Coach K Travels to Face Ultimate Twin Towers - Abdul-Jabbar and Walton ... developing

After playing a few hundred games to catch any kinks in our Value Add Basketball Game GREAT TEAMS, we decided to also test out some of the 120 GREAT PLAYERS cards. Rather than have a draft, we realized we had three schools with five players to make the all-time list of 120 great players, so will use them to set up a round robin and see if we have any issues to resolve. Here are our first line-ups: 

Duke	Yr	Dunk	Ball	Pos	UCLA	Yr	Dunk	Ball
Johnny Dawkins	1986	51-52	1	1-PG	Russell Westbrook	2008	51-53	1
Jon Scheyer	2010	51-53	2	2-SG	Reggie Miller	1987	51-55	2&6
Shane Battier	2001	51-54	3&6	3-SF	Kevin Love	2008	51-53	3
Justise Winslow	2015	51-52	4&7	4-PF	Bill Walton	1972	51-66	4&6
Christian Laettner	1992	51-54	5&8	5-C	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar	1967	51-66	5&8

Our first of three games will feature Duke all-time great players coached by Mike Krzyzewski at UCLA against John Wooden's all-time greats. We will use the home advantage in all three of these games, meaning the home team can switch the result of 36 to a 66 or vice versa, which gives the home team the average three extra calls in their favor like happens in real games to give them about a 3 point home court advantage of average.

UCLA gets the home advantage in this first game. Then Duke gets the home advantage against their rival UNC, and finally the 3rd and final game will be Duke at UNC.

A couple of things that will be different playing with great players from different teams as we have set up the individual players include the following - and we will see if we come across any other variations playing these three games.

1. When playing great teams against each other, the Dunk Range of one team adjusted by the other teams Adj to get one figure for the whole team. This figure does not really calculate how well a player dunks, but rather is the overall adjustment for level of competition and era.

However, with individual players from different teams we match each player against the player at the same position. The two mismatches here are Bill Walton guarded by Justise Winslow and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar guarded by Christian Laettner. As great offensive players as the two Duke players are, their +0 defense and -1 defense is just average, which in the game table increases the 51-65 and 51-62 all the way to the maximum 51-66 dunk range.

UCLA will want to get the ball into the ultimate twin towers.

2. The other thing that is different with all-time great players is deciding how to share the ball. Most players and every player in this game could get the ball on at least 1 extra roll on the 8-sided die, and Dawkins, Winslow, Walton and Abdul --Jabbar actually could get the ball on three of 8 rolls. Therefore before a game between great players you need to choose which players get the ball on the 6, 7 and 8.

As indicated in the box, with Duke it looks like the front line is still the best option on offense so we chose to have the 6, 7 and 8 rolls go to Battier, Winslow and Laettner. On the UCLA side they have the perfect combination of the outside shooter in Reggie Miller, so he gets the ball on 6, and then Walton on 7 and Kareem on 8.

3. Because we only have five players on each team and no subs, a player who runs out of stamina would have all dice rolls adjusted by 1 against him. However, if both players are tired (which is always the case in overtime) then neither player gets the disadvantage.

In this game, Winslow and Walton both have Stamina of 37, so since they would both be tired guarding each other for the last 7 possessions, neither has the disadvantage.

However, Duke's Battier does have the advantage with the max Stamina of 44, so when Love's Stamina of 37 runs out he will have all dice rolls adjusted against him by 1 for the last 7 possessions of the game.

Miller will have the fatigue adjustment only for the last possession since he has a 43 but current Duke coach Scheyer has a 44. Therefore, on the last possession of the game we will change to Kareem getting the ball on a 6, but Kareem on either a 7 or 8.

4. And finally with only five players, we will not play that you can foul out so players can hack away.

The UCLA team definitely looks stronger, but that's why they play the game, which we will do with the opening dice roll.

Results to follow: