Introducing the New NBA Showdown: Rules

Hey guys, time to throw everyone off a bit with my introductory post to my reinvention of NBA Showdown. Yes this is still the Greatest MLB Showdown Blogspot, but Peter has been pressing me for months to get this new game out there, and is kind enough to allow me to post it on the MLB page. We are all here because we love the great game of showdown, but maybe some of you enjoy basketball as well but never got into the one year game, that I believe would be way more popular today than it would have been back in the early 2000s. I wanted to make the game a little more simple to rate -- so instead of Power vs Speed, I did straight-up offense vs defense as the player's two rating.

In creating these cards, I had a lot of success with my play testing and found these cards are tons of fun to play. Now, in this post I am going to re-explain the rules of NBA Showdown, but with my twists of playing the game.  The best thing about this post is, that once it is posted, and you understand the rules, the cards will follow. You don't have to buy packs to hopefully get the guys you love to build your team. You can just print them off and build a team of your favorites, or just play with your favorite team. Much like our version of MLB Showdown, no strategy cards, so it is just straight basketball action with decisions to be made by the coach.

So lets get started with the basic rules of the game. ( A lot of this is copied straight from the original rulebook, but with some edits towards my way of play.)

Basic Game Rules:

Things you will need: Cards, Dice, paper and pencil, or your favorite spreadsheet

Choose 5 players from your team and put each one in a position that they can play.
Set aside your 3 remaining players, your bench, and don't use them this game until you are more familiar with the game play.
Roll to see which player will go first, highest score wins the jumpball and will receive the opening turn in the first and fourth quarters. Loser of the jump ball will receive opening possesion in the second and third quarters.

Team on offense first will choose one of his players. The higher the offense the better. Whoever the opponent had matched up with them for the quarter, you take your players offensive score, and subtract it from your opponents defensive score. Add +1 to your die roll for every point of Offense your player has more than the Defense of your opponent. (You don't have to subtract if your offense is lower than the defense in the basic game.)
Example:

Example 1: We have Jaylen Brown on Offense and Tobias Harris on Defense. Brown has a +1 to his roll from his matchup. I roll a 15, add the 1 and it becomes a 16, earning him 5 points 0 assists and 1 rebound for the quarter. For this first game we will not concern ourselves with assists and rebounds.

Now it is Tobias Harris turn, He gets a +2 to his roll and rolls an 18, giving him a 20. That means he earned 7 points 1 assist and 3 rebounds for the quarter.

Mark the scores of the game on you paper/excel sheet. 

After that round, turn both players over so you can identify who still needs to go. 

Now repeat this step with the remaining four players of each team until the quarter is finished, with the team that won the jump ball choosing the player that will start each turn first.  Now that all the players have gone, mark your total quarter score, and turn all your players back over to begin the next quarter. Whoever went second in the first quarter now goes first and will kick off the new quarter. 

Now go ahead and play the rest of the game!!!!!

Once you are comfortable playing the basic game, you can start adding in hot and cold markers (I use pennies and dimes), assists and rebounds. You don't need to use them all at once, can all be added in over time.

Hot and Cold Markers

When a player rolls a natural 20, the player is hot and gets a +4 to their additional match-up bonuses.

When a player rolls a natural 1, the player is cold and gets a -4 to their additional matchup bonuses.

(If a player with a hot marker rolls a 1, remove the hot marker instead of applying the cold marker, and vice versa. You can have more than 1 marker of the same type on a player)

Assists

Through each game players will accumulate assists, when playing the game after each turn, for example Brown vs Harris, whatever of the two players has a higher assist, Harris had 1 assists vs Browns 0. On Harris' teams next turn the player that is up for his offense will get an additional +1 to his roll.  Assists can carry over from quarter to quarter. 

Rebounds

Rebounds are done by quarter. Keeping track of each teams rebounds throughout the quarter once the fifth and final turn is done for each team subtract the two teams totals from each other, whichever team has the advantage in rebounds, gets that number added to their score at the end of the quarter. 

Example: Team 1 has 17 and Team 2 has 15, Team 1 gets to add 2 points to their end of the quarter score.

