted shots, leaving with 2 guys at 8 in scoring, 1 with a 7 and one with a 6.

Was I still good? Of course I was. They are still stars. It wasn’t 15-3 good though. Over the next 18 games I went 11-7. Over the course of the season I grabbed the number 2 seed and then went out in the conference semis. If I were playing most any other sports sim, the loss of that player would have had a minimal impact. In this game, that was a soul crushing blow. As a side note, my team stayed intact for the next season and went 64-18. They lost 3 games in the playoffs and won the title.

Having simmed countless seasons and drafts, I made just about every mistake you can make. Build a team who should run and shoot threes. . . and have a slow down coach coaching them. Build a deep team and have a coach who likes a short bench. Then the combo PG/SG I thought could give me a solid 15 minutes a game ends up on the bench and throws a fit to the coach because he isn’t getting playing time. Too many post players, too offensive minded, too defensive minded. . . name a mistake and I promise you I made it.

At the end of the day, that’s the amazing thing about this game. Your mistakes have real consequences here. And to me they don’t feel like “cheap” consequences.

If you like basketball and text sims, you should give this one a try.

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