How Ratings Work

One rating for a whole career

A player's rating covers his entire career, not a single season. It's the same whichever franchise and decade he's drafted under: Shaquille O'Neal is the same Shaq in Los Angeles, Miami or Boston.

That matters most for young players. Victor Wembanyama's 2025-26 season was MVP-level, but his rating is built from all three of his seasons so far, including his rookie year and an injury-shortened second season. His rating will rise as his career grows. The same logic works in reverse for veterans: late-career decline counts for little, because a player's best seasons carry the most weight.

What goes into it

Ratings are calculated from publicly available NBA statistics and award records. Three things are blended:

• Peak. How good he was in his best three seasons, measured with widely used advanced stats: Box Plus/Minus (points added per 100 possessions compared with an average player), Value Over Replacement Player (total value compared with a readily available fill-in) and Win Shares per 48 minutes (wins produced per full game played).
• Recognition. All-Star, All-NBA and MVP selections.
• Career value. His total contribution over his whole career, as a smaller share.

Peak and recognition count the most.

A ranking, not a grade

Players are ranked on that blend, then placed on the game's 56–99 scale: a handful of all-time greats sit in the high 90s, and most players fall in the 60s and 70s. So a rating tells you how a player compares with everyone else in Draft Duel, not an absolute grade. When players are added to the game, existing ratings can shift by a point or two.

What ratings don't capture

• Every season counts, including seasons before 1980 and seasons with teams that aren't in the game, even though drafts only cover those franchises from 1980 on.
• No era adjustment. Pace, rules and styles of play changed a lot between the 1980s and today. Ratings don't try to correct for that.
• Older stats are less precise. Advanced stats for older seasons are estimates built from less detailed box-score data.
• Awards favour the famous. All-Star and All-NBA voting rewards stars on winning or high-profile teams, and defensive specialists and role players are often overlooked.
• Short careers look smaller. Young players and careers cut short by injury have fewer seasons and fewer honours to draw on.
• One position each. Each player has a single designated position for roster rules, even if he played several.

Ratings in the game

During the game, each player's skills — shooting, playmaking, rebounding, defense and so on — are derived from his overall rating and position (see How the game is simulated). The CPU coach plays with the same ratings you do, with no hidden boosts.

Updates

Ratings may be refined over time. Each update is published as a new version, and a match always keeps the ratings it was drafted with, so finished games never change after the fact.

Think a rating is off?

Ratings are a game-design choice for fun, not an official ranking, and reasonable fans will disagree. If you think a player is badly rated, tell us which player and why. Every message is read, and good arguments shape future updates.