FTG Basketball Glossary

OVR, POT, soft cap, luxury tax, Bird rights, two-way contracts and the rest, in plain words.

Every basketball-GM term you will see in FTG Basketball, defined in a line or two.

OVR: A player's overall rating right now. It drives how well he plays tonight, not how well he will play in three years.
POT: Potential: the highest OVR a player is likely to reach. Every GM sees an estimate, and the estimate on your own players is the sharper one.
TS%: True shooting percentage. Points per shooting chance, counting free throws. The best single number for how well a man scores.
Pace: Possessions per 48 minutes. A fast team plays more of them, so its raw totals run high.
Rotation: Your five starters and the minutes you give each player. The sim plays to those targets and adjusts for fatigue and fouls.
Soft cap: The salary ceiling that limits signings with cap space. A club can go over it to re-sign its own players, use an exception or sign a minimum contract.
Luxury tax: The bill a club pays on payroll above the tax line. The rate climbs in $5 million bands, from $1.50 to $3.00 per dollar over.
Repeater tax: A club that paid tax in three of the previous four seasons pays half again on top of the normal bill.
Hard cap: An optional league setting. When it is on, no signing or trade can take payroll over the tax line.
Apron: A payroll level above the tax line. Above the second apron a club can send out only one player in a trade, so it cannot combine salaries to match.
Minimum contract: The smallest deal in the league. Any club can sign a minimum player at any payroll, so every free agent always has a legal buyer.
Max contract: The most one player can earn, a share of the cap set by his years in the league: 25 percent up to six years, 30 percent for seven to nine, 35 percent for ten or more.
Bird rights: A club that has had a player for three straight contract years can re-sign him over the cap.
Mid-level exception: A signing budget, a share of the cap, that a club can spend on free agents each offseason. It can be split across players but spent only once.
Biannual exception: A smaller signing budget a club can use once every two offseasons.
Dead money: What a released player still costs: half his yearly salary for every season left on the deal. It counts against the cap and the tax.
Extension: A new contract for a player already under contract, offered in the last two years of his deal. It replaces the old one.
Rookie scale: Fixed contracts for drafted players. First-round deals run four years and pay by draft slot, with club options on years three and four. Second-round deals are two years at the minimum.
Two-way contract: Up to three extra roster slots outside the 15 standard ones. A two-way player can be active for 50 regular-season game days and needs a standard deal to play in the playoffs.
Roster limits: Fifteen standard contracts at most. A trade cannot leave a club with fewer than thirteen.
Season budget: Twelve credits a season, split between development programs (one credit each) and scouting looks (six per credit). Locked once saved.
Development program: A season-long focus for one player, such as three-point shooting, rebounding or stamina. It is graded when its last week ends.
Scouting look: One look at a draft prospect. It gives you your club's own estimate, which can disagree with the consensus and with other clubs.
Consensus board: How the league as a whole ranks the draft class. Every GM can see it, and it can be wrong about a player for good.
Lottery: The fourteen clubs that missed the playoffs. The top four picks are drawn on the real NBA odds; the rest go by record.
Draft clock: Four hours for each human pick. When it runs out, the clock picks for you, starting with the top name in your draft queue.
Pick protection: A condition on a traded first-round pick: if it lands in the top 1 to top 20, it stays home and rolls to the next season. Up to three seasons.
Stepien rule: After any trade, a club must own a first-round pick in at least one of every two seasons ahead.
Trade deadline: The last day for trades, 60 percent of the way through the regular season.
Trade block: Players a club has said it will move. AI clubs read it when they call with offers.
Descending reserve: How free agency ends. A player's asking price drops every round until, in the final round, any club can sign him for the minimum.
Mood: A player's morale, 0 to 100. Minutes, the team record and promises move it, and it changes what he signs for in a contract talk.
Promise: A commitment you make a player: minutes, a role, a plan to extend him, or no trade. Break it and he files a grievance.
Grievance: What a broken promise leaves behind. He asks for more money and will not re-sign until it is settled.
Owner goals: Targets the owner sets each season, such as a win total or minutes for young players. Meeting them keeps the owner on your side.
Chemistry: How well a roster fits together, built by personalities and mentors. It moves a little after every season.
Play-in: Seeds 7 through 10 in each conference play for the last two playoff spots.
Era translation: A league setting that moves players from before 1980 toward the modern shot mix, so they take more threes.
All-League: The season honour teams, named when the season ends.
Record book: Each league's single-game and season records. It opens with the NBA's real single-game marks, and your players can break them.