WHAT IS OKAYMON?

Okaymon is a math/art/music project that was inspired by my multi-decade love of the NBA and Pokémon, both of which unfortunately have no affiliation with this whatsoever. Lemme hit you with a quick breakdown of the project.

• 17 Pokémon types (Fire, Water, Electric, etc.) were reimagined as basketball play styles like Heat Check, Flow, and Highlight.
• The 6 Pokémon attributes (HP, Atk, Def, Special Atk, Special Def, and Speed) were reimagined as basketball skills/attributes (Health, Inside O, Inside D, Perimeter O, Perimeter D, and…Speed).
• Each of the new corresponding play styles and attributes were then defined by using a ton of camera tracking data and advanced metrics to create unique profiles that players could fit into depending on their own individual stats from dataset of around the last ~7 seasons.
• All active NBA players and their associated data were then run through a sorting algorithm that showed how similar their own play style was to the newly defined Okaymon type play styles.
• These players were then put through a second sorting algorithm that matched them to which of the original 151 Pokémon they are most similar to based on their peak play of the past ~7 seasons and corresponding types/play styles and attributes/skills.
• After each player was matched to a Pokémon the list was cut down to the strongest matches, with some creative liberties being taken to break a few ties.
• Concepts for what each player would look like if they became characters in this game world were written up and I was able to connect with some extremely talented illustrators to help bring those designs to life.
• A game is no good without a soundtrack and I was very fortunate to be able to collaborate with Gatex for a continually growing Okaymon OST.

That's more or less the gist of it, but very shortly I will put up a more thorough explanation of all the processes behind the project for anyone who wants to read more about that stuff, akapeople who want to look at graphs while having a hoop convo.

In the meantime I have made sure to include all the most relevant stats used for each type over on theTypespage, along with a description of each play style's strengths, weaknesses, and historical comparisons.

There are many Okaymon/players left to be illustrated and released over the course of this season and some surprises to come, so if you like this then please pop in regularly for the new additions and news, and/or follow the socials for updates. Thanks for checking this out!