I'd sort of prefer to put this in broad terms but I'll go ahead and use my team as an example just so it makes it a bit easier to get at what I'm asking.

I'm 27 games into my season.  How much faith would you put into the numbers that have been complied at this point in the season?

Using my team as the example ...

My leading scorer (who gets the ball an awful lot) has taken 485 FGA and 385 FG3A.  I feel pretty confident that his 44 FG% and his 42 FG3% are close to his "true" numbers.

I have two post players shooting 55% from the floor.  One is a true freshman that has 104 FGA and the other is a third year sophomore with 70 FGA.  I'm not sure I trust either number and because of that I'm more inclined to think that the third year sophomore is more likely to shoot that well going forward simply because I don't see how my freshman with poor IQ can continue to put up those numbers.

I have a junior guard that is shooting 35% from twos and 23% from threes.  There is just 48 FGA and 17 FG3A on the season.  I wouldn't trust that sample at all.  That said, for his three year career he's shooting 34% in 114 FGA and 14% in 43 FG3A.  It's probably a huge mistake to even look at his freshman numbers .... at the same time it's hard to avoid noticing he's one of the worst shooters ever seen in HD history.

In 659 minutes, my starting SF (barely) averages more rebounds/minute (.24) than my starting center averages (.23) in his 732 minutes played.  That really surprises me, but is the sample big enough to read much into it?

In 302 minutes, my 4th string post player averages .31 rebounds/minute.  My third string post player averages .30 rebounds/minute in 478 minutes played.  Is it safe to assume these are pretty equal players on the board?  I'd guess not, but you guys might feel differently.

I suppose the way I'm looking at it is that after a full regular season I can probably start to come to some conclusions about my starters and guys with high distribution.  It is still too early to really get a feel for how my bench guys and those with low distribution are going to perform in the postseason.

I guess I'm curious to know if others are sort of thinking in a similar fashion or if I'm out in leftfield on this.

I don't know if it is statistically valid or not but I generally look  after I have played 7 or 8 games against quality opponents.  I subtract out the games against the cream puffs.

I would think once you hit 100 shots (under the correct circumstances) it's valid enough.

kujay -  I think you are in the ball park with your line of thinking.  Like many things in this game, we all sort of make vague stabs at stuff, never quite knowing what is right or not.  One thing I would add to the mix, is who the player is playing with, sometimes a junior star plays with 3 or 4 seniors and looks better than as a senior, playing with 3 or 4 sophs.  But nice post, and nice way to think of the game in my opinion

I comment a bit on your rebounding questions.

One way to gauge which is the better rebounder (SF vs. C) would be to have them switch positions and see if the numbers remain the same.

A lot of things influence rebounding totals. 
A SF with a 70 rating very likely will get more rebounds than a C with the same 70 as the SF typically is matched up against opponents with lower REB numbers.  The same way a bench player may appear to be your best rebounder since he's often matched up against other bench players.  
The player IQ as well as ATH and SPD also are huge factors in rebound totals.   A Senior with a 70 should be a better rebounder than a Freshman with a 80.
The defensive set also can affect the totals.  A 2-3 zone would put the SF in position to get more rebounds than being in a 3-2 zone.
Having the offensive 3pt setting at 0 or + also could reduce the offensive rebounds a SF would get.  A minus setting gives him more opportunities.

Vaden's improvement is downright scary!

I dont think the rebounding logic works that way

Posted by backboy13 on 11/9/2011 3:50:00 PM (view original):
Vaden's improvement is downright scary!

He looks like he might be one of my better recruits ... something about blind squirrels, right?

Posted by oldwarrior on 11/9/2011 2:59:00 PM (view original):
I comment a bit on your rebounding questions.

One way to gauge which is the better rebounder (SF vs. C) would be to have them switch positions and see if the numbers remain the same.

A lot of things influence rebounding totals. 
A SF with a 70 rating very likely will get more rebounds than a C with the same 70 as the SF typically is matched up against opponents with lower REB numbers.  The same way a bench player may appear to be your best rebounder since he's often matched up against other bench players.  
The player IQ as well as ATH and SPD also are huge factors in rebound totals.   A Senior with a 70 should be a better rebounder than a Freshman with a 80.
The defensive set also can affect the totals.  A 2-3 zone would put the SF in position to get more rebounds than being in a 3-2 zone.
Having the offensive 3pt setting at 0 or + also could reduce the offensive rebounds a SF would get.  A minus setting gives him more opportunities.

Without a doubt, oldwarrior. (Switching positions.)

That said, I'm trying to figure out if an almost season-long sample is enough to determine if trends are real.  If I'm switching positions that lessens the sample even more so.

Now if a 10 game sample is sufficient, I could do a position swap and see what happens.  But if I were to do something like that now, I wouldn't trust the result set.

