Your team

The My team group in the side menu (on a phone, the Team pill at the top of the screen) holds one screen for each part of your team: Overview, Outlook, Stats, Roster, Rotation, Coaching, Scouting, Front office, Schedule, Locker room and My notes. This page covers the screens you use to build a team. Scouting has its own page: Scouting and the draft.

Set your rotation

A rotation is your starting five and a minutes plan. A game has 240 player-minutes: five players for 48 minutes each.

1. Open Rotation.
2. Press Auto set to fill a sheet from each player's overall rating (OVR). The sheet is a start, not a final answer.
3. Move players between the starters and the bench. Use Promote to starter and Send to the bench.
4. Change each player's minutes until the total reads 240 with five starters.
5. Select Save rotation.

Save rotation turns on at exactly 240 minutes with five starters. The league refuses any other sheet.

• In the screen, one player tops out at 40 minutes.
• The targets are soft. Fatigue and foul trouble bend them. The game engine picks the five players on the floor each possession, and it splits an injured starter's minutes at tip-off. A 40-minute target plays about 35 to 36 minutes a night.
• Heavy minutes carry over. A player's load is his minutes over his club's last 5 games, with the newest game counting most. Above 34.5 minutes a night he starts the next game tired, which costs him a little shooting and defense and raises his injury risk. Each day off beyond the usual one sheds 2 minutes of load.
• At 37 minutes a night or more, the coach sits him for one regular-season game to rest. AI clubs rest their stars the same way. One game sat returns him fresh. Nobody rests in the play-in or the playoffs, and the coach never rests a man if fewer than 9 healthy players, or fewer than 8 players with minutes in your rotation, would be left. At most 2 players rest per game.
• The Rotation screen shows a Heavy legs chip for a tired player and a Needs rest chip when a rest is due, each with his load, for example Needs rest · 37.4. A fresh player shows no chip.
• An injured player's minutes go to his backup first: a healthy man at the same position, then the next position over. Only players in your saved rotation get cover minutes. A player you leave out of it never does.
• Until you save a rotation, your coach sets one. The Needs you list tells you so.
• If your saved rotation stops adding up, Needs you shows a red Rotation is invalid row and the Rotation menu item shows a red !. On a phone, a red strip sits above the sim bar. The marks stay until you save a valid rotation.

Roster

Roster lists your active roster. The league holds 15 players per team.

• Each row shows five skill grades on the 20-80 scale, where 50 is the league's rostered average. The column headers are Score, Shoot, Pass, Reb and Def, for Scoring, Shooting, Passing, Rebounding and Defense. Select a header to sort.
• An injured player shows a chip with the games he will miss, for example Out 3 games.
• A tired player shows a Heavy legs or Needs rest chip with his load, for example Heavy legs · 35.6. See Set a rotation.
• The Active roster header has a link that counts your two-way players, for example two-way 2 of 3. Select it to jump to the Two-way contracts card under the roster.

The Moves column in the table has these actions:

• Extend opens a contract talk with the player. Select Negotiate to start it.
• Promise records a promise to a player, for example minutes, a role or an extension.
• Change position moves a player to another position.
• Shop asks the league what teams would give for the player. Each offer lists the players and picks, and the change to your payroll. Select Open in trade builder to load the deal, then send it the usual way.
• Cut releases the player. A cut is final. Half of what is left on his deal stays on your cap sheet until it expires.

Under the table, a Recent injuries line lists this club's players hurt in the last 30 league days, newest first. Each entry gives the name, the kind of injury, the games he missed and the date. The line reads "none in the last 30 days" when nobody was hurt.

A trade clears the saved rotations of both teams. Open Rotation again after any deal. See Trades.

Coaching

Coaching shows your coach card. No other screen shows it. Each club starts with a coach who has a real name. In a new league, each opening coach has his own ratings for Development, Rotation, Offense and Defense. The card has a Game rules link, which opens League rules and the commissioner in a new tab.

The scheme controls open when the league runs v2 rules.

• Offense schemes: Balanced, Fast break, Half-court grind, Pick-and-roll, Triangle, Motion and Pace and space.
• Defense schemes: Balanced, Switch everything, Protect the paint, 2-3 zone and Full-court press.
• Each scheme has a line that tells what it does, and a fit grade from A to F. The grade reads your rotation against the rest of the league. A scheme pays off with an A and costs you with an F. A scheme helps most when your roster fits it. Balanced has no tilt.
• Select Save strategy to keep your schemes.
• Hires, schemes and endgame policy apply from the next game. Coaches and schemes are locked during the play-in and playoffs.

