This is a Loooooong post (I apologize for that; I will try to keep posts a little shorter without losing too much detail in future). If you are seasoned NBA2K player you can skip over some of the sections, such as “team building”. As I was writing this blog I really wanted it to appeal to everyone, including people who may not know much about NBA or have not played an NBA2K title before, as well as appealing to the hardcore who have played every release and can name every player in the league. If you fall into the latter group I hope you’ll find some fun or useful posts on the blog, but please keep in mind that what may seem to be the most obvious and trivial thing in the world to you might be useful to someone new to the game. So with that out of the way (part 1) ….

1. Utah Jazz

Yes. The worst team! I really am making a case that you should play as the worst team (according to the game! Don’t shoot the messenger!). They are 30th in Defense, 30th in Offense and 30th Overall. I hear you “WHY????”. Its a fair question; they don’t have much cap room (a tad under $4 million) and in this early version (V1) their draft picks are pretty worthless (just 1.5 stars – the same, oddly, as the Bulls! If you’re playing as the Bulls you should definitely be trading picks! Remember that those draft picks will be worth far more near the trade-deadline, assuming you’ll still be a terrible team at that point; if not you should trade them with a team who you expect to be terrible! I expect the value of Utah’s picks will be fixed in a patch or roster update, hence mentioning the version number).

The Bad News!

Over the summer the Jazz took on a lot of large contracts in a salary dump from the Warriors (in the real world it was a good trade for both teams; there is a minimum salary cap as well as the soft and hard max caps, so Utah had to take on some contracts; they filled up the squad without comprising the first team, without hurting their chance in the 2014 draft and got some extra draft picks in the process), but in Association Mode you’ll get all of the negatives of that trade (Richard Jefferson, Brandon Rush and Andris Biedrins – earning a combined $24.05 million) with none of the positives (the future trade picks they got in return in real life) – although Rush might be worth keeping around, he earns relatively little and has a wicked three-point shot on him. He’s the best three point shooter in the squad, and at $4 million and contracted for a single year he isn’t breaking the bank.

They aren’t really strong in any one area; they don’t have any super-athletic players, they don’t have a lot of shooting range in the starting five, and the only player who has a chance to feature in the All-Star weekend is Evans, rated at 60 who can dunk and do nothing else. If all of that isn’t bad enough, the three players who took pride of place in the team selection screen in NBA2K13 (Jefferson, Millsap and Williams) are all gone! Oh, and the cherry on the top? The two best young players in the squad (Favors and Hayward) are in the final year of their rookie contracts. None of the squad has, (arguably) the best skill, Lockdown Defender. Is there any good reason to pick this team? No, no there isn’t. So… on to the next team… (I’m joking! It was a joke! Don’t blame me Jazz fans; 2K games made you a laughing-stock; not me!).

Of course there are good reasons (or they wouldn’t be in this list!). This is the ultimate challenge. This is the team you will have the most fun with because you can do whatever you like with them and you can’t make them any worse than they already are. The only way is up! This team isn’t the worst, they are the best! That’s why I put them first. By being the worst they ARE the best!

Taking the worst team and making them the best is a blast (it always has been on NBA2K), but having some good young talent to slowly build an empire? That is just gold! Last year the Bobcats started as the worst team (as you would imagine, following their disastrous previous season), then the Wizards were briefly the 30th team, then towards the end of the year the Magic landed the magic 30 spot. The Wizards were by far the most fun “30th team”, simply by way of having a couple of players who could (with training) go on to become the best two players in their respective positions in Wall and Beal. In many ways, Jazz are even more of an exciting 30/30/30 team than any of the ones mentioned above, because they have talent in every slot!

The Good News!

