Build A Hooper blog
Why Our Historical Archive Ends at the 2021–22 Season
By PENG CHAI · Published
Build A Hooper's historical archive ends with the 2021–22 season. That is a deliberate boundary: the game uses a pinned, documented historical record and builds everything else as original assessment and fiction. This post explains what the cutoff means for the draft boards — and what it does not mean.
A pinned record, not a moving target
The boards are built from pinned sources: Wikidata records for identity and a pinned FiveThirtyEight snapshot for historical performance inputs, both closing at the 2021–22 season. Pinned means the input set does not drift. A run you play next month starts from the same historical record as a run today.
What the boundary means in practice
Players who entered the league after the 2021–22 season are not in the archive. Older values describe the historical record at the time — they are not statements about anyone's present ability, and the game never presents them that way.
What the boundary does not mean
The cutoff is not a promise that later data will be added, and nothing on this site should be read that way. It is also not a gap in the game: the draft, the assessments, and the fictional season are designed around the archive as it stands.
Why we say the cutoff out loud
The cutoff appears on the pages themselves, in the data-sources record, and here, because a historical game that hides its boundary invites exactly the wrong reading. If you want the short version: historical inputs through the 2021–22 season; everything else is ours or fiction.
The approved sources and licenses are listed on the data sources page, and common questions about the archive are answered in the FAQ.