Watching North America and Europe 12 leagues
Minor injury · back on day 13
37 years · 195 cm · 94 kg · United States · Squad number 22
Stars
The grade your scouts give him out of five, for his ability now and for his potential. Half a star is ten rating points. Solid stars are what your scouts know; light blue stars are how far they might be out.
Nothing on its own. The stars are read from the same number or band printed beside them, so they never say more than it does.
Scout him. A narrower range turns light blue stars solid; your own players read exact.
You pick the squad, work the market and set up the night's games. It is free to start, and you can be playing in minutes.
Familiarity
How at home a player is at a position, from 1 to 99. His own position is always 99. Anywhere else it is what he has earned: it starts where the distance from his own position puts it, rises with the minutes he plays there and with a training focus on it, and slips when he neither plays nor trains it.
The cost of standing there. Every attribute he has is cut by up to 18 percent at the lowest familiarity and by nothing at 99, so a man who is at home at two positions is two players. It also decides who your assistant can use at the spot, who counts as cover for it in the fit report, and which second position he is listed at.
Play him there, or choose the position as his training focus in the second slot of his plan. Both together are fastest. Keep playing him there afterwards: a position left idle fades by about a level a season.
One number for how much a player did in a game — scoring, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks counted up, with missed shots, turnovers and fouls taken off. It is a published basketball measure and not one this game invented. It changes nothing on the floor: every figure in it was printed on a match report that everybody could read, which is why it can be shown for any player at any club.
Among the 218 players with at least 4 games this season.
Where he shoots
The season of one man in the three zones: the share of his shots from each, and how well he scores there against the league.
It is a record of what he has done, counted from his box scores. The sentence names the zone he leans on, when his share there is a quarter above the league average.
Give him the role that suits it: a rim finisher is best with passers, a shooter with space. His shooting attributes are the cause, this is the effect.
Takes his shots from everywhere.
Attempts 4 + 2 + 5 11
Makes 2 + 1 + 2, 45% from the floor 5
Every shot this season
One dot for each field-goal attempt he took in a league game this season, filled when it went in and hollow when it missed. How far from the ring is the match record; the side of the floor it came from is drawn for the picture, the same way the replay stages it, so every reader sees the same dot.
It is a record, not a rule. The zones and their makes are counts of the dots, and the line under them sets those counts beside his box score: they are equal when the dots cover every game.
Read where his makes cluster, then give him the role and the minutes that put his shots there. Filter by quarter to see whether he fades or finishes.
2 of 2 shots shown
Tap a dot to read the shot.
The dots cover 2 of 2 shots, from day 8; his box score has 5 of 11. Earlier games have no shot record.
Expected points
The points the league gets from shots like this one this season: the zone, the play, whether it came on the break and whether it came on a second chance. It does not know who was guarding or how far out he stood, because the game records neither. A club's expected points are the sum over its shots, and every figure opens to the kinds of shot it is made of.
It is a measure, not a rule: nothing in a match depends on it. It tells shot selection (how good the shots were) apart from shot-making (what the men did with them), so a bad night reads as bad luck or bad shots rather than just a bad night.
Take more of the shots the league scores most from, the rim and the open three, and fewer long pull-ups; the tactics page moves shots between them.
| Expected points: his 2 shots, kind by kind | 2.4 |
|---|---|
| ÷ 2 shots | 1.19 |
| Points from the floor: 2 × 2 + 1 | 5 |
| ÷ 2 shots | 2.50 |
Expected points are measured against league rates through round 4.
| Kind of shot | Shots | Worth | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rim · Drive62 % of 358 league shots | 1 | 1.24 | 1.3 |
| Three · Catch and shoot38 % of 514 league shots | 1 | 1.13 | 1.1 |
| Total adds up | 2 | 1.19 | 2.4 |
Only 2 of his shots are counted so far. We say lucky or unlucky from 6 shots up.
Nothing yet. A title counts for him when he played at least half of his club's games that season; an award is given on the season's last days.
Today
Form
Whether he has been playing well lately, measured against what a player of his rating should be producing. Runs from −1 to +1, and starts at 0.
How he shoots and performs in the next match, alongside the team's form as a whole.
Nothing but playing well clears it. It answers a question nothing else in the model does — rating is what he can do, morale is how he feels, consistency is how widely he swings, and none of them remembers last week.
Passing
Delivery, accuracy and timing.
How many assists he creates, and how often a pass of his is turned over.
Ball handling
Dribbling under pressure.
How often he loses the ball, and whether he can start a drive at all.
Basketball IQ
Reading the game — positioning, rotations, knowing what is about to happen.
Where he is standing on defence, whether the help arrives, and whether he sees the pass that is there.