On the plus side, you have a complete set of young starting players (Trey Burke, Alec Burks, Gordon Hayward, Derrick Favors and Enes Kanter) who are all under the age of 23, and all (apart from Burks) have at least B potential. They are fundamentally sound; Favors is a defensive rebounding God, Kanter crashes the offensive boards like a mad man (and plays way above his 68 rating. Don’t sleep on him just because of the overall rating, it doesn’t convey his true value to the team). Burks doesn’t excel in any one area but is a decent rounded player. Hayward has a great three point shot on him (although he needs to be put through some rebounding training!). Trey Burke is the best 2013 draft pure point-guard in the game. This is a team where you can keep the core and trade away the other pieces for young talent and/or draft picks (or allow their contracts to expire and then fill in the missing pieces using cap-space during free agency). You have a lot of versatility here, but if you want to take full advantage of this opportunity you’re in for the long haul!

Sometimes it isn’t about the stats or the stars a player has, but the feel of playing as that player. Burke, Hayward and Favours are especially fun to play with in this squad. The team as a whole has a nice feel before you start adding in new pieces to improve it. Before I embarked on any other mode on NBA2K14 I played half a game (swapping sides at half-time) with every team in the game, just to get a feel for the squads and the new players. Utah weren’t too bad, they’d be around mid-table in terms of fun to play as (that is subjective of course and depends on your playstyle and the slider sets/difficulty you play on).

Remember I said above you have the 3 ex-Warriors earning a combined $24.05 million? You also have Williams earning $7.5 million. Apart from Rush, none of those players represent value for money and should be traded away to a team with cap space (this is a realistic transfer, you’ll either get pretty crappy players back or you’ll have to package a draft pick for a more valuable player). For those keeping score, that $4 million cap-space you started the game with just became $35 million (ish)! (minus any players you picked up on the way to trading them away and assuming you got rid of Rush – who I would maybe keep). As you’ll see, we are going to be focusing on picking up youth players and hopefully building the squad organically by picking players with high potential and rounding off their rough edges in development drills and adding the finals touches in training camp.

Having said that, there’s certainly enough cap relief there to bring in an star during the 2014 or 2015 free-agency, should you wish to do so (just remember that nearly all of the contracts you have are youth contracts, and you will require more cap space than usual to extend all, or most, of those contracts in the future).

The Challenge

It is always tempting to go nuts in free agency and grab the superstars, especially on your first play through the new game. Association Mode very quickly becomes boring if you do that EVERY game with EVERY team you play as. It also makes the game incredibly easy. Try not to do it! I promise; you’ll have more fun! So, please don’t do that with this team (I’ll give you the perfect team for that in a later post!). THIS team just screams “talent? I’m Oozing baby. Oozing!”. I’m not saying don’t grab a player you need and would fit into your system just because he’s a superstar. I’m just saying, don’t take every player you don’t need in the hope of flipping him (along with a player you’ve been training up) for a star player you like in real life. Do that on another save game (with your favourite team, and if your favourite team is Utah, create 2 save games!).

Slowly watching as your team of youngsters goes from being the 30th, officially the worst, dead last (in every area!) team in either conference, to eventually, after years and years of hard slog, being title winners? Using each month’s development drills to level out your player/squad’s weaknesses? Using the end of year training camp to finesse the finer parts of your starting 5? Carefully scouting and landing a 7’6″ Serbian man mountain with a weird name and A+ potential? Finally starting a season and seeing you are the no1 ranked team? That is more fun that filling a team with (current) All-Star players! You’re not going to do it all in a season. Hell, you’ll probably still be in building mode 3 seasons down the line (if you’re doing it right!). You’re here for the long haul, there are no short cuts here! (OK, there are short cuts. But don’t do it! Remember the lesson from The Shining? “All play and no work makes Jack a dull boy”).* But when it all works, when the pieces all fit and you have created a monster of a team and kept a core of players from the start? That, right there, is gaming gold! So what we are not doing is taking shortcuts to build an elite team and win the title in a season or two, what we are doing, is taking the core of the youth already in this team and building them up into title contenders (but adding pieces here and there is par for the course!). Think of this as an OKC Thunder project, not a Miami Heat one!

