8/18 = 44.4%. That is not an outlier, but it is lower than his rf fg%. 4/15 is an outlier though entirely possible, even within a 54% fg% season. Also to keep in mind, it's not a 1v1 match up for offensive player vs defensive player, it's a team aggregate defense with the man actually doing the guarding playing a more significant role (thus a 20 defender on a team full of 90s does not necessarily cripple you).
The thing that gets me is that we've been complaining (myself included) about these things for years. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change. All complaining does is get me in a bad mood. If it makes you feel better to complain, cool, but I accept that this product is no where close to what it could be and that the people responsible for it don't care about it or about us. Sometimes I think you (***collective you, not any one of you in particular) get a bit nit-picky, extreme or overly dramatic, but for the most part you're right. There is too much randomness at play. Everything can't be strict, however.
There needs to be a happy medium: randomness within range. Outliers should still occur - just not frequently. Here's what I mean:
The way it currently is (to my knowledge):
Player A has a fg% of exactly 50%. Team B all are 50 defenders.
Player A attempts a FG. There's exactly a 50% chance that it goes in. Let's say it misses.
2nd shot - exactly 50% chance.
3rd shot - exactly 50% chance
(and so on)
This is probability/true randomness. No matter how many times you flip a coin, it has a 50% chance of landing on heads. Just because it's landed on tails 10 times in a row does not mean that it has an increased chance to land on heads.
I believe this is how the sim works. I might be wrong, however.
My opinion is that the further something strays from its real %, the increased (or decreased) likelihood of an event should occur. Say player A misses 10 in a row. For that 11th shot, he should have a substantial increase that it goes in. Not 100% (never 100% of anything), but an increased chance. If Wilt has 5 personal fouls and a foul is the call, then he should have a ridiculously lower chance that he picks up that 6th foul (since he never fouled out).
The thing is, that becomes really tricky when you move it to other aspects of the game (rebounding, for example). You can expect a guy who averaged 20 fgas a game to probably shoot it around 20 times (assuming correct usage in team construction), but how do you do rebound expectancy? I guess you do like I do now: add up the five on the floor of each team, get the total of the two teams, then make new percentages based on that cumulative total, then adjust that as the game goes along.
I don't know... it'd take a mind smarter than mine to tweak the system to still keep the feel of "anything can happen" while keeping the "should never happens" out.