wilfredo salinas tracking thread Topic

on kansas last year, i signed a 0 star puerto rican named wilfredo salinas. he had the nation's highest FT shooting so i figured i would check him out - lo and behold, he had some killer potential. here is a link to him

at the start of his sophmore year, his ratings are:
74 ath
73 spd
14 reb
70 def
2 sb
15 lp
67 per
76 bh
55 pass
39 we
71 sta
A+ ft shooting

not much to look at, but with the potential information i have, here are his most likely caps:
89 ath
97 spd
14 reb
94 def
2 sb
15 lp
97 per
85 bh
80 pass
74 sta
A++ ft shooting (he hit A+ right away in his fr year, with medium potential. hes still medium starting soph year)

with that almost unique FT shooting ability, and great offensive ratings, he could be the greatest 0 star of all time. he could definitely be one of the top offensive shooting guards in the country. but, hes also one of the most interesting and uncertain players of my career. his high spd/per and low lp suggest hes a pure 3 point shooter, but his FT shooting is largely wasted if that is the case. i've thought about playing him at -2, i've even considered not growing his per (i didn't freshman year, but there are also more important things to grow). im not sure he would draw as many fouls taking those long range jump shots. its still unclear to me if there are different kinds of 2s in the game (particularly, 2 kinds), or if there is just one kind.

how would you guys play this guy? would you cap his per and let him drain 3s? or do you hold him back on per, and let him draw lots of fouls, taking advantage of his a++ ft shooting? or, do you grow his per, and leave him on -1 or -2, to try to get the fouls and better fg%?

players like this are so rare, i thought it was worth tracking him here. ill post his progress and stats each season, with how i decided to play him. i might switch it up over the season to get an idea how he plays with different 3 point settings, but once i grow that per, i can't really go back. i've had a guy with A+ ft shooting before - exactly once - and he lead a mediocre fb/zone mid major to the elite 8, almost making the final 4 against a championship caliber team. he was more productive than all the 90/90/90/90 guards i had on my d1 championship teams - but he only had like 70 ath, 99 spd, 48 per, and 99 bh. wilfredo salinas has way better ratings, so im confident if i just limit his per, and let him shoot a ton of 2s - he will be great. the first a+ guy i had scored like 25ppg very efficiently. what i don't know is if growing his per in the 90s makes him even better, or if it limits the effectiveness of that a+ ft shooting. i feel like he has the potential to be the greatest player ive ever coached, if i play him right - so i am pretty interested to see how it goes, and to hear any thoughts on how you guys would play him.
11/27/2013 11:06 PM (edited)
ohh wow, he took the redshirt without a complaint! i had planned to attempt to RS him soph year, but with 2 walkons, its kind of a tough call. now i have a decision to make, think i should RS him? hes not so gaudy, he might stay 5 years.

i guess one thing i should mention that i didn't is, i am running motion/press here. that random guy with 48 per and a+ ft who was shockingly more productive than my 99 in everything championship guards, he was on a fb/zone team. anyway, i am not really sure what impact FB has on allowing a player like that to be so awesome, but i do think FB does better with low lp/per players than any offense. and it really lends itself nicely to FT shooting based teams, although i think motion does, too. so that is one other variable/aspect that is an interesting part of the equation. that dude also had high stamina, and being on a zone team, that let him be really productive - this guy only started with 74 sta low low, and is 71 now - and hes on a press team. so hes looking at playing about 20mpg, while the first guy played in the low 30s.
11/28/2013 3:39 AM (edited)
You can take this with a grain of salt due to my lack of experience, but I will throw it out there anyway.

