AN INTERACTIVE EXPLAINER
What makes
a good GM?
A contender needs a final piece. A rebuilding team needs a future. A good grade should know the difference.
Step into the front office01 — FIRST, DEFINE SUCCESS
Same roster.
Different assignment.
Winning now and building for later ask different things of a front office. Choose a roster, then change its mandate to see what matters most.
The next chapter
Young core. Clean books. A drawer full of picks.
Illustrative inputs. These are fictional teaching rosters, not NBA team grades. Pillar scores—including each mandate’s Timeline score—are authored examples. Weights and aggregation use the current engine.
Rebuilding
Did the GM create a credible foundation for the franchise's next competitive era?
Score × mandate weight = points. Switch mandates to compare the weights.
Competitive strength
Star power, the starting five, rotation quality, and two-way balance measure the basketball on the floor.
Roster construction
Positions, skills, and functional depth look beyond collecting talent to building a complete roster.
Contract health
Value, future risk, mobility, and team control describe the quality of the contracts on the books.
Cap & flexibility
Cap position, tax exposure, future commitments, and transaction tools measure room to maneuver.
Asset management
Draft capital, pick quality, optionality, and eligible exchange value measure the resources behind the roster.
Timeline alignment
Core age, prime windows, continuity, and development are evaluated against the chosen mandate.
Bars share a 0–40 point scale. The total uses unrounded contributions, before any plausibility adjustment.
One intentional exception. Timeline Alignment changes its targets with the mandate. Here, the ideal core age is 19–25. The other five pillar scores stay fixed.
02 — LOOK AT THE WHOLE FRANCHISE
Six lenses.
One bigger picture.
A star can change your ceiling. A contract can close a door. The grade follows both—and the choices in between.
PILLAR 01 / Competitive strength
Can this team win?
Star power, the starting five, rotation quality, and two-way balance measure the basketball on the floor.
| Championship Push | Run It Back | Ascending | Retool | Selling | RebuildingSelected |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 35% | 25% | 20% | 15% | 5% | 5% |
Scroll across to compare all six mandates →
Explore this pillar
What goes into the number
Four views of the rotation: star power, starting-five quality, rotation quality, and offensive/defensive balance. Player impact is adjusted for the evidence behind it and compared with a frozen league benchmark.
Moves that can help
Illustrative directions, not guaranteed score increases. The full before-and-after state determines the result.
Upgrade a real rotation role
Replace a low-impact rotation player with a stronger two-way contributor, then assign that player meaningful minutes. The improvement depends on who leaves the rotation and how the minutes change.
Strengthen the weaker side
Add a defender to an offense-heavy lineup, or a creator to a defense-first group. Two-Way Balance puts more emphasis on the weaker side of the team.
The tradeoff. A famous name is not an automatic upgrade. The model evaluates impact, minutes, reliability, and balance. Acquiring a star can also cost contract flexibility or draft capital.
PILLAR 02 / Roster construction
Do the pieces fit?
Positions, skills, and functional depth look beyond collecting talent to building a complete roster.
| Championship Push | Run It Back | Ascending | Retool | Selling | RebuildingSelected |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20% | 20% | 15% | 15% | 5% | 15% |
Scroll across to compare all six mandates →
Explore this pillar
What goes into the number
Roster completeness, position coverage, skill coverage, and functional depth. This pillar evaluates the full eligible roster, including whether the team has enough creation, shooting, defense, rim protection, and rebounding.
Moves that can help
Illustrative directions, not guaranteed score increases. The full before-and-after state determines the result.
Fill a missing skill
If the roster lacks ballhandling, add a credible playmaker. If it has no rim protection, add a player whose defensive evidence addresses that gap.
Build a second way to play
Add a capable backup at an exposed position or another player who can supply a scarce skill. Useful redundancy matters when too much of a skill sits with one player.
The tradeoff. Adding another player does not guarantee more depth credit. Experience, position eligibility, skill evidence, and existing coverage matter. A roster can also become over-concentrated at one position.
PILLAR 03 / Contract health
Is the money well spent?
Value, future risk, mobility, and team control describe the quality of the contracts on the books.
| Championship Push | Run It Back | Ascending | Retool | Selling | RebuildingSelected |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10% | 15% | 15% | 20% | 10% | 15% |
Scroll across to compare all six mandates →
Explore this pillar
What goes into the number
Contract value, long-term risk, mobility, and optionality. The model compares salaries with confidence-adjusted expected value, checks future guaranteed exposure, and evaluates how easily the team can move or exit its commitments.
Moves that can help
Illustrative directions, not guaranteed score increases. The full before-and-after state determines the result.
Keep useful production at a fair price
A plausible contract below the model’s confidence-adjusted expected salary can improve contract value. A cheaper player is only a bargain relative to what that player contributes.
Reduce avoidable future risk
Exchange a burdensome multi-year guarantee for a less risky commitment, or negotiate a team-controlled option where realistic. The cost of that transaction still belongs in the other pillars.
The tradeoff. Low payroll alone does not mean healthy contracts. Expiring deals receive neutral optionality rather than a windfall, and rookie-contract policy and uncertain salary estimates can affect the result.
PILLAR 04 / Cap & flexibility
What can you do next?
Cap position, tax exposure, future commitments, and transaction tools measure room to maneuver.
| Championship Push | Run It Back | Ascending | Retool | Selling | RebuildingSelected |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10% | 15% | 15% | 20% | 20% | 15% |
Scroll across to compare all six mandates →
Explore this pillar
What goes into the number
Current cap position, tax/apron exposure, future flexibility, and transaction flexibility. The model looks at commitments and dead money as well as usable exceptions, trade restrictions, and roster room.
