How the NBA draft game works

Every player with a regular season on record from 2013-14 on, from Sleeper's free public stats, the same feed our NBA fantasy pages read. We could not find an openly licensed all-time NBA box score dataset that allows this use, and we do not copy stats from sites whose terms forbid it, so the NBA pools start in 2013-14. Older seasons will join when there is a source we may use. A player needs 82 games on record to be rated on his career. Positions are the one Sleeper lists for him.

Each season is measured by John Hollinger's game score per game: points, plus 0.4 a made shot, minus 0.7 a shot taken, minus 0.4 a missed free throw, plus 0.7 an offensive rebound, 0.3 a defensive rebound, 1 a steal, 0.7 an assist and 0.7 a block, minus 0.4 a foul and 1 a turnover, divided by games played.

A season's game score is divided by that season's 90th percentile among players with 40 or more games, so seasons are compared with their own league, and scaled down when he played fewer than 50 games.

The average of his three best seasons, times 0.85 plus 0.15 for staying power (full credit at 500 games). It is ranked within his position.

A pool rates its own players from that order: the best at a position is 99, and the rating falls by 8 times the natural log of one plus his rank divided by 1.6 (one starter at each position plus a share of the three bench spots), never below 40.

The This season pool is every player on an NBA roster now, rated on his 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons, the newer one counted double and each weighted by games, scaled down until he has 40 games across the two. That form is 85 percent of the score and the career score 15 percent, then the pool rates the order as in step 5.

A team's strength is its players' ratings weighted by slot: each starter counts 2.5 times a bench player.

Twenty rounds of four games against one opponent, 80 games in all, on a round robin schedule. Both scores are drawn around 112 points: each point of strength difference moves the stronger team's expected score up 0.6 and the other's down 0.6, home court moves them 1.25 each way, and each score varies by a standard deviation of 11. A tie goes to overtime, worth 5 points to the winner, who is more likely to be the stronger team. The top four play best-of-seven semifinals and a final (the top two in a league of two or three).

The box scores are simulated, not real: each game's points are split among the players by minutes and rating, with rebounds, assists, steals and blocks drawn by position. The MVP is the best simulated season, scaled up by how often his team won.

Player stats, positions and current clubs come from Sleeper's free, read-only public API (regular season totals by season, 2013-14 on). Player photos are Sleeper's headshots; where there is none, the card shows a plain silhouette.