marshdaddy's 2K Toolkit

[marshdaddy]

What up?

For those of you that don't know me, I'm marshdaddy. I've been kicking around over on the Basketball Dynasty subs for a few years with The Golden Era (shameless plug, check it out on OS and on YouTube) and over the years have developed a number of tools and templates that I use to make my dynasty feel more realistic. The biggest gripe I have with MyNBA, and I know I'm not alone, is the lack of realism.

Random trades of super stars to teams for no returns? 2K has it. Players refusing to sign with teams or teams overpaying guys for no reason? You bet. And, my personal biggest issue, the lack of media coverage that we see in the real world just doesn't exist in 2K.

So over the years I've made a number of things to address these issues. For the media coverage, I've created templates for websites, news articles, standings and stat leaders, all aimed at helping me feel more immersed in the game and the world. For my 30-team control brethren and sistren, they all know the pain and obnoxious number of hours it takes to get free agency and trades to feel real. Well, using real-world examples, I've created a number of tools that I've used to simulate the NBA offseason, to get realistic trades and to make the free agency period much more exciting than 2K ever has.

And now I'm excited to begin making all of these things available.

I recently published MarshDaddy's 2K Toolkit, which will be the home for all of these items as they become available to the public. For now, I've already published my Reference Doc, which I use to keep historical archives of my entire league history (my version is here, if you care to look), as well as my Free Agency Selection Tool, which I'll have a separate post on.

In the near future, I'll be posting more of the tools that I use, including the templates for making websites, articles and social media posts, as well as automated resources to make the league decisions feel real. While we already have a free agency tool, I'm currently testing out a potential automated trade system to help make authentic trades without the user having to go through all 30 teams and build them up themselves.

Please feel free to take a look and use the tools as you see fit. Everything that I publish will be free to the public, and I'll be posting walkthroughs of each tool over on my YouTube channel. If you're feeling generous, there is a donate option, but no shame if you choose not to.

Thank you to everyone that has followed The Golden Era over the past 5 years - and 14 seasons. And an additional thank you to the many users in here who have inspired me or shared many of their concepts and designs. None of what I have done has ever been from my mind only, so thank you to all the creatives in here who make this community what it is.

[marshdaddy]

Free Agency Selection Tool

Link to tool | Link to walkthrough | Link to website

This tool incorporates team rosters, team salary and ownership desires to generate and automate where free agents will sign during free agency, or which teams a superstar will demand to be traded and to where. It also determines the player's salary, using real-world examples to create realistic contract amounts, lengths and destinations. For example, a higher overall player is more likely, if not guaranteed, to sign for a larger percentage of the salary cap compared to lower overall players.

Meanwhile, there is a significant salary range for lower overall players, meaning the same overall player could sign for one team at $15 million a year or $20 million with a different team. All of the signings are based off of a percentage of a salary cap and mirrors what we see in the NBA today.

The tool does require 30-team control so that the CPU isn't make dumb or irrational offers. I would also recommend pulling down the salary demand sliders so that players are interested regardless of what offer you give them. These are the settings I use, which still has unsigned free agents thinking they deserve more, so feel free to set as necessary. With this tool, you shouldn't really need the contracts sliders because the tool is picking the teams.

Min Rating: 15
Max Rating: 100
Salary Curve: 62
Player Potential: 0
Player Durability: 75
Player Minutes: 87
Player Fame: 14
Player Non-Financial Ambitions: 75

You'll be able to access the tool directly through the link above, which will take you to a Google Sheet. You'll need to download a copy of that tool as the public one is read only.

There are instructions on the first sheet, and a full walkthrough of the tool is available on my YouTube channel through the link above. I have left examples of the team roster and Likelihood to Leave (LTL) as a reference point. Instructions are below for redundancy.

If you have any issues with accessing the tool, or any bugs come up, please let me know and I'll look into it. Enjoy!


Step 1 - Ownership and Team Needs
First, you'll fill out the ownership and team needs sheet. This sheet includes the team's salary situation, the owner's spending desire and the team needs.

You can easily grab each team's salary info by going to Front Office > Finances > Salary Cap Breakdown in MyNBA and just cycling through the teams.

For spending desire, you have three options: Free Spending, Luxury Tax Limit, and Slightly Into Luxury Tax. This will determine the likelihood that a team will sign players depending on their salary range. You can use real world owner desires (the Clippers are Free Spending, the Pacers are Luxury Tax Limit) or you can make it up for yourself.

Team Needs are up to you. I use the ATD base roster as I agree with the overall ranges there. Personally I consider a 78/77 overall as being the last guy on a playoff rotation. So I'll add in the team needs based off that logic, with the pursuit of having 2 players 77+ at each position (or maybe 3 SG 77+ and 1 SF 77+, but you get the idea).

Step 2 - Likelihood to Leave
Next, go to Likelihood to Leave (LTL). This was a formula I created to automate if a player who has an overall of 85+ would like to leave his current team. Normally I do this when a player is either entering free agency or if he has one year left on his deal and is demanding a trade. Considering the current NBA, you could probably do this every offseason for the league's best players.

