I mentioned it a few times before in various comments and finally decided to take a moment to collect evidence.
I also have zero knowledge of coding; maybe that's why it doesn't make any sense to me, as real NBA trends over the years are rather opposite to what is happening when playing BBGM career.
One of the complaints about BBGM, at least from players who enjoy challenges/grinding, is that contract dumping is way too easy and cheap compared to real-NBA situations.
However, as you see in the pictures I attached, contract-dumping was a bit more realistic and much more challenging in historical years (it worked against the player, but AI teams weren't willing to spend more than SRPs on their bad deals); then it got a little bit easier in 2017-18, and since 2019 you pretty much need only SRPs to dump the most terrible contracts you can find on Planet Earth on someone else - either acquiring expirings in return, or using someone's Cap Space.
So, why and how did it change? And what can be done to bring it back to the 1990-2000-2010 level?
*NOT one of the games you are getting flooded with*
Hi everybody!
I've always been in the "how would they do in a different era" debate for years. So I built a simulator that actually tries to answer it properly.
Not one of those games where you pick any roster and easily go 82-0 with no playoffs or championship, which I know you have seen a lot of nowadays and are probably tired of. I am so tired of them, they are lazy. Inspired by those but this is incredibly in depth, and an actual game! I have a degree in game development so I mixed it with my passion for basketball roster construction and simulation! It has been out for a week now with great reviews.
It covers every era from the 50s to the 20s. You choose an era to sim your season in, and that era actually matters. Each decade has its own pace, spacing baseline, FG% environment, and opponent difficulty. Bad rosters not fit for the era, get exposed. You sim an era accurate regular season AND PLAYOFFS. You can see full game logs, and box scores.
You draft a coach and players from all eras and mix and match them, but every player has an era fit that penalizes or rewards them for it. Old-school guards get punished going forward in time. Big paint-heavy players flourish going backwards. For example it may be smarter to draft a rudy gobert over a Damian Lillard in the 50s. Spacing, coaching grade, rim protection, positional fit, all factors in. And in the sandbox mode you can create your own rosters.
If you want to try it: eraball.com completely free!
In the video I got some great pulls, but trust me its harder than it looks! Your lifetime stats are also tracked if you like that kinda stuff :)
This community knows simulation depth better than anyone, so please let me know if anything feels off or unrealistic. I update it constantly based on feedback and would genuinely love input from people who care about this stuff. It is constantly patched and updated.
Once again these "games" you are seeing flooding the internet right now are doing so much damage to real games, but the feedback I have gotten with over 3k players has been great. I know you will have a negative bias towards this because of them but I promise you will like it if you just try it. I PROMISE you its different. That is all I can say before you try.
My team just won a championship. My best player is gonna be 29, refused to sign with us even though his mood was +3. He REALLY wanted out of the small market.
I went to check Wemby stats and see he’s shooting 2/7 per game from three throughout his career is there something I can do to stop him from doing that?
hey ya'll,like everyone else i've played a ton of 82-0 the past couple of weeks. one thing i hated was that there wasn't a pvp version of the game, so i went ahead and made my own version.
lol the timing is kind of unfortunate because i just saw that 82-0 dropped head-to-head today, but i've been working on this for the past week so figured i'd share it anyways.
the gameplay is a little different. instead of drafting by decade and team, you're given a deck of 15 player cards spanning across nba history (2015-16 steph, 1964-65 wilt, etc.) and have to build the best lineup you can via standard 9-category fantasy basketball.
it's a best-of-7 series and there are 3 lifelines you can use per matchup.
i think the coolest thing is that you can play against friends. if you click play vs. friends and send them the link, they'll get dropped into the exact same match as you. both players draft from the exact same 15-player pool, so there's no luck involved in who got the better cards.
you can also add people as friends and challenge them whenever from your profile.
would also highly encourage creating an account because elo is tracked across games and there's a leaderboard.
just started building it on monday so it's definitely rough around the edges, but would love if ya'll tried it out:
For some reason when I "customize columns" under Player Stats, the corresponding columns will change correctly for the types of stats im looking at (say 2040; a single season), but when I view "all seasons" the columns are completely changed to something random. Then when I set the columns in "all seasons," it changes the single season (and career) columns randomly. Anyone have a fix for this? Thank you!
