Should I comment on this or not??? This is a loaded one...
I have a few different takes on this.
For those that know me I have done real teams playbooks for years. I have scouted teams and put in their real plays, actions, and would get players ball in spots they liked to operate from to mimic real life execution of X's & O's. I would test the plays 1st in CPU vs CPU to make sure they were not broken, had good spacing, and the CPU executed them well. If you are not familiar with what I do then you can see the blogs and thread below of details of my work...
Playbook Thread
https://forums.operationsports.com/f...-complete.html
Current Teams
https://forums.operationsports.com/v...ull-playbooks/
Classic Teams
https://forums.operationsports.com/v...eam-playbooks/
I have no idea if people realized this or not but playbooks out of the box have always been generic. 30 teams and 15 teams shared a playbook with another team. Nothing was real about the playbooks in the past. The plays were real just not individual teams playbooks.
When I first heard about this and saw czar's video on it, I got intrigued and had to take a peak. 1st thing that stood out was the low number of plays. I think the Rockets had 21, Lakers 28, and Spurs 31 out of a possible 50 total plays you can add per playbook.
I don't like that for a few reasons. I like the idea of real play styles obviously, but you can not do playbooks like this for guys who want to play in my league. What happens if you were the Rockets and drafted Hakeem Olajuwon in a fantasy draft? What if 10 years down the road in your my league if D'Antoni was fired and or your squad is completely different. Well with these playbooks you have 0 post plays, mid plays, high post plays, cutter, DHO's, etc. You can add 50 plays but through play types still get the CPU to only call the 21 you have in their playbook. So, for example Capella or all bigs would have Roll Man Play type and no Low post play type. Same result but for my league longevity if you got Hakeem you would have Low post plays to use at least. You need to account for moves down the road.
Secondly, NBA teams have monster playbooks. I have a few old NBA playbooks I had the opportunity to get my hands on in the past and they are 550 pages long! LOL! I heard people talk about the Bucks & their 5 out offense and it's all they are running. I had the chance to see them play the other day and watched the 1st half keeping track of every play they ran. Granted they ran 80% 5 out during the game but I still kept track and had 24 plays that they ran in 1 half of 1 game of basketball. They were all plays 2k had in either 18 or 19. Budenholzer still running alot of same stuff he ran in Atlanta too... What you see teams run in 1st 25 games, 2nd 25, and 3rd 25 games of the season are different. Then when the playoffs hit it becomes a half court game. You start to see all the plays in their playbook. My point is every team although to the naked eye and to most people think they are just running PNR all game and the same plays over and over are wrong. They might run PNR all game yes, but the pre action or where the PNR is happening & where each shooter is in a play is different. Every team easily should have 50 plays in it.
Thirdly as a user this is bad. If you had this playbook (Rockets) and are going head to head with someone and only had 2 3 point plays in your playbook how easy is that to defend. I get they get alot of their 3's from PNR and drive & kick but I also guarantee if I scouted them I'd see some more 3 point plays mostly in ATO, EOG, etc...
Another thing is we are 3 months from release of 2k. We are a month and a half into the NBA season. We have 3 teams playbooks done. No offense to anyone but all 30 should or could be done by now from thedata and game footage we already had. Will all 30 teams be done this year and by when? Or is this just a test? I am just curious? Reason I am curious is I know working on 2k20 has to be coming up shortly, no? Finishing this project for 19 would take away from that, no?
My last thing is the Rockets & Spurs have the same coaches and style. This could really have been inputted in the off season and small tweaks after the season started for new actions and plays. The Lakers are different as although their coach is the same due to the crazy off season they had and the new roster we had no clue how Luke was going to play this year. I completely get the new coaches with new teams needing time to scout though. But guys like Pop & D'Antoni could have had been done pre release.
My last concern is does this matter this year with CPU not calling or running any plays from within their playbook glitch and needing the workaround to have them run plays outside of Series & freelance? Is it worth doing more in 19 if this is not addressed?
I like the idea of where this could go though. I'm all for realism. It would save me time every year that's for sure! I think it can be tweaked and they for surely need to account for my league players and long term my leagues. Good stuff Dirk & glad they have you on board talking about Playbooks & Tendencies as OS articles! Man after my own heart! LOL