Basketball Pro Management 2015

If you’ve checked out my reviews of the Out of the Park baseball management simulation series, you’ll learn that as much as I love baseball I can’t manage my way out of a wet paper bag.  That doesn’t stop the series from being very well done and well received.  I got to thinking though; If I can’t manage a winning baseball team, what about managing a winning basketball team?  I put that theory to the test as I check out Pro Basketball Management 2015.

When you first begin the game you can choose to start a new game, load a previous game, or even read up on the rules of basketball.  Now granted the rules are pretty condensed but it does go over some of the basics such as basic fouls, offensive, and defensive tactics.  Basically it’s nothing that someone who has played a few games or watches a lot on TV would pick anything up from, but for someone like me who rarely watches basketball it helps to understand a few things, such as what determines how many free-throws someone gets when fouled.  Anyway, when starting up a new game you can enter your information as manager and then choose to either create your own team or choose from a huge selection of pre-set teams from various countries, both men’s and women’s teams.

There was something I noticed when choosing my pre-set team.  You can choose either a pro-level team or a collegiate-level team (for the record I set my team’s nationality to USA), but I never saw any actual team names, just cities.  Furthermore there are a lot of collegiate-level teams, but some were notably absent…sort of.  For instance, I didn’t see Ohio State on there, but one of the city options was Columbus, OH.  Combine that with the fact that you have pro-level team cities but not names and I’m guessing there’s no actual NBA or NCAA team licensing agreement for this game.  Honestly, that’s not a big deal and not really a factor in my review of the game, but it is something I thought I would point out.  Then again you can create your own team so that fixes that issue right there.

After creating your team it’s time to start your season.  I’ll be honest, I had a bit of a rough time getting started and I think that’s for two reasons.  First off, while navigating the menus and options isn’t too terribly difficult it did take me a bit of time to make sure I was hitting the right buttons to progress the season to a certain point.  Second, I was still in the Out of the Park mindset and was basically ready to head to the first game of the season.  Here however you can actually set up practices before or between games to work on various aspects of your team and create a strategy with your team such as where to put a player and how long they can play for.  You can also create your own plays which took me a bit to get down, but once I did I created a little play that only takes five seconds to execute.  Thing is I couldn’t figure out how to actually call the play itself.  I’ll get into strategies in a moment, but I’m guessing that the play will occasionally come up on its own.

Once I actually began a game I learned the hard way that managing a team during a game of basketball is a lot harder than in a game of baseball.  With baseball you can manage the depth of your players, what kind of pitch to make and how they should swing at a pitch.  Basically you’re going play by play.  Here however you’re constantly keeping check on things; player health and fatigue, offensive and defensive strategies, formations, and so on.  Thankfully you can let the system determine where to put what players but just leaving the default strategies on constantly is probably not the best choice as the opposing team will eventually adapt to what you’re doing and change up their strategies to match.

With that said though, once you begin to create more plays and understand how the system works, everything about the game (from your team’s perspective of course) is at your control.  You can also watch the game either in 2D or 3D so unlike the Out of the Park series, you can actually see your players move, pass, and shoot.  At the end of each quarter you can give your team a bit of a pep talk that might have an effect on the players’ morale.  Sadly that’s not my best area as I tend to pick the wrong options and lower my team’s morale when we have the lead.  Another nice feature is that you can simulate entire games or just a quarter at a time.  Don’t have time to watch forty-eight minutes of basketball?  How about speeding it up by 2x or even 4x.  Probably not the best option if you’re keeping a close eye on your strategies though.

Between games you’ll go back to the main screen where you can check your emails to get info on your players as well as anything else going on around the league, change your strategies, check the status of your players’ contracts, and so on.  Essentially, that’s all there is to the game.  Much like the Out of the Park series, this is a management simulator so there’s not much more to it.  I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert on basketball.  Heck, outside of the occasional NCAA game I don’t even watch a lot of it, so trying to come up with winning strategies isn’t my forte with basketball…or any sport really. 

However, Pro Basketball Management 2015 is a pretty solid basketball management simulator and I had fun tinkering around with it once I got going.  It’s nice that a good amount of the game is automated, such as choosing your starting players and positions.  As I was starting to set that up for my first scrimmage game I was literally staring at the screen and wondering what some of this stuff meant.  Then I noticed the option to have the game suggest a lineup for you as well as who should play where and for how long and I’ve stuck with that.  If you’re an expert at basketball, this game should be right up your alley.  If you’re a noob like me who’s rarely played or watched the sport, you might be intimidated by what you’ll see.  That said, this is a pretty good management simulator that fans of the sport should check out and give a shot.