Decision making
Shot selection, and knowing when to pass.
The quality of the shots he chooses, and how often he turns the ball over.
Screening
Setting screens, and using them.
His teammates' shot quality and the screen assists he generates — not his own scoring. A great screener raises the whole lineup and appears in nobody's box score.
Three-point shooting
How well he shoots from beyond the arc.
How often his three-point attempts go in, and — through the lineup around him — how much room everyone else has to work in.
Mid-range shooting
Pull-ups and jumpers inside the arc.
How often his mid-range attempts go in.
Finishing
Scoring at the rim, through contact.
How often he scores at the rim, how often he draws the foul with the basket, and how well he converts in transition.
Free-throw shooting
How reliably he makes free throws.
How often his free throws go in — and nothing else, deliberately, so that a poor free-throw shooter can be punished by fouling him.
Movement off the ball
Cutting, relocating and getting open when he does not have the ball.
The quality of the shots he receives, and the chances he creates for himself without the ball in his hands.
Post play
Back-to-basket scoring, and passing out of the post.
How often the offence goes through him with his back to the basket, and how well it works when it does.
Offensive rebounding
How hard and how well he goes after a shot his own team has missed, instead of retreating.
The share of your own missed shots he wins back.
Defensive rebounding
How reliably he ends a possession by claiming the ball after a miss at his own basket.
The share of the opponent's missed shots he ends the possession on.
Shot blocking
How often he gets a hand to what is put up near the rim, and how hard he makes it to shoot over him.
How many shots he blocks, and how many the opponent declines to take at the rim because he is standing there.
Perimeter defence
How well he stays in front of the man he is marking out on the wing and at the arc.
How good a look the man he is guarding gets from outside.
Interior defence
Guarding the paint and defending the post.
How good a look the opponent gets at the rim.
Stealing
Forcing live-ball turnovers.
How often he takes the ball off the opponent.
Aggression
Defensive intensity and physicality.
How many fouls he commits, how often he goes for the steal, and how much pressure the opponent feels.
Speed
Top-end speed in the open court.
How often your team gets out in transition, and how often it scores when it does.
Acceleration
First step and change of pace.
Whether his drives get past the man, and whether he recovers to close out.
Agility
Lateral quickness and change of direction.
Perimeter defence above all, and keeping a driver in front of him.
Leaping
How high he gets off the floor.
Rebounding at both ends, blocked shots, and finishing at the rim.
Strength
Physical power and holding position.
Post play, finishing through contact, and rebounding.
Stamina
How well he resists tiring during a game.
How many minutes he can play before his performance starts to drop, and how far it drops late in games.
Durability
How well he stands up to the wear of a season.
How quickly he recovers between matches, and how often he picks up a minor knock.
Composure
How he performs under pressure.
Shooting and free throws in the last three minutes of a close game, and turnovers late.
Consistency
How reliable he is from one night to the next.
How widely his performance swings around his own average. It changes the spread rather than the level, so two players with the same season figures can be completely different to manage.
Work ethic
How hard he applies himself in training.
How much he gains from training, and whether he can push a little past his potential. Nothing in a match reads it at all.
Leadership
How much he lifts the players around him.
Your squad's morale, and how steady the team is late in games. It works on his teammates and never on himself.
Determination
How hard he keeps working when things are going badly.
How the team behaves when it is trailing, and how much of a comeback it is capable of.
What he is paid is between him and his club. To sign him, make his club an offer, or put a trade together.
Wage
What the club pays him, as the deal stands today, quoted by the season where the world quotes so and by the week where it does not; it is paid in equal daily shares across every day of the season, offseason included. A contract with an annual rise moves this figure once a season, at rollover, so the number shown is always what is actually being paid rather than what was signed.
The club's wage bill every week, and through the salary rules how much room is left to sign anybody else.
It is fixed until the deal changes — a rise written into the contract, or a new contract altogether.
Contract ends
The season after which his deal runs out. Contracts end at the season's close: when that rollover comes he leaves the squad and enters the free-agent pool, owing the club nothing.
When he can walk away for free, and how urgent the question of his future is. A short deal is a cheap player about to become an expensive decision.
Once a deal is near its end you can offer him new terms, and an agreement takes effect the season after the current one runs out. Leave it and he reaches the free-agent pool, where anybody may sign him.
Representation
His agent's work. Some agents push hard on every deal and charge for it; others do not, and a player with no agent at all asks only for himself.
His weekly demand, and a one-off fee your club pays on signing.
Deal with the same agent fairly and repeatedly. They ask for less from a club they like doing business with, and take a smaller cut.
Nothing has moved yet.
Training changes attributes a little at a time, and every change is listed here when it happens.
United States 