Advanced Game Rules:

(This is an example of the score sheet that I use when playing)

The advanced game may be similar to the basic but with more strategic rules put in place over the course of the game. Match-ups are more crucial, along with each team manager being able to choose which player will guard the player that is up, without having to use them that turn for offense. Also the fatigue for players quarter rating will come into play and the depth of an 8 person bench will become more important. Also when in the Advanced game each players turn will require 3 rolls. The first roll is the scoring roll, the same way but it is only for points. This is the only turn where you can earn a hot or cold marker. The second roll, still offense vs defense is the assist roll. The third and final roll is the rebound roll. This way players have the chance for box scores to not read the exact same in each game and has played out very fun in the play tests that I have done. Negatives outcomes from the offense vs defense in the advanced game will be applied to the players roll. 

In the advanced game instead of 5 players per team per quarter, it will now have an additional player for each team, the 'sixth man' which is your chosen bench player to use per quarter. This role is important to adding some additional fire power from the bench, but the unique thing about the 'sixth man' is that playing in that role doesn't count against their quarters played total. As well their offense and defensive ratings are cut in half. The 'sixth man' on both teams must match up against each other in the turn to make the 1/2 of their offense and defenses fair. You also must declare your 'sixth man' at the beginning of each quarter. A player can only play from the 'sixth man' role once per game.

Double- Teaming

Coaches can choose to double team a hot or star player over the course of the game but it has its downfalls. The player being double teamed will have to face his defender's defensive rating  +4 from the player helping out. Negatives outcomes from the offense vs defense in the advanced game will be applied to the players roll. The player being double teamed will receive a bonus on his assist roll of +4 to his roll as a teammate is now open. The player who was left for the double team, will also receive a +4 to his roll on scoring. 

Buzzer Beater:

A tie game tends to happen at the end of a game I instituted a fun end of game situation. Each team will roll the die, whoever has the higher roll will have the last possession. This is a straight up 1 vs 1 possession, the team with the ball chooses which player they want to have the ball in their hands.The defense also chooses who they want to defend the player with the ball. Positional match-ups will be into effect for this possession. The offense rolls the die, and if they roll a natural 20 or their roll + the offense advantage is equal or greater than 20 they hit a buzzer beater and won the game. If the offense rolls a natural 1, it is a turnover and the team on defense now goes to offense with a chance to win the game and the same scenario plays out as listed above. If the team on offense outcomes doesn't produce a turnover or a buzzer beater, the game is tied and heads to overtime.

Overtime

If the game is tied after regulation and buzzer beater sequences, you play another quarter as normal with no 'sixth man' on the court. Continue this until a team has emerged victorious.

Fatigue:

Each player has a quarter on their chart to determine how many minutes they can play a game. Jaylen Brown and Tobias Harris as seen above both have 3QT. Meaning that they can play 3 quarters of a game without facing any fatigue. The penalty for fatigue is if they are on the court after playing that amount and not in a 'sixth man' position, their offense and defense will be cut in half for every quarter they a out there.

Example: Jaylen Brown has played the first 3 quarters and we are now in the 4th, and he isn't i nthe 'sixth man' role. He will now be a 7 Offense and 6 Defense. If the game went to overtime and he continued to play, he would then be a 4 Offense (round up) and a 3 Defense. 

Team Building

Teams are built from the cards of your choice. 

Needs:

At least 1 player that can play at each position. 

No more than 1 version of a player

At most 12 players, at minimum 8

A total of 5,000 points or less. (original rules stated the 5 most expensive player must not cost more than 4000, if you want to continue that rule it is up to you. In my version it is your team, build it the way you want, just stay under the cap)

Position-Less Basketball: In the new NBA Era of small ball and position-less basketball this is another form of game-play you can choose to play. In this format you do not need the 5 positions filled each quarter, but you face defensive punishments for players trying to guard someone that is not in their positional abilities. Here is the penalties for each position

Offense -- Guarded By

PG        -- PG/G no penalty -- SG +1  SF/PF/F +2  C+4

SG        -- SG/G no penalty -- PG +1  SF/PF/F +2  C+4

SF         -- SF/F no penalty  -- PF+1   SG/SG/G +2 C+4

PF         -- PF/F no penalt    --SF+1    C/SG +2       PG +4

C           -- C no Penalty       --PF+1    SF+2            PG/SG/G+4

Well, that is everything! I hope you enjoyed it and are getting ready to begin playing games of your own. When rating these cards the hard thing to determine a players defensive value, in basketball it is such a team sport, that if a team has a good defense it can help hide a terrible defender, so sometime you will see a player pop up and be like he wasn't that good of a defender, but his team was. Be on the lookout for the 2019-2020 season cards of the teams that would have been in the playoffs when the season was postponed due to Covid-19.