But that's my opinion and I'm not sure it's correct.  Hence, this thread.

I'm almost sure that centers get more rebounds than PF's or SF's if all things are equal and that it is a 5,4,3,2,1 type ranking by position.   Below is a very good player, who played center for me his frosh thru junior seasons, but is playing SF his senior season. He is a 1000 level player, who has been in the 900's since his soph season, and has been maxed out at rebounding, ath, etc for a while.  If 21 games was a large enough sample size, one might conclude SF's are 80% as likely to get a rebound as centers, which is probably my intuitive level too.  If I had to guess, I would say a 90 something PG would probably be 60% as likely to get a rebound, which might mean a PF is 90% and a SG 70%, but those are all guesses.

Yr.	GP	GS	MIN	FG%	FG3%	FT%	OREB	REB	AST	TO	STL	BLK	PF	PTS
53	21	21	23.2	.510	.437	.684	1.2	4.8	1.8	2.1	0.7	0.6	1.3	14.1
52	32	32	24.6	.521	.396	.677	2.3	6.3	1.1	1.6	0.9	1.4	1.6	13.3
51	31	31	24.1	.542	.412	.750	2.0	6.0	0.9	1.1	0.9	1.2	1.9	14.5
50	33	33	23.4	.459	.207	.547	1.5	5.4	1.0	1.1	0.6	1.0	2.1	5.2
Averages				.516	.391	.684	1.8	5.7	1.1	1.4	0.8	1.1	1.8	11.5

I'm ready to accept that positions are treated differently, but looking at data like this you ALSO need to think about who else is on the floor

Ignore the guards, cause lets assume they are the same and have modest effects

When he was center lets say he had REB of 95 and the other forwards had REB of say 90 and 60.  Lets ignore ATH etc etc.

Now, he is SF and is still REB of 95 - but now the other guys are 95 and 90.  We could have a sharing effect

Posted by oldresorter on 11/10/2011 2:46:00 PM (view original):
I'm almost sure that centers get more rebounds than PF's or SF's if all things are equal and that it is a 5,4,3,2,1 type ranking by position.   Below is a very good player, who played center for me his frosh thru junior seasons, but is playing SF his senior season. He is a 1000 level player, who has been in the 900's since his soph season, and has been maxed out at rebounding, ath, etc for a while.  If 21 games was a large enough sample size, one might conclude SF's are 80% as likely to get a rebound as centers, which is probably my intuitive level too.  If I had to guess, I would say a 90 something PG would probably be 60% as likely to get a rebound, which might mean a PF is 90% and a SG 70%, but those are all guesses.

Yr.	GP	GS	MIN	FG%	FG3%	FT%	OREB	REB	AST	TO	STL	BLK	PF	PTS
53	21	21	23.2	.510	.437	.684	1.2	4.8	1.8	2.1	0.7	0.6	1.3	14.1
52	32	32	24.6	.521	.396	.677	2.3	6.3	1.1	1.6	0.9	1.4	1.6	13.3
51	31	31	24.1	.542	.412	.750	2.0	6.0	0.9	1.1	0.9	1.2	1.9	14.5
50	33	33	23.4	.459	.207	.547	1.5	5.4	1.0	1.1	0.6	1.0	2.1	5.2
Averages				.516	.391	.684	1.8	5.7	1.1	1.4	0.8	1.1	1.8	11.5

I think that this is correct.

I'm wondering if it's skewed to heavily, like built into the sim engine. I think there might be too much pre-programmed in there and not enough leeway for the players to actually get it figured out on there own in this area. If I play a guy at c he rebounds better than if I play the same guy at pf, and that shouldn't be the case.

Does anyone else see that?

Posted by mamxet on 11/10/2011 6:04:00 PM (view original):
I'm ready to accept that positions are treated differently, but looking at data like this you ALSO need to think about who else is on the floor

Ignore the guards, cause lets assume they are the same and have modest effects

When he was center lets say he had REB of 95 and the other forwards had REB of say 90 and 60.  Lets ignore ATH etc etc.

Now, he is SF and is still REB of 95 - but now the other guys are 95 and 90.  We could have a sharing effect

this sharing effect is true as far as I know.  I used to look (it has been a while) at players in d3 who lead the world in rebounding, usually they play with really bad rebounders.  The only part of your statement that might not be true, is I am not positive guards can be ignored.  Often, these mega rebounders play with a pair of 1 REB guards, who indeed often average 1 rebound per game, as well as some pretty average to poor PF's and SF's.

The same is true of top assist guys, usually they have high PA, maybe BH and SP too, and play with very low PA teammates.

Assists just seem to have no resemblance to real life. Plenty of seasons, the guy leading my conference had maybe 4 to 4.5 assists per game. Not sure that would be in the top 10 for a real life conference.