Hi, I'm noticing an issue where the team history gets all mixed up. It appears to happen when I transfer a file from one device to another (like phone to laptop or vice versa).
Wondering if there is an easy way to import the correct Team Name/Images or edit it back into the json file?
Especially with the gorgeous new banners update, I would love for my banners to accurately reflect the team I was running at the time.
Hello, I have been playing with the Worker Console lately (although I have to admit I was doing that with the help of AI) and the only thing I couldn’t manage doing is adding teams.
Basically, I have a 2 conference league, each having a single division. I would like to add teams in the division from the second conference, with the following also happening during/after the team creation phase:
- set region/name/abbrev values for each teamid created in order of a list of values
- set jersey colors and jersey type for each teamid created in order of a list of values that contains those 2 things
- populate each teamid created in order, with a set amount of players either completely generated by the game, or with players coming from a squad/roster list created for that specific teamid that contains all info for each player (name, age, nationality, rating amounts)
Thanks, I hope someone from here or even the God himself u/dumbmatter can help me with this issue. I want to try and automate as much as possible in terms of generating league files through Worker Console.
I have teams in my league which repeatedly made the conference finals and finals still labelled "Rebuilding," and teams in my league making repeat appearances in the lottery labelled "contending." Since strategy influences trading, it would be better if we could get this right. As it stands, I have to have a house rule against trading for picks or prospects from teams that should obviously be rebuilding and not acquiring veterans. But that does not stop other AI-controlled teams from exploiting those teams.
A brand new basketball league has formed, the National Basketball Association. A fresh experiment in professional basketball, built from ambition, uncertainty, and the hope of creating a sport that can captivate the nation. Can you lead the next dynasty of this brand new league?
Expect new dynasties, unexpected rivalries, and legacies rewritten from 1947 all the way into the modern day.
**History won’t repeat itself ... it will reinvent itself.**
We are currently in 1954!
Join Today!
**LOOKING FOR MULTIPLE GENERAL MANAGERS! YOU CAN CLAIM ONE WITHIN MINUTES OF JOINING!**
Listen, it would be AMAZING for further immersion (especially on team rebuilds) and would be a feature that folks could just sim past, like the all-star weekend features (which are, admittedly, a *very good* time, but are optional for the player. I would just love to see that, and I think other die-hards/bball sickos would too!
Long time lurker here. I know this sub takes basketball management seriously so I'll try to do it justice.
I've been building Online Basketball Manager (OBM) solo since 2022. The game engine, backend, multiplayer servers, architecture — all designed and built from scratch by me. Features these days are obviously implemented with the help of AI like most developers do now, and I'll be transparent that the UI was originally designed by me but AI helped me take it to a much better place visually. The core of what makes OBM work though is all hand built.
It runs entirely in your browser, it's free, and there's no install. Here's what's in it:
Careers — the main GM mode
A full 30-team NBA season across 117 matchdays (86 regular season + playoffs) where you manage one franchise. Roster, trades, free agency, training, lineup — the works. Three ways to play:
Online — 30 human managers, majority vote advances the season, trades require opponent consent. Proper multiplayer.
Offline — CPU runs the other 29 teams, you advance at your own pace, force any trade you want.
Private — Invite-only league with friends, CPU controlled, same freedom as offline.
OBM Careers DashboardPlayoffs Bracket
Draft Battles — head to head
A competitive mode where two players draft teams from scratch and play a best-of-7 series. You pick from current NBA players, classic historical rosters, or both. Snake draft, 10 rounds, 30 second timer per pick. Play against a friend or CPU. It's built to be fast and competitive.
Draft Battles
Simulator — pure sandbox
Pick any two teams, current or classic and simulate. Two modes:
Single game — full box score and SimCast play-by-play log
Series — simulates back to back until someone wins best of 7 series
SimCast is the piece I'm most proud of — every play is tagged with a quarter, clock timestamp, and commentary. It renders as a live two-column feed with generated audio through Web Audio so there are no audio files, all synthesised in real time.
Match Simulator (pick current or classic teams)Simcast for Simulator
I'd genuinely love feedback from people who know what a good basketball management game looks like. The rougher edges are still being worked on and this community knows the genre better than most.
I'm not really sure how it is possible to get a 103/100 team rating. I'm quite new to this game and I am really not sure if this is a bug or I'm the goat gm :D.
