Sure, your favorite team’s GM sucks, but could you do any better? Would you chase stars to form a Big 3 or build around the margins to craft a perfectly balanced roster? Put your team-building skills to the test by constructing the best possible lineup without exceeding your $15 budget.
Winning Formula: Preternatural ability to attract defenders with an industrial-sized magnet.
Cause For Concern: Are you really gonna blow a third of your budget on the first guy? Get a grip, man.
Winning Formula: A veteran locker room presence that’s shown no signs of age
Cause For Concern: Can’t stay out of the headlines
Winning Formula: Basketball prodigy who didn’t play professionally until he was 18
Cause For Concern: Your remaining players must agree to sign with Klutch Sports
Winning Formula: Unstoppable smile
Cause For Concern: Makes a lot of noise jumping around like that
Winning Formula: Team player who knows how to maximize 8-minutes of screen time
Cause For Concern: Lack of lateral quickness renders him a liability on the perimeter
Winning Formula: Dominates in crunch-time thanks to innate punctuality
Cause For Concern: 1-12 postseason record against the Warriors exposed a glaring weakness to better teams
Winning Formula: Survived rookie hazing ritual where teammates forced him to carry the whole franchise
Cause For Concern: Can complain for a foul call in 10 languages
Winning Formula: Matching tattoos render these twins indistinguishable to defenses
Cause For Concern: Sabotaging home-court advantage by renovating the arena before every game
Winning Formula: High-level endurance from years in disco and porn
Cause For Concern: Downtrodden eyes that convey the death of certain kind of American masculinity
Winning Formula: Trade demands
Cause For Concern: Completely anonymous despite a decade of MVP-level production
Winning Formula: Knockdown shooter with a mean streak on defense
Cause For Concern: An overbearing father looms large over any team who signs the Fanning sisters
Winning Formula: Stopping opponent’s momentum by blacking out the arena lights
Cause For Concern: Failed to pull off the Van Der Woude Job
Winning Formula: Emotional abuse
Cause For Concern: Works too hard, cares too much
Winning Formula: Innovating the game by being stronger than his opponents
Cause For Concern: Charming, hospitable personality could backfire in a sport where pettiness rules the day
Winning Formula: Strong rim defender who can switch onto wings
Cause For Concern: The 36-year-old Autobot probably peaked in the early 2010s
Winning Formula: Jumping over stuff
Cause For Concern: Slender frame could leave him susceptible to hard-hitting safeties
Winning Formula: Can do everything on the court except make teammates better
Cause For Concern: Inconsistent player who struggles to put up 70 points every night
Winning Formula: Conflict-management skills to lead any locker room
Cause For Concern: Opposition to horrible human rights abuses in direct conflict with team’s Nike or Adidas endorsements
Winning Formula: World’s best dad
Cause For Concern: Stamina took a serious hit this season after contracting a deadly respiratory virus
Winning Formula: Lockdown defender with elite wingspan
Cause For Concern: Bites on too many pump fakes
Winning Formula: Throws passes with every part of his arm
Cause For Concern: Media overexposure risks spreading awareness of the game
Winning Formula: Plays bigger than his size thanks to vocal projection
Cause For Concern: Missed NBA All-Star Weekend to do his little skits
Winning Formula: Crunch-time performance art
Cause For Concern: 4ÆM\\\x_O34
Winning Formula: Curdled milk
Cause For Concern: Tanked his audition for White Men Can’t Jump by hopping over a wet spot
Winning Formula: Regular season defense
Cause For Concern: Divided his locker room by spreading and independently creating Covid-19