After putting in the player name, you'll go through a handful of items to determine the player's LTL. Everyone starts out at 20/20, or 100% chance to leave. Depending on the inputs, that number will go down - winning the Finals last season will bring that number down significantly - or up - being older than 32 will make that number go up.

This next part is important. Wait until you have input every single player that you are putting through LTL. Once you have done that, click the Calculate Likelihood button. This button will determine the player's LTL and then run a random number generator in the backend between 1 and 20. If the player's LTL was 9, then a roll between 1-9 will have the player wanting to leave and a roll between 10 and 20 will have him not. You'll only see the player's LTL score and then the output of if he wants a trade or not (for free agency purposes if he wants to re-sign or not).

The way I use this is if a player is under contract and did not request a trade, then he is staying put next season. if the player is a free agent and did not request a trade, he will still go through the next process, though he will have very heavy odds to stay with his original team. Broken down simply for folks who don't like to read a lot:

Player did not request a trade and is under contract next season: No additional actions
Player did not request a trade BUT is a free agent: Goes through part 2 of the LTL process but his original team is an option but with heavy odds to stay
Player did request a trade: Goes through part 2 of the LTL process and his original team is not an option

Step 3 - Roster Setup
From there, you'll go to the Roster tab. This is probably the most time consuming part of the tool, but it's very important. You will go through every roster and put in the relevant details for every player's age and overall. There are 15 roster spots if you want to use them, but I'll tell you right now that the only thing that matters are players over 78 overall (as you'll see from the template). This part of the tool is giving each team a score, or as I like to think about it lottery balls. The better the team, the more points (lottery balls) they get and the higher chance they have of being the preferred destination of the player in question.

There are 36 roster rows available. You'll see the template has 32 teams being used as my franchise has two expansion teams (Seattle and Las Vegas) but the script is designed to be able to handle league growth.

Step 4 - Selecting Team Options
You can start with whoever you want, but I typically start with the stars. Take the players you just put through LTL and put the first name in cell D46. Now, if the player did not request a trade but is under contract, you'll write down his original team in cell D52. If he did request a trade, leave the original team blank.

Next, hit Select Teams, which will auto pick five teams and copy them to the next available column before clearing column D. That will also copy and paste the teams to the Team Picks tab. If you get any duplicates, you can either randomly pick a different team or just leave it. I prefer to leave it as I take that to mean the player really wants to go there.

Step 5 - Picking Teams
You can run through every player in free agency at once, or do step 4 and 5 at once for each player, your choice.

Part A
Go to team picks and fill in the player's years pro, overall and position. The overall and years pro will impact how much the player chooses sign for in relation to the salary cap, while the position will give some advantages to the teams interested in him if any of their team needs is matched by their position and overall.

Part B
Next fill out how the five teams can get the player. You have 5 options (Sign and Trade, Sign Outright, No Deal Possible, Exception, Clear Space). If you select No Deal Possible, the automation will not pick that team. You can either choose to leave them in, or replace that team with a team of your choosing.

For the previous team you have just one option. Nothing really critical there.

Lastly, put in the salary cap for the league.

Once you have done all that, each player has its own button. Click it and it will determine what team the player signs for, what his year one salary is, the percentage of the salary cap he that is, how many years his deal is, the percent increase (or decrease) of the deal and the total salary.

This section is based off of real-world signings. So if a player is 90+ overall, he's signing for 35% of the cap. Lower overall players have larger swings in range, so maybe you'll get a deal that overpays the player at his cap number or maybe it's a steal for the team. The example in the sheet has Nickel Alexander-Walker getting a $41 million deal for two years from the Bucks. I'd call that an overpay.

But for transparency, I included a second NAW contract where he signs a two-year deal for $30.8 million with the Jazz. The range is there - and can go even lower - but it's the luck of the draw.

Lastly, if you care to publish these, there are randomly generated tweets output to the Tweet Log tab. You can copy that language there and share it as you see fit for your dynasty.

[marshdaddy]

GM Simulator

Link to tool | Link to walkthrough | Link to website

The latest tool is now available for use, the GM Simulator. The GM Simulator allows you to create realistic, authentic trades at the click of a button. Based off a handful of simple user inputs, the tool generates trades that take into account roster construction, roster needs, team direction and expectations, GM personality and draft picks, among others.

You'll no longer need to do 30-team control to create trades for every team. Instead, after putting in the initial roster, you'll be able to make trades for every single team, and targeted trades for individual players, with one click.

[marshdaddy]

Reserving for future post

[marshdaddy]

Reserving for future post.

[Baebae32]

Thank you for this! Will be using it for my file

[marshdaddy]

Sept. 10 Update:

Just released the GM Simulator tool. Details are above for consistency but links are here:

Link to tool | Link to walkthrough | Link to website