Maybe. First off, let me say I’m relatively new at this, so if any of you veteran players see an obvious flaw in this idea, please speak up ASAP. I’ve noticed when we talk about putting together teams here, we generally use the starters’ percentages, total them up, and then say—“My Assist % is 105”, etc. But what about the rest of the team? Those seven other guys generally take up about 20-30% of your minutes and can make a difference in your team’s overall effectiveness. So, I am working with a calculation that works sort of like baseball’s ERA. An ERA gives you a pitcher’s earned runs per 9 innings—I’m trying to figure the number of a team’s turnovers, ASST, RB, and ORB per 240 minutes, which of course is the total number of player-minutes a team puts on the floor each game.

It works like this: take for instance a team’s total offensive rebounds (we’re speaking here of the real-life numbers of your prospective team). If you multiply the number of rebounds by 240 and divide by the team’s total minutes, you get the number of team offensive rebounds per game (that is, per 240 player-minutes). For example, prospective team “A” starters have an ORB% of 39.7, and the team totals 1287 ORBs. 240 X 1287 = 308880. Their total drafted minutes are 17152, so 308880/17152 = 18.0. The pure number is of course not so useful, but it is for comparison purposes. Observe:

Team “B” starters have an ORB% of 41.3%--so they should be clearly better in that area than team “A” (with their 39.7%). BUT—team “B” totaled 1278 ORB in 17247 minutes. So: 240 X 1278 = 306720/17247 = 17.78. In spite of team “B” starters having a higher ORB%, team “A” subs appear to make up the difference, by a margin of 18 to 17.78! It’s a small difference, but it does, I think, show the value of incorporating the bench’s contribution.

So? Does this make any sense? Is it fatally flawed somewhere? Am I missing something?