I feel there is not a lot of logic when players struggle playing 25 minutes and it makes you lose. I think someone needs to improve rotations while using minutes... I lost a game because my guards got tiring, tired... And yet a back-up ended up playing only 14 minutes while I set him at 24-28. Just needed to rotate him in... And rest my players. I am going fatigue but I don't like it. How do you get a player to play 30 + on fatigue...

To maximize minutes using fatigue, I tend to

1. set to tired
2. adjust the foul situation sensitivity to keep him in the game more
3. leave the line below him in the depth chart empty

A high-stamina player can hit 30 MPG on fairly fresh in M2M. You need even less stamina to accomplish this in zone obviously. Or you can just set the player to play until they are at getting tired or tired. Gonna be tough to do in the press I imagine but even guys with mediocre stamina (~74) can play 25+ MPG in M2M. 

I had tired guards and my 24-28 minutes back-up plays 14 minutes. He is a good scorer. I lose by 2. The guy comes back from 15 down. It's fatigue for me or a slow death.

Did your starting guards, who got tired, get the right amount of minutes?

Keep in mind that if you're concerned about players playing tired, what you're really doing is arguing that you should be using the fatigue setting.

I think the fatigue method works better for MOST situations.

It always does. I am switching and think it's frustrating how it is programmed.

I don't play the minutes setting so I probably don't know what I'm talking about. You said you want your starting guard at 30 but your back up is set to 24-28. I think something has to give there. And I could see your starter picking up 2 early fouls sitting allot of the first half and then your strayer playing more in the second to get to his target min. I'm not sure but I would think starter mins trump back up so if your starter didn't have his he might have stayed in longer. But I know nothing of this seeing so take it will a grain of salt.

If you're using minutes, you've got to think like a computer, not a basketball coach.  

The logic for minutes doesn't care about fatigue -- you have ordered the computer to play your players a certain number of minutes so THAT'S going to be its priority. It will look to ensure that all your starters reach their target number of minutes first and only then starts giving consideration to the backups. If a starter looks to be "on pace" to reach his minimum in a game, the sim will swap the player out for his backup when the fatigue gets to yellow or when the player has been in so much of the game that he's on a pace to exceed his maximum number of minutes that you assigned. If the player is behind pace to reach his minimum minutes, any consideration for fatigue goes out the window because, again, to the computer you've made clear that MINUTES are the key objective you want met (this is why a guy that gets quick fouls in the first half will play the entire second half in maroon if need be). If the game is close, it will play the starters toward the top end of their minutes window and sometimes will exceed the window on the premise that we all want our starters in the game, if available, when the game is on the line. 

Yeah something isn't adding up with your explanation. To really know if minutes isn't acting like it should, tell us your depth chart and minutes settings, and link to the game in question. You say that you want your starters to get 30 minutes, if that is their setting your back is never going to get 24-28, the system will do its best to get your starters their minutes first. Also, if you have your starters set to 28-32 minutes and they only play 9 in the first half due to foul trouble, they aren't coming out in the second half until they foul out.

I only use minutes to cover promises or to try to get a specific rotation that I want.  By far the easier setting is fatigue, but you've got to use trial & error to get over 30.

The trick I use to make target minutes function predictably is to limit my total max target minutes to just at or barely over 200.  Then I make sure that I have close to 40 minutes covered at each position (I don't want 45 at each of 4 and only 20 allocated to one C, for instance).  It's unclear that the sim will give you what you want with that.

Remember, as others said above, if you set both guards to 28-32, then there are only 16-24 minutes remaining between both guard positions.  If you give the instruction to give guards 100 minutes and your team 250 minutes, then it is hard to know what the computer will decide to do.