In Draft Day Sports Pro Basketball's (DDSPB), you act as the general manager, head coach, (or both) of your very own professional basketball franchise. With numerous custom options from teams, logos, players, coaches, color schemes and more -- this is a solid text-based basketball simulation that works best as a season simulator with you playing the role of GM.
DDSPB provides a newspaper, email, cell phone, a magazine, and several franchise-specific and league data screens to supply the information you need to do your job. The newspaper details game reports, transactions, injuries, and power rankings, while email is used to provide instructions regarding what you need to do to progress in the next phase of the game. The cell phone is used primarily for communication from the owner. The well-designed interface ensures that the information you need is no more than a click or two away.
The game is broken down into several phases from coach hiring/firing and training camps, to the summer, developmental and professional league games. The highlight of these phases is the rookie draft. The magazine provides a list of the top 15 players for each position as well as a mock draft. When playing as GM, you get to "work out" up to 15 players for a more in-depth scouting report. The draft is set up like it is on television, as it shows both the pre-draft lottery and the actual draft itself.
The draft production has three commentators that banter back and forth (via text boxes) about the upcoming pick, the available players, whether or not a player is a good fit for the team, and so forth. It gets repetitive after a while, but it is a great touch. At any time you can access your "war room" and review rosters, propose trades, and ask your scout for advice on your pick. The draft provides a good bit of tension, and is one of the game’s major strengths.
As entertaining as it is putting your team together, some of the fun is taken away when playing as a head coach. There is mutual exclusivity between the GM and head coach jobs, meaning the head coach has zero input on the building of the team roster, so you act as an observer for those phases of the game. In real pro basketball, most coaches have at least some input, even though they may not make the final decision. Granted, playing as both the coach and the GM rectifies this, but it minimizes the purpose of having a coach-only mode.
The head coach's responsibilities focus primarily on training camp and game management. You decide which areas each player and your team focus on in practice. For game management, you set a player rotation matrix that is broken down into two-minute segments for each quarter, set sliders to dictate how much zone defense your team players, how aggressively to crash the boards, whether you shoot quick or slow the game down in the half court, and how often your team presses full court on defense.
You can call up to ten different plays; however, DDSPB doesn't come with any plays loaded. There are no pre-defined sets to build from either. Fortunately, the mod community has provided some plays to download, or you also can design your own. The play editor is pretty rudimentary, though, as you only have the ability to locate the players on the floor, indicate where the ball should go, and dictate whether or not the recipient should dribble or pass. You do this in "layered" phases. You can't call for screens or declare when a shot should be taken. It's not very deep or detailed.
The game themselves play out on a 2D court and it does take a little time to adjust to the action in 2D, as the player and ball movement is pretty disjointed. The action is carried out in phases, where the players (represented by jerseys) and the ball move at all once, from station-to-station, in a move-pause-move-pause manner. There's a slider to control the speed of the movement. In addition, a bare-bones play-by-play box calls the action. After getting used to the rhythm, the 2D game action is workmanlike, but it doesn’t dazzle.
