So, I was messing around online the other day, you know how it is. Got kind of bored. Ended up watching old NBA highlights. Jordan’s fadeaway, Magic’s no-look passes. Good times.
Then I started thinking, there are just so many players. Everyone always argues, “Who’s better? Who’s the GOAT?”. It gets tiring, honestly. Same arguments over and over.
I thought, wouldn’t it be funny to just have a wheel decide? Take the argument out of it, just spin and see who pops up. A bit of fun, yeah? So, decided to make a ‘random NBA player wheel’. Seemed like a simple enough thing to kill an afternoon.
Getting the Names Together
First hurdle: needed a list of players. That sounds easy, right? Wrong. You go online, search for “NBA players list”, and bam! You get hit with everything. All-time lists with guys I’ve barely heard of, current rosters down to the last benchwarmer. It’s overwhelming.
I didn’t want like 2000 names on my wheel. That’s just silly. I wanted recognizable names, guys you could actually talk about. So, I decided to make my own list. Bit of a pain, but better than using some massive, useless list. Took me a good while, actually. Had to think, who are the big names? Current stars, obviously. LeBron, KD, Steph, Giannis. Then the legends: MJ, Magic, Bird, Kareem, Shaq, Kobe. Threw in some other favorites too, guys like Iverson, Ewing, Duncan. Ended up with maybe 60 or 70 names. Seemed like a decent number.
Spent maybe an hour just typing them into a basic text file, one name per line. Felt kinda old school, just manually typing stuff out. But hey, it worked.
Finding a Wheel Maker
Okay, names done. Now, how to make the actual wheel? I’m not a coder, not really. Didn’t want to spend days learning some complex program just for this silly little project. Keep it simple, stupid. That’s my motto sometimes.
Searched for ‘online wheel spinner’ or ‘random name picker wheel’. Found a bunch of websites that do exactly this. You just paste your list in, and it makes a wheel you can spin. Perfect. Picked one that looked easy to use, no frills.
Putting it Together and Spinning
This part was easy. Just copied my list from the text file, pasted it into the box on the website. Clicked ‘Create Wheel’ or whatever the button was. And there it was. A colorful wheel with all the names I picked.
Time for the test drive. Hit the ‘Spin’ button. It made a little clicking sound as it spun, kinda satisfying. Watched it slow down… slower… slower… landed on… Larry Bird! Okay, nice. Solid first pick.
- Spun it again: Got Allen Iverson.
- Third spin: Kevin Durant.
- Fourth spin: Hakeem Olajuwon.
It worked just like I wanted. Simple, random, and sparked a little fun. Called my buddy later, told him about it. We ended up spinning it a few times, just laughing about the random matchups it created. Like, “Okay, wheel says Iverson vs Bird, who you got?”. Dumb fun, but sometimes that’s the best kind.
Final Thoughts
So yeah, that was my little project. Making a random NBA player wheel. Took maybe, what, two hours total? Most of it was just getting that list of names right. The actual wheel part was super quick using that online tool. It’s nothing fancy, but it does what it’s supposed to do. Maybe later I’ll add more names, or try a different tool. But for now, it’s a fun little distraction. Sometimes the simplest things are the most useful, you know?