If you play the game anything like me, you’ll become attached to your Serbian 7’6″ man mountain after spending 4 seasons training him every month and investing skill points into him, and you’d rather give up gaming and take up knitting than let the Lakers steal him from you, so you’ll match the crazy $17 million per year offer (and rising) that he demands, and push yourself well into luxury tax, perhaps even approaching the hard cap and then it becomes a hassle trying to juggle player contracts as you try to keep your favourite players when they reach the end of their rookie contracts. So, if you want to add an extra level of difficulty (and realism!) you should certainly try to stay inside below the luxury tax level. Back in the real world, this isn’t a team that is likely to be happy splashing out millions of dollars per year in tax payments which go to other teams. Ideally you want to be hovering around the cap limit, dropping below it into each free-agency and picking up a bargain player or two (whilst keeping one or two elite players, and a group of “others” who are value for money). We are getting slightly ahead of ourselves here, but this is an issue you need to have in mind from the beginning of the game, as the limit you place on yourself will directly affect which players you try to trade for (and will certainly affect whether you pick up an All-Star in free-agency).

Team Building

Note: This section contains a (rough) guide on how to improve the team in the first season or two. You might want to skip it if you consider “game tips” to be spoilers!

No1 tip; when you have tons of cap room be careful that you don’t trade up for a really bad contract (i.e. offering a package of players worth $3 or 4 million a year and getting someone like Joe Johnson in return and wiping out your cap space). Your eyes might light up when you see that 3 star player being offered in return for some trash you just want to get rid of, you should certainly be aiming for quality but always with value in mind (“Is player Y worth $X per year?”). The cap limit forces you to do this. If you can start to think of cap space as something that has value (and not something that should be filled at the first opportunity) you will be half-way to assembling the best group of young players in the game. Once you’ve assembled the best group of young players in the game, you are half-way to having a squad full of elite All-Star talent!

For this squad of players to grow together we are aiming to add rookie players of roughly the same age, from the 2011/12/13 drafts as well as any draftees from the in-game drafts who look half-decent and have decent (B+, preferably A) potential. Also take the age into consideration; a player with A+ potential has far more room to grow if he’s aged 19 or 20 than a 24 year old player does! If you’ve upgraded your scouts (so you can trust the potential rating you see) and you see a 19/20 year old with A overall and A+ potential he is a major future star and you should be aiming to grab him by acquiring draft picks!

If you have a choice of players who have similar stats, age, salary, etc always grab the one from the latest draft, not only do you get an extra year or two of paying him a rookie wage, but you also get extra points to use in training camp – you are awarded points for playing a rookie for 20+/25+ and 30+ minutes at the end of the season. In addition to being in with a chance for extra points for winning the ROTY award. That is potentially an extra 60 reward points, just for playing a rookie player in your main squad! I’ve seen some of the generated rookies in NBA2K14 start at 80+ and with A+ potential, so this is definitely something you can continue to do season to season and build a world-beating squad. As we’re not cheating and trading picks mid-way through the season or after the season has finished we need to try to make an educated guess at the start of the season which teams will underperform compared to their draft pick value. For example; has a star player (or two) moved teams? Has an aged squad just got a year older and had some players drop stats/retire? Has a major trade occurred? Did you just pick off a player from another team leaving them short in a position? If so try to grab their draft pick, without improving their squad! Maybe you can just do a straight swap, maybe you can swap all your picks for their current year’s pick? (and hope to grab another draft pick in a trade later on in the season or next season). As your young squad is going to be getting better each year, trading draft picks after the first season should be a no-brainer (as you should expect to finish better than the previous season!). Even if a rookie player doesn’t work out (for whatever reason; maybe you just can’t get along with their jump shot, or their stats are skewed in the wrong direction, or you just don’t like the way they play!) they still have (relatively) low salary and are a tradeable asset for a player who you do want.

This is a team screaming to be allowed to grow together. So, your first move should be a salary dump of the old players who earn lots of money onto a team with some cap space (76ers!), preferably for somebody who you can use in your squad or trade (and remember, always try to add some trade picks to their side of the bargain, even if it’s only a single 2nd round pick in your favour!). You only start with 12 players, so to dump some players from your squad you’ll need to recruit a free agent or two; Beaubois as your back-up point guard is a safe bet (25 y/o, 72 rating and decent potential). Similarly Lamar Odom is available as a backup 3/4 and is preferable to Jeremy Evans (although he won’t win you the dunk contest!).

