I have had an on-going discussion (arguement) with Seble about how much control the coaches should have over distribution.   I routinely see actual shot distributions that don't look anything like what I put in the game plan.    

Seble argues that real life coaches dont have much control over shot selection in games.  I argue that this is a simulation and we have limited control over anything, and that if things like shot distribution are going to be random, we might as well let the teams be SIM coached.     

Below is just an example of what I see.  Akin was set up with a higher distribution than Mills.   Mills takes 20 more shots.    Sure it worked out, but that's not what I set up.

http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=8315290

We really only have 2 in-game tools, defensive positioning and distribution.   I'd like to think that is I win/lose it's partly because of my game plan, not because the engine decided to 'randomize" by inputs.

I totally agree with this-- I am getting less frustrated by those occurences after reading through the posts about the randomness but I consistently run into the situation where Player A shoots 20 shots and Player B Shoots 10 and I decrease A and increase B only to have Player A shoot 22 shots and Player B shoot 8 shots.  I understand different defenses/players/other teams settings affect those, but I would like to see the effect that our distribution number play a larger role in that equation.  That might mean a guy is getting passed to more often when he is double-teamed and therefore more missed shots/turnovers but at least the guys we want shooting the ball would be.  I don't think the argument (which I've heard offered many times before) that real life coaches don't have shot selection control holds much weight.  They might not control how good of a shot or where the shot can come from, but they definetely can control who is going to take the most shots and we should be able to as well.  Seems like an easy fix but surprising number of coaches also seem happy with "letting the dice roll".  
    I think that is why so many say that this game is 80% recruiting because, for the most part, we are setting a lineup and then letting the sim make the vast majority of decisions.  I completely share your feelings that sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't, but have come to understand and accept that my gameplanning role is a very minor piece of the puzzle. 

I have no issue with "the open guy" taking shots when there is a mismatch caused by substitution patterns.  But I would like to see options for more cause and effect.

I think what would be good is a FACTOR ... like fouls ... that we can set to control how close we want distribution to followed.

One setting could be absolute ... the chance is totally based on only the distribution setting ... and several others, all the way down to almost no impact at all.

Then different coaches could make the determination on their own and everyone can get closer to what they want.

Distribution could be better, I agree, but right now it is light years ahead of where it used to be.  I occasionally have games where the shot attempts look a little funky when compared to the distro that I set, but honestly, for me, those games are few and far between.  For the most part, what I set for my distro is what I get for my shot attempts.

Mully - I'm with seble on this one, nothing would harm the game more than making the shot pattern too predictable.  Over the course of a season, it works perfect, any single game, it varies with random number theory, just like it should, just like it does it real life.

I really like Hughes idea-- everyone could be happy.   I do admit that I am relatively happy with the results more often than I am miffed by them.   I tracked one of my guys and he was set at 21-24 distro and ended up with 16% at the end of the year.  That is pretty far from perfect (~20-33% off the target) in my mind so it takes more than even a year to work out.  I think if we had firm control, it would probably hurt a team more than help a team by forcing the ball places the engine wouldn't normally but it would be interesting to see.  Definetely frustrating when my lowest distro guy on the court with the worst matchup takes 3 shots in a row while my highest distro guy doesn't get the ball against the other team's backup.  As I mentioned though, looking at the big picture makes it easier to take.

I like distro as it is. Certain positions do more with less distro. I have found that I can give my pg less distro than my PF say 12% vs. 18% and the majority of the time both players end up taking the same amount of shots or are at least fairly equal distro wise. Guards tend to get more possessions than bigs and I find if I want my bigs to be the focus of my offense I have to give them the lions share of distro.

Mully - in this case I think your analysis is flawed by comparing Mills and Akin.  Obviously you expect that your starters play together a lot, and that you can therefore do a reasonable comparison of shot numbers.  For whatever reason this does not seem to be the case in this game.  Reading through the boxscore it looks like for some random reason (maybe Mills shot FTs a few times early and got left in longer than other starters and his substitution pattern was thrown off?  Only 4 total, so probably not.  I don't know) your 4 starters other than Mills spent most of their time on the court with Stryjewski or Suleiman at the 1.  Mills spent a LOT of his court time playing with your bench guys.  Akin and Mills played fairly few minutes together, and Mills took a huge number of shots with 0 or 1 other starters in the game.  I'm guessing his distro dominates that of most of your bench players, and that explains both his enormous shot volume and the fact that your bench players' combined shot attempts came in right at the season average in spite of the fact that you were playing uptempo.

+1

Posted by oldresorter on 6/14/2012 6:44:00 PM (view original):
Mully - I'm with seble on this one, nothing would harm the game more than making the shot pattern too predictable.  Over the course of a season, it works perfect, any single game, it varies with random number theory, just like it should, just like it does it real life.

I agree with OR here. It's easy to pick out a game or two where the shot chart is completely skewed from the distrobution, but at the end of the season offenesive % on the player gameplan page is usually right where I want it to be.