You say his ratings suggest he is only a 3 pt shooter, which would limit his free throws.  However, I wonder if his high speed and good ball handling would make him a bit of a slasher that would still be able to draw a lot of fouls.
11/27/2013 11:23 PM
I'm pretty sure there are at least two kinds of two-point shots, because PE definitely improves two point percentage (at least somewhat), and I can't imagine that includes shots near the basket because then what is LP for?  Mid-range jumpers are definitely the lowest percentage shot, but free throws are the highest so if you especially if you see yourself in bonus/double-bonus situations he could still be a really efficient scorer.  However, at high D1 I'm not really sure what it takes in ATH/SPD/BH to be that kind of slasher player who make a good percentage and draws a lot of fouls.  I would track his True Shooting Percentage (0.5* PTS / (FGA + 0.44*FTA)) and see how it turns out relative to your other players.  
12/5/2013 4:08 PM
I'd keep him balanced and play him at 0.  
12/5/2013 4:10 PM
Posted by rgerkin on 12/5/2013 4:08:00 PM (view original):
I'm pretty sure there are at least two kinds of two-point shots, because PE definitely improves two point percentage (at least somewhat), and I can't imagine that includes shots near the basket because then what is LP for?  Mid-range jumpers are definitely the lowest percentage shot, but free throws are the highest so if you especially if you see yourself in bonus/double-bonus situations he could still be a really efficient scorer.  However, at high D1 I'm not really sure what it takes in ATH/SPD/BH to be that kind of slasher player who make a good percentage and draws a lot of fouls.  I would track his True Shooting Percentage (0.5* PTS / (FGA + 0.44*FTA)) and see how it turns out relative to your other players.  
(warning - this has nothing to do with the tracking of the player and can be safely ignored by anyone interested in the tracking of the player)

ill absolutely track his TSP, that is what i am super curious to see myself :) 

i am not saying there aren't two kinds of 2 point shots, but i do question the logic there. PE definitely improves 2 point percentage, including for bigs. but this could be true for all kinds of 2 point shots, lp certainly does it to, there is no reason they have to be mutually exclusive?

one thing i noticed in the early days, before lp mattered for guards, was that killer lp/per sfs always, always underperformed where i hoped. i had an olden days 80+ ath/spd/lp/per guy in d2 (which was way harder than getting one now), which is more or less the most impressive d2 sf i ever saw since you couldn't recruit 1 and 2 star d1 players. but he just wasnt that great on offense. that made me think lp OR per was used to determine the kind of shot, never both. i hoped a certain effect existed - namely, that there were multiple kinds of shots he could take, and not only did he just take a mix of them, but the ability to take a mix of them and improve through versatility, would matter. i never could find any evidence it did and it really looked like it didn't. further, it seemed like whatever the kinds of shots were, it was basically lp OR per that mattered, not both - never both - maybe per a teeny bit for bigs. but in these days, going from say 1 to 50 lp or per in a 90+ spd/per or ath/lp type player, it clearly helps. you'd think a big who had killer ath/lp and just took shots in the paint, if he added the lowest % mid range jumpers, wouldn't help him - when his mid range jumper shot ability was mostly based on per. but it does, so that would suggest lp matters for mid range jumpers, which sort of makes no sense, or there is just one kind of 2 point shot.

not really sure where i am going with that - but the increase of the importance of lp on high per/spd guards and per for high ath/lp guards did increase the complexity of scoring and make it a lot more interesting. in the simpler world, it didnt really seem to me like you could get bigs to take jumpers, or get guards to slash, or get sfs with both lp and per to really outperform a guy with one of the two. this makes me think there were not two kinds of 2pt shots back then - otherwise through some decision mechanism to decide what shot to take, bigs would decide to take jump shots while guards would decide to slash, and lp would have helped guards while per significantly helped bigs.

to me, i often wonder if there are "guard 2 point shots" and "big man 2 point shots", even more than i wonder if there are close to the basket and far from the basket two point shots. for some reason, high ath/spd guards with low per draw more fouls than high ath/lp bigs. the only things i can think of (but im certainly not sure i have them all) that could justify that difference are 1) two different equations, 2) speed causing the extra fouls to be drawns, and 3) being defended primarily by a guard, not a big, somehow results in more fouls being drawn.

with issue 2), its certainly logical - and for guards, im pretty sure it does. but i really have not noticed much difference in bigs offensively for spd, ive always considered it basically meaningless as far as that goes. this is something we could probably figure out between us. any interest in running a regression on fouls drawn per fga at the 5 based on speed? seems to me fouls drawn might be tough, so fta could be used, but care would have to be taken as a bunch of things muddy that water - the 5's ft shooting ability, the systems being run by both teams, etc...

with issue 3), the guards have all the ath/spd/def of the bigs, in many cases. so what, is it the SB? i am kind of skeptical. but a regression could probably be run on that, too - really, would be interesting to see by position - the correlation (or lack there of) of the SB of the defender, and the fouls drawn per shot attempt.

anyway, im not sure how much this matters, but if there are different formulas for 2pta of guards or bigs (or similarly, if the position of the player in question is part of the formula), that would be pretty interesting, at the least. also, ive wanted to ask you for like a year, if you would have any interest in looking at what plays into foul drawn - where are the closest correlations - because it seems to me lp/per dont play much role, and it would be pretty interesting to know if its really just ath/spd/bh? and how they compare in importance. 

