Field guide
The 99OVR field guide
99OVR asks one question six times: which player on this roster is best at this one skill? These guides are written to make you better at answering it, whether you are learning the rules, planning a $15 Budget run or trying to remember who actually guarded people in 1974.
Start here
New to 99OVR? These three pages cover the rules, the modes and the numbers on your result card.
Strategy
Get better at the actual decision: which player answers the skill in front of you.
The six skills, explainedWhat Jumpshot, Handles, Finishing, Playmaking, Defense and Athleticism each measure, and how they feed each other.How to read a rosterTurning a box-score line, a role and a decade into a good guess about one hidden skill.Budget strategySpending $15 across six skills, when to pay for a star and how the weakness-wheel refund changes the back half.Positional builds, PG to CHow each position re-weights the build, which skills to chase first and how the decade pools differ. Reference
The bosses, the flaws and the franchise wheel, documented in one place.
Decade guides
Seven decades of basketball, how each one played and what that means when its roster lands on your wheel.
The 1960sRussell, Wilt, Oscar and West headline a pool where defense is everywhere and handles barely exist. Learn which famous lines point at the wrong skill.The 1970sEight different champions, a merger and the deepest defensive centers in the game. Where the 70s pool hands out jackpots, and where it leaves you with nothing.The 1980sShowtime, Celtics green and Detroit’s Bad Boys, in a 112-player pool. Where the decade’s traps hide and which role players carry one elite skill.The 1990sJordan’s Bulls, a golden generation of centers and the slowest, most physical basketball of the modern era, with the thinnest big-man shooting in the game.The 2000sShaq and Kobe, Duncan’s quiet dynasty and the iso wings: a decade that rewards shooting-guard and small-forward runs and starves anyone hunting point-guard defense.The 2010sSplash Brothers, switchable wings and centers who never left the paint: one of the deepest defensive pools in 99OVR, with a hard split between stretch bigs and lob catchers.The 2020sJokic, Luka and Shai, plus a generation of six-nine wings who do a bit of everything. Good numbers come easily in this pool; top grades are harder to earn. About these guides
The guides are written by the team that makes the game and are checked against the game’s own rules, so the numbers in them match what happens when you play. Player ratings in 99OVR are our editorial judgments for this game, not official NBA ratings. If you think we got a player or a rule wrong, tell us.