At this stage of the season (“pre”) there are plenty of free agents available, so it’s really a case of picking who you like the look of or picking the best player for that position, which isn’t necessarily the one with the highest overall score. You should take age, trade value, potential and the Skill Graphs into consideration and perhaps even scout the player to make sure there aren’t any glaring holes in his game: you don’t want to get a point guard who can’t pass! You can round off some stat deficiencies with Development Drills, but not all (and not passing!). There are plenty of good players available in all positions except center, so you really need to be looking at adding an extra C and keeping Kanter (or adding another and trading Kanter for another youngster with potential), especially as Gobert is not even really suitable for a backup role in the team (he’s a nice size, his stats and potential stink), and Biedrins just simply isn’t worth the $9 million salary.

Looking for a solid C while Kanter grows would probably be next on the agenda. If you see Kanter as your long term solution there are plenty of centers you should be able to grab by packaging up a couple of the older players in your team or using up cap space. Asik is very easy to get, the Rockets are SCREAMING to give him away and he seems to pop up on nearly every trade offer. He’s certainly a serviceable player for a season, but there are better out there. I mention him purely due to the ease with which you can pick him up (see also Monroe at the Pistons). Should you choose Asik, you should probably look to get rid of him before the final year of his contract kicks in though due to the massive backloaded contract (you don’t want to be paying him $15 million in his final year! He’s arguably too expensive at $5 million a year as there are better options). Perkins is now very easy to pick up, and now only 1 star. Anderson Varejao is available for 2 stars, is easy to trade for and is an improvement on Perkins or Asik, but these players come with big contracts (poor value!).

On the other hand, if you don’t feel like Kanter (who is a good player, certainly better than his starting overall 68 stat indicates, his major downside is the massive imbalance in his rebounding; he is very good at offensive rebounding and, at best, average in defensive rebounding, which isn’t ideal at all for a center) is the long-term solution and are looking to trade him up (or if you fancy running with another rookie starting player and having Kanter as the backup); Nerlens Noel is only 19, he turns into an absolute beast and is already crazy fun to play as, but is a bit of a hassle to get as he’s 3.5 stars (achievable, depending on what, or rather who, you are willing to give up!). Andre Drummond is big and athletic and turns into Howard, big, athletic and infuriatingly bad at free-throws! Trading for Valanciunas feels a bit like trading like for like, they are both 21 years old, both rated at 68, not too dissimilar Signature Skills. Kanter carries more weight than Valanciunas, so is probably a better choice if you’re looking for a solid pick and roll C (Trey Burke is a “Pick and Roll Maestro”, so having someone bulky is an advantage) and someone to bully in the post, but Valanciunas has more potential, and the added benefit of an extra rookie year on his contract and slightly less salary, but will cost you a second round draft pick + Kanter if you decide you’d prefer Valanciunas). Vucevic is another choice here, he’s an upgrade on Kanter but has a couple of years on him. In the 2 year gap between the 2 players Kanter will catch up, and overtake Vucevic (eventually, players stats generally stop improving around the age of 25, so the younger they are the more growth room they will have). It would be remiss not to mention Cousins (as he’s still a rookie, albeit in his final year), he is an absolute beast and will turn into the best pure C in the game (unless an A+/A+ center comes through in a draft class), he’s 3.5 stars, but he’s very difficult to trade for (with an 80 rating), and the best rookie option in the game (and can play either the 4/5 slot).