so back to the two kinds of 2s, if there are two kinds of 2s for bigs, how would that work? for starters, the complexity of making that work is so much higher than 1, my gut said admin probably went the simpler route, as is so often the case (you even used that argument to largely convince me of your position on tempo). if there are 2 kinds of shots, do all bigs take both kinds? if so, how do you figure what % of close shots vs far shots are taken? they cant all be the same for all bigs, that would make no sense, right? anyway, now if there is a jump shot and a lp shot, and bigs take more jump shots the higher level of ability they have (which seems about the only logical way i can think of, to figure out the %s of each), you would expect a curve where small amounts of per are absolutely useless, and then there is a discontinuity at some level. this is something that should be able to be verified, if you are up for the statistical work :)

my opinion is that per is not absolutely useless up to a point, and that while per is CLEARLY valuable to bigs in terms of fg% in this day and age - that spd is not - even if its on a 50 per big. to me a 90 ath/lp big is not good enough in high d1 to be a lead scorer. its one of the biggest imbalances in the game, IMO. but with 90 ath/lp and 50 per, now he can be a lead scorer - albeit probably not as effective in the upper high scoring levels (20 ppg or higher) as a guard - but still, hes viable there. however, i don't think he needs that spd. if there were two kinds of shots, you would expect that 50 per really only to help on the jump shot, and you would expect the jump shot to rely on spd and bh like 3s do. so, my feeling is that bigs are just taking 1 kind of shot, its just such an easier way to go, and from the way the ratings help him improve, i don't really see how it could be 2 shots for bigs.

one other thing that makes me thing guards and bigs take different 2s is the ratings that play in. spd and bh helps guards in terms of 2pt%, there is probably no disagreement there. low per guards with crap spd/bh take terrible 2s, while high spd/per guards can be very effective in terms of fg% just taking 2s. plus, guards with higher spd/per who do take 3s, when you back out the 3s from fga, clearly shoot better from 2pt land than their lower spd/per counterparts. how does spd help guards so much and bigs so little, just in the set of 2 point shots? there could be two totally different kinds of 2s but even then, within the set of just jump shots, its still true - why?

anyway, im sure i am not making as much sense here as i could. so in conclusion, my opinion is most likely there are different 2pt shooting formulas for players at different positions - minimally guards and bigs. if that is the case, it already gives flexibility in how 2 point shots work. i think i initially believed there were 2 kinds of shots because the way different players performed on 2s worked so differently. but now, i believe that is because different positions are figured differently (same goes for 3pt shots). now, if you already have different 2s and 3s for different positions, that is pretty complex - and we have a variable to control how many of each type is taken - which makes me really doubt they would take that next step and make different kinds of 2s for each position. figuring out how a center decides how many jump shots to take vs paint shots is pretty tricky, especially with 0 user input, and you have 5 positions to deal with... on top of that, i dont see observations that support that kind of system. if you did, id expect to see things like low amounts of low on guards or per on bigs having no impact, and then a major jump. id expect in the olden days for lp to actually matter for guards, and per to be meaningful for bigs. to me, it just doesn't really add up. 


12/5/2013 5:33 PM
I mostly skimmed over your post gillispie but one of your questions was if spd or agh was more important for drawing fouls. One of my players Edward Williams attempted the third most FT attempts and 2nd least minutes this past season. He has good spd and bh, but not very good ath. This makes me believe spd and bh could be important for drawing fouls, and not ath.
12/5/2013 6:14 PM
I think one of the reasons guards draw more fouls on 2 point shots is the defensive metric designed to oppose it. 

I am reasonably sure that 2 point shots are defended by an equation of ATH/DEF/SB (and maybe speed).  Since guards are covered by other guards, the SB component is usually low in the defenders equation.   

