Introducing: The Novato Project

Crucial Baskets kicks off its 2018-19 season by saying farewell to NBA 2K18.

Hello, and welcome to Crucial Baskets’ commencement of its 2018-19 content schedule. This season we will be using simulations, analysis, retrospectives, and even fiction to help us gain perspective on life and the beautiful game of basketball that we all love so much. 

We start off the new year by bidding farewell to NBA 2K18. The game is reaching the end of its cycle, with NBA 2K19 coming to a worldwide audience on September 11. We will send the game off by using the game to run a mini-tournament featuring some of the NBA’s best players and coaches from the 2017-18 season.

This tournament is called the Novato Project, named after the California town where NBA 2K is developed. It consists of six teams divided evenly into two groups: East and West. Each team will play the other two in their group once. The top two teams in the group will advance to a winner-take-all Group Final. The winners of those games will face off in the Championship game on Labor Day.

Each team has a 10-man fantasy roster. Each player’s ratings, tendencies, hot zones, and play types were edited to closer reflect their 2017-18 statistics. Gameplay will be CPU vs. CPU, with sliders based off of Superstar difficulty. However, all of the sliders will be set to 50 — except Body Sensitivity (45) — to ensure play on the polygonal court truly corresponds to the players’ listed rating and tendency numbers.

Continue scrolling down to check out the teams, full rosters, and tournament schedule. 2018-19 will be a great season for exploring the game of basketball. We at Crucial Baskets can’t wait to get things started!

Novato Project Teams and Rosters

EAST GROUP

WEST GROUP

Novato Project Schedule

In total, the Novato Project will consist of nine games. Full versions of each game will be posted at the Crucial Baskets YouTube channel at the time listed on the schedule below.