Posted by pexetera on 3/31/2026 6:25:00 AM (view original):
Interesting. While it frequently references them, it doesn't actually know what the usage penalties are. I think it's greatly underestimating both the team and individual usage penalties, which alters shooting efficiency, and would cause it to rank some teams too highly and others not enough. We've seen what happens when teams don't obey the usage rules, it can result in some ridiculous shooting percentages.
I'm also curious if it knows that the SIM compares the two teams cumulative rebound percentage on the floor (OREB vs DREB) at any given time to determine the probability of who wins the possession for every missed shot, which causes some clubs to win the possession battle by a large margin. This would have a bigger impact on possessions than fouls and turnovers.
A good rule of thumb to determine ranking would be to have it compare all squads cumulative OREB and DREB percentages to make an adjustment to each squads estimated number of possessions per game, and then multiply by the weighted average shooting efficiency of each team to calculate what it believes each teams average scoring per game will be.
It could take into account potential usage penalties to adjust each teams shooting efficiency, and then also adjust team shooting efficiency up or down based on comparing each teams average defense (2% shift in shooting for every 10 defensive points above or below the league average), and then use the new estimated average shooting efficiency to calculate teams average scoring per game.. and then come up with a ranking based on that. You could also ask it to recommend what defensive strategy to use against each opponent... if people want that information shared.
I absolutely agree. I can give it that prompt and let you know what it says. I will also state it 100% didn't understand usage, especially what happens if you have too much. It assumed a lot of the time that you face the same individual usage penalty for having too much usage as too little. Also, it 100% isn't understanding how defense works either. These flaws are why I haven't posted the Podcasts yet because it's misunderstandings are much more evident when it has to expand on its logic more.
Here are some extra information/prompts I am giving I am giving it: however, I understand that I am no expert and the information I am giving it outside of ash could be flawed as well if you see anything I say as wrong or flawed let me know, it helps a lot!:
A clarification on the cumulative usage penalty or the Individual usage penalty:
There is no “Individual usage penalty” for being OVER 115%, but only for being under 100% cumulative usage%. The reason that too much usage can hurt you is two fold. 1: more usage costs more money for leagues with a salary cap. So spending money on the extra usage is a waist. The other reason it hurts is that it spreads your shooting too thin. Let’s “pretend” usage= shots taken. You only get 100 shots per game. If you have a player slotted to take 30 shots a game but your teams “cumulative” shots are 130, your 30 shot player is going to have his total shots reduced to match that 100 shots per game total. Your 30 shot player might only then take 23 shots. That thinning happens to all 5 players on the court at that time the usage is too high. N Not only that, statistically you are risking variables to bring down you shooting percentage. See, the engine is basically a series of coin flips. The more coin flips = closer to your statistical average, if you reduce the number coin flips you are reducing the chances for your shooting to stabilize.
Some baseline/minimum cumulative stat goals to be competitive:
+100 usage%
+30 OReb%
+80 DReb%
+50 assist%
Note on assist%- If you have under 60 cumulative assist% you will have a penalty to team eFG% but if you run uptempo you will see a bump to team eFG% that usually cancels out the minor penalty for being under 60 cumulative assist% (about 5% either direction). However, if the cumulative assist% is under 50%, the penalty becomes to great to overcome with just an up tempo offense.
A clarification on how defense works in the whatifsports engine:
While this is true: "If your opponent doesn't have their positioning set to correctly defend your team, they will foul more. Most players will leave the positioning at 0 by default, therefore if you have an extreme inside-outside team (ie high paint% scorers mixed with high perimeter% scorers - ie 3pt bombers), you cause more fouls. Couple this with players that already have a high rate of going to the line and suddenly you can start winning much more than if you had not.” That is the major benefit to having outside along with inside shooting because the defense in the sim does not AUTOMATICALLY collapse on non shooting teams. HOWEVER, if your team does NOT have outside shooting threats your opponent CAN manually set their team to collapse the paint against your team specifically. So if you don’t have outside shooting you run the risk of a savvy owner noticing and collapsing the paint against your team as a whole; however, the same thing can occur if a team has no insider scoring as well. If you have too much perimeter scoring and no inside threat a team can be set to abandon the paint and defend the perimeter so, balance is king. It's worth mentioning again that “most owners will leave the positioning at 0 by default” Also, having a stretch 4 or 5 does not necessarily pull defenders from the paint, that isn't how the engine works, it doesn’t mimic a real basketball game in that way.
Notes on Rebounding: the rebounding portion of the Possession Battle is literally a probability engine based on cumulative rebounding. The sim compares the two teams' cumulative OREB% and DREB% on the floor to assign the probability of who wins the rebound for every missed shot. Therefore, a team with a massive cumulative rebounding advantage will mathematically generate more possessions over the course of a game than a team relying purely on low turnovers. This is why higher is always better. While the 30% and 80% baselines are good minimums to hit, they are just that MINIMUMS to be competitive, more is ALWAYS better. Say one team has 40% cumulative OReb% vs a team that has 90 cumulative DReb%. Those two totals add up to 130% which isn’t possible, you can’t have 130% of rebounds, so the average adjust by ratio. In this case the ODDS are adjusted to 100%. In the case of this example the offense would grab 30.8% of rebounds while the Defense would grab 69.2 % of available rebounds. The higher the number of Dreb% and OReb% the higher percentage of rebounds you will grab, always, no matter the total numbers of Reb% on the floor.
3/31/2026 9:55 AM (edited)