Moves that can help
Illustrative directions, not guaranteed score increases. The full before-and-after state determines the result.
Create room for the next move
Reduce future guaranteed commitments without replacing them with equivalent dead money. The team gains future spending room only after the relevant charges are included.
Recover usable transaction tools
A legal move below an apron threshold may restore tools the team could not use before. The benefit depends on the actual cap state and restrictions, not just headline payroll.
The tradeoff. Waiving a guaranteed contract does not make the salary disappear. Dead money still matters. Cap room, exceptions, and trade exceptions are different tools, with different rules and deadlines.
PILLAR 05 / Asset management
What is in reserve?
Draft capital, pick quality, optionality, and eligible exchange value measure the resources behind the roster.
| Championship Push | Run It Back | Ascending | Retool | Selling | RebuildingSelected |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | 5% | 15% | 10% | 40% | 30% |
Scroll across to compare all six mandates →
Explore this pillar
What goes into the number
Draft capital value, pick quality, asset optionality, and eligible asset exchange value. The inventory measures the rights the team actually controls, including protection terms, timing, swaps, and trade restrictions.
Moves that can help
Illustrative directions, not guaranteed score increases. The full before-and-after state determines the result.
Improve the quality of the return
A first with meaningful lottery upside can strengthen an inventory more than several low-upside pieces. Removing protections can improve the receiving team’s expected value when it opens access to better outcomes.
Untangle future obligations
Resolving a protected obligation can free future draft years for trades. Whether that improves optionality depends on the remaining rights and Stepien constraints.
The tradeoff. Pick count is not pick value. A swap is not another whole first, and a protected pick can roll into a later obligation. Provisional Asset Exchange Value may be excluded while the inventory metrics are reweighted.
INSIDE THE ASSET DRAWER
A pick is a set of possibilities.
The slot matters. So do the rights attached to it. Explore a hypothetical first-round outcome using the grader’s actual base draft-slot curve.
Base DAV units · draft slot → · curve version 1.0.0
Chosen outcomes, not forecasts. The protected-pick and swap examples below are separate rights over the same illustrative slot.
Pick #8
75.9base DAV unitsFull ownership of this selection, before time discounting or uncertainty.
The pick conveys
75.9 units received in this draftPick #8 falls outside the protected range, so this selection transfers to the receiving team.
Keep the better selection
+35.2incremental DAV unitsYour pick #20 is worth 40.6 units. Swapping up adds the difference, not another whole pick.
Follow the obligation, not just the label.
For an illustrative top-4 protected first that becomes unprotected next year:
- Lands 5–30The first conveys now. The obligation is satisfied.
- Lands 1–4The original team keeps this year’s pick. The obligation rolls to an unprotected first next year.
Other agreements may roll through several years, convert to seconds, or expire. Those written terms determine the outcome. A multi-team swap may also allocate picks through a priority chain rather than a simple two-team exchange.
How the full model gets from outcomes to value
It values each possible outcome, weights it by probability, follows protection and swap terms, and discounts the year in which the asset actually arrives. The current time discount retains 92% of the same outcome’s value for each year of delay. The examples above show one outcome only; they do not value the future rollover.
Future draft position remains uncertain. Current pre-lottery official odds are still a model limitation: the implementation uses a strength-based approximation when a slot is unknown.
PILLAR 06 / Timeline alignment
Is everyone on the same clock?
Core age, prime windows, continuity, and development are evaluated against the chosen mandate.
| Championship Push | Run It Back | Ascending | Retool | Selling | RebuildingSelected |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20% | 20% | 20% | 20% | 20% | 20% |
Scroll across to compare all six mandates →
Explore this pillar
What goes into the number
Core age fit, prime-window alignment, continuity, and the development environment. This is the intentional mandate-dependent pillar: a rebuild and a championship push ask for different age ranges, control horizons, and development roles.
Moves that can help
Illustrative directions, not guaranteed score increases. The full before-and-after state determines the result.
Give the young core a workable runway
For a rebuilding mandate, assign meaningful roles to young players while keeping enough useful veterans to support them. Merely making the roster younger does not satisfy every development target.
Keep a contender’s core together
For a championship push, preserve control of the players who anchor the rotation and add help whose productive window overlaps theirs.
The tradeoff. Younger is not always better, and more development minutes are not always better. The model uses mandate-specific target ranges. Moving toward one mandate’s target can move away from another’s.
“Good” depends on
what you’re building toward.
The mandate changes the priorities. It doesn’t turn a weak roster into a strong one.
03 — OPEN THE NOTEBOOK
A grade you can
look inside.
Thirty teams. Six different jobs. Explore a published model edition, change the mandate, and follow the evidence behind every score.
The first edition is in review.
A complete 30-team edition will appear here after its roster evidence and model results have been reviewed. No illustrative teams are substituted for real league results.
Methodology, limitations & credits
The six-pillar framework was developed with AVC. This first edition illustrates how mandate weighting works; it does not evaluate a submitted scenario or reconstruct an NBA season.
Real grades also depend on evidence quality, provisional metrics, and plausibility safeguards. Some uncalibrated Asset Exchange Value results are excluded and their pillar weights renormalized. That behavior is not simulated in these teaching inputs.
Read the technical model documentation for equations, current weights, and inspectable implementation source.
Editorial inspiration: The Pudding’s NBA Redrafted and The Ringer’s Trade Value Rankings. Illustrations are original to this guide.
The best models can be questioned.
That’s how they get better.