It would be remiss of me not to mention Anthony Davis, he’s listed as a PF, and is another player who is near impossible to acquire unless you are willing to trade away your best players (and draft picks!), but if you want to have a “star” player ( he turns into a 99 rated player within a few seasons – UPDATE (20th Oct 2013): that was incorrect information, please see this page for information on the changes in potential in NBA2K14 which have drastically changed how some players grow) to build around and play through a season or so with an unbalanced squad; Davis is the player to do it with (having the best young C in the game along with a decent PG is a good strategy and it is a strategy many NBA teams attempt to follow! The advantage of Davis, apart from the fact he becomes one of the best players in the game in a season or two, is that you can slide him over to the 4 when you pick up a decent C in the future, or continue playing him at the 5 if you draft/trade for/get a free agent who is dominant at the PF slot. He is more suited to the power forward position simply due to his lack of weight/strength, but he’s also better than practically every centre in the game at the centre position despite the weight/height disadvantage!

The best trade off in value/stats/age/potential is, for me, Drummond. He’s still only 20 (younger than many of the 2013 draftees), he’s got the build needed for a solid C at 270lb (although lacks a little height at “only” 6’10”), his sky high potential with the Hustle, Rebounder and Eraser skills means he’s perfectly equipped to be one of the best (if not THE best) centers in the game in a few seasons. Drummond and Davis were my favourite frontcourt pairing in NBA2K13 (especially if you gave Drummond a boost with a potential upgrade in training camp in the first season, which isn’t needed in NBA2K14), I suspect Noel/Davis might be the duo to aim for long term in this release (I haven’t got through enough seasons to say for sure).

Replacing Burks in the SG slot should be pretty high on your agenda (unless you want to blow 75 reward points on upgrading his potential – which I wouldn’t do; unless you’re playing the game on a very easy setting you’ll be lucky to end the season with much more than 75 points! Oladipo (76) or McLemore (72) are both great 2013 draftees, real fun to play with, and are valued at 3 stars and both have high potential. Oladipo starts with better defence and a higher rating but loses a year to McLemore (who also has slightly more potential, so will grow above Oladipo given the extra year of growth). C. J. McCollum is a great combo-guard, he lacks a bit on defence but he has sky-high potential, can score from anywhere (>80 in both mid and 3pt) and comes with the Shot Creator and Interceptor skills, his biggest downside is that he’s a year older than Oladipo, but at 2.5 stars he represents real value and Portland have Matthews in the starting position so he is easy to trade for.

From the 2012 draft the obvious choices are the 3rd and 4th picks; Beal and Waiters. Both turned into the best SG’s in the game (given long enough) in NBA2K13, I haven’t played far enough into NBA2K14 to say how they compare with the 2013 batch. Personally I find half of the fun with the 2K series is playing “this” (the current) year’s draftees, but if you missed NBA2K13, or this is your first 2K game, then both Waiters and Beal are solid picks and fun to play with. Waiters is 21 and rated 76 and plays as a combo-guard but is slightly harder to pick up at 3.5 stars, Beal is a year younger (and seems to have grown since NBA2K13, he’s now 6’5″ compared to 6’3″), he’s a point down on Waiters with a 75 rating and you lose the option of using him as your PG, but his advantages outweigh his disadvantages for me; he has an amazing 3 point shot, extra potential (and an extra year to grown being just 20 years old), he comes with the Catch and Shoot and Corner Specialist skills (whereas Waiters doesn’t come with any Sig’ Skills) and is easier to trade for as he’s “just” 3 stars. As with the centre position, if you want to go crazy and aim for the best rookie then Paul George is your man, like Cousins he’s in the final year of his rookie contract, 4 stars and near impossible to get unless trading another star player.

If you’ve managed to do half of the above (you’re obviously not going to able to trade for all the players you want, or perhaps even all the players you need! But hopefully you’ve somewhat improved the starting 5), you should have some cap space left and you’ll need some squad players. There are plenty of good players available in free-trade in all positions except C. A future article will go into some depth about the current crop of free-agency players (as they have a shelf-life, many of them will have disappeared by the next update, either taken by NBA teams, retired or they playing elsewhere), so I’m a little reluctant to go too deep into that area. Just know that it’s worth picking up players you can afford and can use in your squad (and obviously try to get rid of any poor players in your team if you can replace them with somebody better/cheaper from free-agency). But do try to only take the players who you need, in the positions you need, for a realistic contract length (as though you were a real GM)

It is easy to use that cap space to keep flipping free-agents (for better players from other teams) as a way of improving your team, but by doing that you are playing the game engine, not the game. The Rockets gathered assets 2011 through 2013 and changed them into star players, but that was over a long term (years). It is too easy to gather players from free-agency and then package them up or combine them with another player to trade for a star caliber player every 28 days in the NBA2K games, and this should be avoided if you can help it! That is a shortcut to getting a team full of current All-Stars (which is what we are trying to avoid in this challenge!). This year’s version also punishes you far more than NBA2K13 for doing this; your team’s morale will drop (and keep dropping) if you keep chopping and changing the squad every 28 days.

The Jazz Legacy

Through the first season you should be scouting (do it manually, don’t set the option to automatically scout. Also remember to upgrade your “Prospects Scouts” – you have $6.5 million to spend on staff so hiring a full set of B/A (Level/Potential) scouts and either a first class Assistant Manager should certainly be on the cards), even if you’re mainly a “simmer”, you should be playing some early games just to get a feel for the players (which ones are the most fun? Which players have horrible jump shots or bad releases that you just can’t work with? Which one’s could benefit most from development drills?). Remember that this is a long term goal, having a blazing fast C who can do everything but rebound isn’t the end of the world, you can train him in a year or two to be better than Kevin Love through drills and the end of season training camp and have the most dominant C in the game (just be ready to pay him as such)!

Your aim (in terms of gameplay) through the first season depends entirely how you play. If you’re the type of player who likes to play the majority of games you’ll probably have a higher expectation (of the number of wins achievable) than someone who sim’s most (or all) of their games. Nobody likes to lose all the time, but just remember that this is supposed to be a fairly poor team (even after some team building). If you’re playing and winning every game then you definately change the difficulty level and sliders so it becomes more challenging. Losing every game isn’t fun, but there is an almost RPG element to team building in Association Mode. Growing the team (and individual players) and working on the finer parts of the team to build a squad you are happy to with and can improve and then allowing them to grow = more wins. When it falls in place and you have a dream team that you’ve constructed and organically grown over many seasons and you feel unbeatable, THAT is the payoff for all of your hard work over multiple seasons; if you’re already winning every game there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for you! Don’t try to find a balance, try to find a challenge!

If you’re finding it hard to find a setup that is challenging (whilst being occasionally beatable) in the game, you can download slider sets from the internet. I haven’t found a downloadable set of “realistic” sliders that I like yet, I’m still using simulation mode. I will create a links page with links to various NBA2K websites eventually, some of them will certainly have downloads of slider sets for NBA2K 14 (from the top of my head I’d suggest checking OperationSports who have a whole forum dedicated to downloadable sliders) . I’m not sure I’d universally recommend any one of them, because what I find “realistic” and a test of my skill level will almost certainly be different to what YOU find challenging (and more importantly, fun!) Make a judgement on how many games you think the team should win, and aim for a difficulty/slider level that reflects that number (if you’re a .500 team in the first season you’re either “playing the engine” or the difficulty is too easy!). Keep in mind that you will get better at beating the game even after you’ve increased the difficulty, so playing with the ingame difficulty level/sliders is an on-going process! I wouldn’t worry about it every game, but certainly consider changing the sliders up a bit if you’re winning the title every year or dominating with teams that aren’t very good. Keep in mind; realism!

The rest, is up to you!

* – I know that’s a misquote!

Phew – again sorry for the long post! I welcome all comments and would love to hear from anyone who tries the challenges (let me know how you get on!) and constructive criticism (new information or corrections) are always welcome.

Final note: The game does change to reflect changes in the NBA, players stats are boosted or dropped in-game to (somewhat) reflect their real-life performance. Rookie players are especially susceptible to this and you can see big swings in their ratings. The ratings are current (as of October 14th 2013). If you are reading this blog after the season has started players and teams mentioned in this blog may have become busts or had breakouts which will outdate some of this information. Please bear this in mind.

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