What is Basketball-GM? What is this Article?
Basketball-GM (https://play.basketball-gm.com/) has long been the best NBA General Manager simulator for those of us who cannot afford NBA 2K every year, and is arguably better than 2K depending on how you plan to use it. The site is generally pretty well-known, but it’s come to my attention that there are some things that I’ve long taken for granted that not everyone might now about Basketball-GM. So, compiled here is a list of resources for you all to improve your experience on the site. This article is intended for quality of life. It does not contain a strategy guide, although I invite folks to create those and post them in the comments of this article.
How to Enable Player Photos and Team Logos
Real Players link: https://www.reddit.com/r/BasketballGM/comments/1js9ni5/real_players_photos_file_version_19/
Team Logos link: https://www.reddit.com/r/BasketballGM/comments/1b0se9m/updated_nba_teamdata_file_for_historic_rosters/
The explanation on how to use these is attached in the posts. Credit to alexnoob who created these resources. Essentially, dumbmatter and ZenGM (owner and parent company of Basketball-GM) do not have the licensing rights to the images and likenesses of NBA players and teams (with one exception, the 1970s hooper Bob Seemer). However, dumbmatter has built the site with extreme customization and alexnoob (not publicly affiliated with the company) has created links for us to get these images and names.
Improved Rosters
Alexnoob, being the absolute legend that he is, has also created real players rosters that I personally find to be better and quicker to update than the default real players rosters. I always use these rosters instead of the built-in ones. They also have proper salary cap inflation and future scheduled events for relocation (the latter can be easily disabled during league creation) to more closely simulate the future of the NBA. Here is the link to this file which will stay updated throughout the 2026 season, ready to copy and paste: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alexnoob/BasketBall-GM-Rosters/master/2025-26.NBA.Roster.json
Alexnoob has also released rosters for many previous seasons, as well as various other more unique rosters such as 2025 summer league and WNBA rosters. The best ways to access these are on his directory page (https://alexnoob.github.io/) and his GitHub releases page (https://github.com/alexnoob/BasketBall-GM-Rosters/releases).
The BBGM Multiplayer Guide
Basketball-GM does not host native multiplayer, however, there is a thriving multiplayer community on the Basketball-GM discord. They are generally similar to our Fanspo mocks, but with a few major differences.
The twists are usually different. Rather than trading players or other common Fanspo gimmicks, they often allow users to participate as Create-A-Player (CAP) in which the user, as the name implies, creates a player and acts as the player. Additionally, the multiplayer leagues usually run for multiple seasons, some are even dozens of seasons in, which would be unheard of for a Fanspo mock. This means that mocks are more likely to start in the past, and many run well after the present day.
It is easier to access the league to view important details. Are you looking to see your player progressions in the second preseason? Want to check on your players’ performance at the trade deadline to see if you want to move anyone? Everything is right there in the league file. League files are easily exportable on Basketball-GM, meaning it is easy for the league commissioner to send the link out to the players instead of having to answer dozens of questions about these same topics.
So, how can we implement this on Fanspo? No need to wonder, much of this has already been done before. I ran a mock once, on my old account (u/Banchero) following many of these principles. The mock was called the Paolo Basketball League (PBL; link https://fanspo.com/nba/s/nba_mocks/p/_4D1NoGo43cWG-/the-pbl-starts-now). It failed due to lack of players (I was a very fringe user at the time and did not promote it well) but there were about ten GMs and the season sim went quite smoothly.
I started the league in 2002-2003 which was easy with the built-in rosters. The league was accessible through a Dropbox link (which was not difficult for me as commissioner to create, as BBGM can import and export directly to and from Dropbox) allowing players to view key stats. This also reduced the need for a roster post from each user since rosters were publicly available on the link. This league did not include CAPs or other major twists (I was a lazy commish, hence why I haven’t run a mock since) but it was markedly different from other mocks band cause of the aspects I have discussed. It was less time-consuming on both me the commissioner as well as the players. The mock ended after one season but could have continued into future years since progs and prospect ratings would be easily accessible helping immersion.
Wrap-Up
I hope this guide helps you all in some way. Whether you didn’t know about the alexnoob tools, or you learned something new about mocks and BBGM multiplayer, or you didn’t even know the game existed, there is something to learn for almost everyone on Fanspo folks.
If you enjoyed this article please drop a like, flame, and follow. If you have a resource to add, drop it in the comments, I’m sure I’m missing something. With all that being said, have a good one.