Best way to make a roster patch?

Andrew will probably know more about this than any of us....

What method do you use for making a roster patch? Is going through the DBF files and put all the players on their correct teams the best first step?

I prefer to do as much as possible from within the game. There's little point sifting through the databases to make trades and change player data such as jersey numbers when it can be done so much quicker in the game's roster management functions. Same goes for creating players; it's much less of a hassle to use Create-a-Player and then edit attributes in the databases as necessary.

If you're starting from the default rosters, I'd recommend getting everyone in the rosters who's still active on their correct teams before anything else. You might not always be able to make the eight player minimum with current active players depending on which game you're working on so you might have to leave a couple of free agents/retired players on a team as placeholders until you create the missing players.

There are a couple of ways you could next approach the update. You could either update the ratings and data for all the default active players and then start adding the missing ones or you can just work on it team by team, updating the players and adding the missing ones as needed. You can also remove retired players from the Free Agent pool by changing their TEAM value to 32.

As far updating other data (coaches, plays, etc), you can choose to do that before you get started on the players, after you're done or in between if you want to break up the monotony.

Thanks for the tips Andrew. What site(s) do you use? I go to http://www.basketball-reference.com/ But at that site you are unable to see jersey numbers unless you click on every player. Also do you know of a site that you can view all the players who played in a season... say 2004? Rather than just the teams and the rosters from that year?

For bio data and jersey numbers, I usually just check the rosters on NBA.com. I'll also cross-check info with Yahoo! NBA, usually when it comes to jersey numbers after a trade or signing.

Thanks for the tips Andrew. What site(s) do you use? I go to http://www.basketball-reference.com/ But at that site you are unable to see jersey numbers unless you click on every player. Also do you know of a site that you can view all the players who played in a season... say 2004? Rather than just the teams and the rosters from that year?

http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... mbers.html

http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... stats.html

Dude.... I love you.

Get a room.