I would be interested in seeing if a guards with a reasonable BLOCK score draw less fouls.
12/5/2013 6:38 PM
I would definitely build up his PER.  Obviously his most efficient shot is the FT, but I'm trying to run some numbers and I just can't come up with any reasonable scenario in which he gets fouled on a large enough percentage of his 2 pt shots to make him more valuable as a 2-point specialist.  I haven't been keeping up with high D1 as much recently, but I'm guessing for this guy capped out maybe, what, 42% 3-point shooter, maybe 43-44% 2-point shooter?  I mean, the BH isn't truly elite for that level.  If he gets fouled 40% of the time, including some and-1s, I'd have him at about 1.3 PPP.  That's virtually identical to his points per possession shooting 3s, and he will get fouled occasionally on 3-point shots, which I haven't factored in at all.  And I highly doubt he'd actually draw fouls that often.  If the worst-case scenario for building up his PER is break-even, I don't see why you wouldn't do it.  It increases the team's versatility, and you can always -2 him if you need to.
12/5/2013 10:16 PM
Total conjecture but they could have solved when to use LP vs Per by using distance from the basket. Within a certain distance and the shot is determined by LP, outside that and its determined by Per. Where a player takes the majority of his shots is depended on where he can get the shots from as well as where they will be most effective. A high speed/ath/bh guard with mediocre per and bad LP will probably take a lot of mid range shots, if they had high LP they would probably get closer to the rim, and if they had high per they are obviously going to take a lot of 3s.

No idea if thats actually how it works or not since I have done 0 research but it just feels right to me.

12/6/2013 3:31 AM
I'd probably try -1, which will let him still shoot a lot of 3's but also slash and get fouled more.  But this is once he gets closer to 90 PE.  Currrently he's at 69 so he has a ways to go before you really have a true decision to make.  And his 39 WE will slow his PE progression vs. a 60+ WE.

Thinking about it a little more after looking at his current ratings, I'd definitely have him at -1 now (or next year when he plays) b/c his PE isn't elite enough for a 0 imo.  Then as he progresses in PE as well as his other categories, he'll have more of the ability to be an elite 3-pt shooter with 93+ PE, but with that A+ FT, I'd stick with a -1 and just increase his distribution to increase his scoring opportunities, either from deep or from the line.  He should be a really nice scorer.  And if you find he's simply not getting to the line enough to justify the -1, then put him back at 0 and let him bomb away.

12/6/2013 12:57 PM
gillespie,  

I sort of agree with you about the PE/LP tradeoff, that maybe only one is chosen for any given shot.  However, what kind of a shot he takes depends on the opposing defense (personnel and their +/- setting) and with high PE and high LP your guy can always take the shot that is available.  

As for SPD, my experience is that bigs with SPD are more efficient scorers, but that's D2 and D3 talking.  
12/13/2013 1:00 AM
gillispie,

I would not even think about not trying to improve his PE.  Having a higher perimeter will make him a better 2 point shooter as well.  It's illogical to think he will be a better 2 point shooter with a 15/67  LP/PE than with a 15/97 LP/PE.   If you don't want him taking 3s,  then put him at minus 2.  But to think he'll be worse with a higher PE is crazy.  That being said, I would not put him at minus 1 or 2.  He will be an elite 3 point shooter if he hits that potential.  Plus his ATH isn't elite and his LP is brutal.  I would probably keep him at 0.  He will still takes some 2 point shots and get free throws, but he will definitely prefer taking 3's.  I think he will be more valuable to your team that way. 

12/14/2013 4:04 PM
Posted by utahjazz88 on 12/14/2013 4:04:00 PM (view original):
gillispie,

I would not even think about not trying to improve his PE.  Having a higher perimeter will make him a better 2 point shooter as well.  It's illogical to think he will be a better 2 point shooter with a 15/67  LP/PE than with a 15/97 LP/PE.   If you don't want him taking 3s,  then put him at minus 2.  But to think he'll be worse with a higher PE is crazy.  That being said, I would not put him at minus 1 or 2.  He will be an elite 3 point shooter if he hits that potential.  Plus his ATH isn't elite and his LP is brutal.  I would probably keep him at 0.  He will still takes some 2 point shots and get free throws, but he will definitely prefer taking 3's.  I think he will be more valuable to your team that way. 

i think this is the majority viewpoint, as expected, and i suppose ill go that route. but i do feel like per/lp affects shot selection, and i fear the existence of jump shot type 2s as opposed to foul-heavy interior type 2s... because if it exists, his per could influence him in terms of taking those shots. OR used to theorize that lp of guards mattered for shot selection - even before lp mattered for guards. i never could decide how i felt about that but i definitely feel those ratings influence shot selection today, which means it would theoretically be possible for higher lp or per for certain players to hurt them - as it could influence shot selection in an undesired way. but, i am probably just over thinking it.
12/16/2013 5:57 PM
wilfredo salinas tracking thread Topic

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