To diversify the player pool a bit and to enable me to cut down on doing anything other than renaming guys when the modern era starts (the game generates too many old names and I've edited the name file before, but it's a bit laborious) I've been running parallel D2 and D3 leagues. At a certain point in history, those guys enter the draft but not through the NBA.
They essentially get drafted into
foreign leagues as imports. That's how they start their careers. If any of them are good enough, you'll see them eventually end up in the NBA and because of my talent distributions, it happens, but you also see a lot of otherwise good players who should be in the NBA who never end up on teams because they're too old, they were overlooked and teams just signed guys they knew already.
I did this in the early part of this sim, but then stopped for over a decade because I didn't have many foreign leagues activated and so, there'd be nowhere for them to go. As I add more foreign leagues, it starts to make more sense to have these guys entering the pool.
It keeps rosters interesting across the board and I find the dynamics super interesting to watch play out. I think we'll bring back D3 in 1970 and add a D2 league too. Where they get fed? I dunno, probably Australia and Canada, eventually it'll be China, but I don't bring that league into play until modern times.
This time, we'll get to follow these guys and I can start looking at overlooked dudes who might be good enough to play in the league, highlight careers of star D2/D3/undrafted guys who dominate overseas, too.