NBA 2K19 Playbook Changes Are a Significant Test Case for Simulation Basketball
 

Recently, NBA 2K has quietly made changes to its game designed to appeal to the simulation...

Written By: Smirkin Dirk

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Re: NBA 2K19 Playbook Changes Are a Significant Test Case for Simulation Basketball
 

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

Re: NBA 2K19 Playbook Changes Are a Significant Test Case for Simulation Basketball
 

That Bucks playbook update was fire! �� wow! Still need to attest for my league longevity but GREAT update for sim rosters and for the Bucks to play like they do! THe 5 out stuff is amazing! Much needed!

Edit- just tested Raptors and it’s bad. Bad spacing, broken plays, cpu doesn’t execute them well, etc. I’d keep maybe 10 of those plays tops for immersion reasons. The actions might be real but unfortunately the timing windows are not right which equals a lot of clutter unfortunately...

Re: NBA 2K19 Playbook Changes Are a Significant Test Case for Simulation Basketball
 

Why did you find it necessary to use a massive font? It doesn't help get your point across; if anything, it makes it worse.

Re: NBA 2K19 Playbook Changes Are a Significant Test Case for Simulation Basketball
 

robrien13;2049619009...Do the creators of NBA 2K realize that much of the simulation crowd uses coach mode? First, they have it in, than we have to do a tiresome workaround, and next they take it out altogether. If NBA 2K was really interested in the simulation crowd, they would have left coach mode in, and [b]not punish us because of the non simulation crowds misuse of this mode

You can still do coach mode you just can't watch the cpu vs cpu animations. If something big happens you can pause and instant replay, the game is still being "captured" as if you were in true coach mode. SimCast Live with audio on broadcast is what I use from time to time. I'm with you I wish they still had it in but yea easy on the font size.

Re: NBA 2K19 Playbook Changes Are a Significant Test Case for Simulation Basketball
 

I didnt even realize 2k used the same playbook for all teams. Thats because 2k's AI is good at exploiting poor defense, mismatches, and going to the hot hand.

the downside for having team based playbooks is that casual users will have a harder time adapting defensive schemes.
having to devise a defensive scheme to stop a team is great for sim players and most likely not for casual or inexperienced 2k gamers

Im all for the implementation, because ift forces you to learn a teams schemes in order to runa fluid offense. and like you stated in the article, can go a log way in a legacy mode when signing free agents and drafting etc.

this will eventually will lead to alot of game improvements in gm/my league modes. the unique team playbooks will really open the strategy and innovation for the gm/legacy mode.

Ive already thought of ideas just by reading this article.

Re: NBA 2K19 Playbook Changes Are a Significant Test Case for Simulation Basketball
 

What could work for people who play Myleague/MyGM is to have coaches with different playbooks for each system they know. Some are more post heavy, guard heavy and whatnot you get the point.

Inside the coach sliders there is a system adaptability slider that adjusts who the coach prefers to play based on system fit I believe. Well, if 2K can program another slider that could adjust the flexibility of the coach to change his system/playbook based on the types of players he has, that can help alter the play-styles of teams as the years go on. Great coaches would adjust easily, with knowledge of 2-3 systems with full playbooks and poor/underdeveloped coaches with 1 or 2 playbooks could find themselves fired dropping the moral and chemistry of the team.

Also, as a result of a system like this coaches would need badges and just like the mentor system an assistant coach playing with a certain coach system can/should evolve his awareness of that system and bolster his rating of that system.