Front office

Front office shows the books.

The Contracts tab shows one column for each season. Each cell is the salary the cap counts that year. A dimmed dash means no salary that season. A shaded cell is the final year of the deal. Dead money from a release gets its own rows. The Committed, Dead money and Cap room rows sit at the foot of the table.

• Payroll counts against the soft cap. Past the tax line, the team pays luxury tax. Dead money from a release counts too.
• Over the cap, you can sign only your own free agents and players on minimum deals.
• A broken promise opens a grievance. A grievance blocks a re-sign until you resolve it.

Season budget

The Development tab on Front office holds the Season budget card.

• Your club gets 12 credits each season. A development program costs one credit. Each scouting credit buys 6 scouting looks. The card reads, for example, "6 dev programs · 36 scouting looks". The plus and minus buttons move one credit between the two.
• Select Lock budget to save the split. A locked split holds for the whole season.
• Set the split before the opening tip, which is game 1. A club with no split at game 1 gets an automatic split. The locked card shows an auto chip for it. In a league that starts in the offseason, you set the first split after the draft and free agency, before that season's opening tip.
• Until you set the split, Scouting and the development programs stay locked. The development tab shows "Set your season budget above to open development programs." The Needs you list holds a row, Set your season budget.
• A program runs for a set number of game days. It grades on the day it ends, during the season, and the card names that date, for example "grades on Feb 3". A player runs one program at a time. He can run several in one season, up to 3 over his career.
• A commissioner sees a read-only card for a club that no GM runs.

Outlook

Outlook looks five seasons ahead.

• Position strength grades each starter against the same position on every team. Tier and rank do the grading.
• Org depth names the best bench player at each position and what he is to the starter.
• Five-year plan runs each contract out, then hands the position to the next player or to a pick you own. Amber and red mark a successor who is worse than the player he replaces. The Max age and Min OVR filters in the pane head limit who the plan can name as a successor. The game does not save them.
• Draft capital lists your picks. For how picks move, see Pick trades.

Team stats and schedule

• Stats gives every stat a league rank. Green is the top quarter and red is the bottom quarter. Attempts rank on volume and stay grey. Turnovers and points allowed rank low to high, so first is fewest. A tie across the whole league shows a dash.
• Schedule lists your results, newest first, and then the games still to play. A result opens its box score. An opponent name opens that team. Play-in and playoff games carry a round tag.

Locker room

Locker room shows player mood as a score from 0 to 100. It is a tab on each team's page. To read a rival's locker room, open that club's Overview and select its Locker room link.

• The score is 50 plus each standing effect plus promise effects, held between 0 and 100. The line under each name is the biggest mover and always shows the direction of the current reason.
• Team record is one standing effect per man, read from his club's current regular-season record: +2 at .600 or better, -2 at .400 or worse, 0 in between. It does not add up week after week.
• Minutes compare the minutes a man gets with the minutes his OVR earns against the whole league. A top-ranked man expects starter minutes. This holds on AI clubs too. Only the current band counts, and bands do not add up.
  • Well below expectation: -14 (buried).
  • Somewhat below: -6.
  • Somewhat above: +4.
  • Well above: +10 (featured).
  • The bands split at 5 minutes per game, with a second tier at 12.
• Starting a development program for a man adds +4 to his score, with the reason "started a development program". See Season budget.
• A man is measured only over his club's regular-season games since he joined it by draft, signing or trade, and only after 3 such games. Games he missed while injured or resting do not count against him. Two-way men are not measured. Playoff games are ignored.
• A new league starts each player with one opening reason, worth at most 10 points either way. It names his situation: "starting for a contender" (+6), "a veteran on a rebuilding club" (age 30 or older, -6) or "playing out the last year of his deal" (-3). A small random spread of up to 3 points in either direction rides on top. A player with no situation reads "came to camp in good spirits" or "came to camp in a sour mood". The reason drops off at the season rollover.
• Below 40 reads unhappy. Below 20 reads miserable. Contract talks price the score shown here.
• The season picker filters the storylines. The score covers every season.