Building a balanced five

Why a basketball lineup that covers all six categories beats a lineup of pure scorers — and how to draft one.

The most common way to lose a promising run is to draft five players who all do the same thing. A team of four high-scoring guards and one more guard will light up the scoring category and give away rebounding and rim defence, and the simulation reads that gap as a weakness the bracket will exploit. It looks like a great team on paper and stalls in the playoffs.

Your team rating rewards coverage across the six categories — scoring, playmaking, rebounding, perimeter defence, rim defence, efficiency — not a spike in one. Two elite scorers plus a genuine playmaker, a rebounder, and a rim protector will out-rate five scorers almost every time. This guide is about how to build that five on purpose instead of hoping it falls out of the draw.

What each category actually buys you

Every player is scored on six categories as a z-score: how far above or below the league average they were, measured against their own era and season. Balance matters because the rating is rewarded for covering all six, and punished for a category nobody on your five covers. Here is what to look for in the stat line for each.

• Scoring — points per game. The easiest to find and the easiest to over-draft.
• Playmaking — assists. One real distributor changes the whole profile; two is often a luxury.
• Rebounding — rebounds per game. Usually your bigs, sometimes a rangy wing.
• Perimeter defence — steals and a guard or wing who was known for it. The hardest category to read from a box score, so lean on what you know about the player.
• Rim defence — blocks, and a center who protected the paint. Skip this and the frontcourt gap shows up in the sim every time.
• Efficiency — how much production a player generated per shot and per touch. A high-usage, low-efficiency scorer can pull your rating down even while putting up points.

Read the whole stat line

In Classic mode the stat line is right there: points, rebounds, assists and PIR. Do not draft on points alone. A player with modest scoring but strong rebounding and blocks is often more valuable to your five than a one-dimensional gunner, because they fill a category no one else covers. PIR is a decent single-number tiebreaker between two similar players, because it already nets out the misses and turnovers.

Think about what your lineup is still missing as you go. By the fourth and fifth slots you should be drafting to your gaps, not to the best raw scorer on the board. A good habit: before each spin, say out loud which of the six categories you still have nobody for.

A drafting order that works

There is no single correct order, but this one wins far more than it loses.

• Rounds 1–2: take the best player available, but note their positions and which spots they leave open.
• Round 3: if you have two scorers, take a playmaker or a rebounder even if a bigger name is on the board.
• Round 4: draft to your biggest remaining gap. If nobody rebounds or protects the rim, this is the round to fix it.
• Round 5: fill the last open spot with the most efficient player who fits it. Efficiency is the quiet category that separates a champion from an early exit.

Positions force the issue

Because placement is position-locked, a balanced five tends to fall out naturally: you need players who can fill the guard spots, the wings, and the two big positions. A point guard can play the point or the wings but never center, and a pure center only fits the two big spots. If you spend early picks on guards, your last slots must cover the frontcourt — plan for it rather than getting stuck with only a center spot open and no center to place.

Use the swap freely. Lifting a player and moving them to a different eligible spot costs nothing, so if a late pick would sit better at a wing you have already filled, move the earlier player rather than passing on the pick.

Lineups that look good and fail

• Five guards. Elite scoring, no rebounding, no rim defence. Wins the regular season, loses in the playoffs.
• Two centers and no playmaker. Dominant inside, nobody to get them the ball. The playmaking category sits empty.
• Empty-calorie scorers. Big points on poor efficiency. The scoring z-score is high but efficiency drags the whole rating down.
• A famous name at the wrong spot. A great player forced into a position they barely played does not change the sim, but the roster hole they left elsewhere does.

A worked example

Say your first two spins hand you a scoring guard and a scoring wing — both strong, both filling the scoring and part of the perimeter defence categories. The right third pick is not another scorer; it is the best playmaking guard on the next board, even if his points are modest. Round four, look for a rebounding big with blocks: he covers rebounding and rim defence in one slot. Round five, take the most efficient player who fits the last spot, ideally a big or a forward who does not need the ball.

That five covers all six categories with no wasted slot. It will not always go undefeated — nothing does — but it will consistently out-run a five that simply took the top scorer each round.