Some quick facts about the last ODL and fga/m
The league average in the sim was 93.36 fga, per team, per game. I don’t have the EXACT number of minutes per team, but with OT and some total minute rounding (some games your players add up to 241, 242, 239 etc) and my own observations I’d put the league average at about 19,800 (my own team had 19,785). SO, that’s about 241.46 mpg per team, meaning the league average for fga/m in the sim was about 93.36/241.46 = .387
The .387 is on a per player basis, so multiply that by 5 to get the league average for 5 guys on the court, which is 1.935. Hit that and IMO you should avoid the individual penalty for the most part.
FGA/min in the sim is determined by more than just RL fga/m (for example team orb’s play an obvious role.)
It’s easy to check what your RL fga for any 5 guys that will be on the court at the same time will be, for example with my current squad, if I start D Walker, R Allen, D Granger, T Chandler, and Shaq, then based on the versions I could use my total FGA/ min for my five starters would be found as follows
Walker: 696/2883 = .241
Ray: 1500/3022 = .496
Granger: 1277/2424 = .527
Chandler: 407/2059 = .198
Shaq: 1665/3163 = .526
So my the total for my five starters is: 1.989, which is higher than the league ave of 1.935 produced by the sim last season, so IMO, no one in this group would be very likely to hit the individual penalty in the sim while this group of 5 is on the floor.
I don’t think you REALLY need to be as high as 1.935 to avoid the penalty , because look at my team and the 19 total usage points for the above versions. That’s a huge number and while I do plan to start all 5 my three usage guys will only be sharing about 11mpg with all-3 on the floor since Ray/Granger will play all 48mpg of my SF or SG minutes and I’m actually going to use the 95% efficient at Center Granger for the 8-9 mpg that Shaq sits out (which is a topic for another time, but since I will have 4-5 guys with .5 usage and I don’t have a high usage back-up for Shaq, I HAVE to use Granger there to avoid exposure to the TEAM usage penalty.
If you can get to .375 per player or 1.875 for 5 guys then you are likely in the ball park of avoiding the penalty IMO. I’ll share one more thing in a few minutes, and btw I let this eat up my time to do more evals tonight, sorry about that.
Another important note, the top 1/3 of the league in terms of sim fga was 8 for 8 with winning records. This group of 8 included the league champs, runners up, 3 of the 4 division winners, a 52-win #2 seed, both #3 seeds, a #6 seed, the best non-playoff team in the league that went 45-37 and just missed the playoffs at 7th in a conference, and finally a 42-40 team. The first team with a losing record was 9th in the league in FGA/m.
Like I said RL FGA/m does not account for 100% of FGA/m in the sim, but IMO it does play a role, and based on last season’s results this is a variable that is worth being aware of.