dh - Griffith was basically 100% a salary pick. Part of my strategy last year, which I tried to carry out again this year, was to not have any wasted minutes on the floor - in other words, sacrifice excellence in the starting lineup to avoid playing 1500 or more minutes of crap. Too many people get starstruck when drafting their starters, end up with almost nothing to spend on the bench, and that great starting lineup is ruined by all the crap they have to throw out there with it. Having no scrubs can do wonders - it can even help a team that starts TR Dunn win a title ;).

So anyway, despite the fact that there were plenty of people I liked better than Griffith in the abstract, no one else could give me high usage along with a good efg% at his pricetag. I don't like his turnovers at all, but all I needed was straight scoring - didn't want to pay for too many assists and rebounds I didn't really need.

On Drafting AK in the 2nd round.  I knew that I wanted 1 of 3 high minute point guards that were almost never drafted after the 1st round, and I had a couple of other players that I didn't think would be drafted, so I decided to draft those players in the last round and focus on getting some players that had some history of getting drafted in rounds well before they normally were.  That's right, I built my team around Moncrief and drafted him last.

One of the things I really like about my team is the fact that I will put a good defender on your top 3 scorers.  (Well Moncreif and even Gross are above average, but still)  As dh said, also, I will not waste money on defense; Barkley and Smith will be guarding your 4th and 5th options. 

My defensive rebounding is average; not weak but average.  I have almost enough assists.  My team average is 10.7 (Assist %*Player Min)/(sum (team minutes)) and I am pretty sure that is enough to cause FG% hit, but a pretty small one.  I find that anything more than 12.4 to be wasted money.

Posted by ashamael on 8/10/2011 7:24:00 AM (view original):
draft's over and none of his cheap seasons are any good so I feel confident in asking the following question without getting redlined:

Nobody drafted Deron Williams?  What the hell?  His 07-08 season is ******* rape in $47M.

That is all.

Have a great day!

If I would have known he'd be available in round three or four I never would have taken CP3 in the first. That 07-08 season of his is kicking *** for me in the UPL.

UPL- 22.9 ppg, 3.1 reb, 11.8 asst, 57-55.8-80 as his percentages...filthy! Honeymoon soon to be followed by a return to Earth for him I'm sure.

Also, my ODL team will be entered very late tonight.

Forget Sim effectiveness and think about real effectiveness and the era he played in, Anybody else think that Sid is the best player not in the Hall of Fame come Friday?  (Until Friday it is the Worm)

thanks for the evals, dh. You're absolutely right about defense in the frontcourt. 

Posted by appleseed1 on 8/10/2011 10:03:00 AM (view original):
Forget Sim effectiveness and think about real effectiveness and the era he played in, Anybody else think that Sid is the best player not in the Hall of Fame come Friday?  (Until Friday it is the Worm)

He belongs in the Hall to be sure.   Had to go against Philly and Boston throughout the early 80's and the Bucks held their own.  Not only a strong scorer, but won the first 2 DPOTY awards!   Short career has kept him out but I hope he gets in eventually.

Nice eval DH, thx.   Granger is the big question mark.  I went with usage over rebounding for a change.  My last 2-3 teams have been strong, but low usage rebounders at the SF haven't put me over the hump.    Quite a series last ODL, but I wasn't even able to use a computer for a month (don't drive drunk gents), so missed it.  Larry Smith had a huge game after Kareem fouled out!

Thx also tarheel for the evals.  good job.

Posted by appleseed1 on 8/10/2011 9:25:00 AM (view original):

On Drafting AK in the 2nd round.  I knew that I wanted 1 of 3 high minute point guards that were almost never drafted after the 1st round, and I had a couple of other players that I didn't think would be drafted, so I decided to draft those players in the last round and focus on getting some players that had some history of getting drafted in rounds well before they normally were.  That's right, I built my team around Moncrief and drafted him last.

One of the things I really like about my team is the fact that I will put a good defender on your top 3 scorers.  (Well Moncreif and even Gross are above average, but still)  As dh said, also, I will not waste money on defense; Barkley and Smith will be guarding your 4th and 5th options. 

My defensive rebounding is average; not weak but average.  I have almost enough assists.  My team average is 10.7 (Assist %*Player Min)/(sum (team minutes)) and I am pretty sure that is enough to cause FG% hit, but a pretty small one.  I find that anything more than 12.4 to be wasted money.

I don't know what you think is "average" defensive rebounding. Your team is most certainly below average in terms of defensive rebounding. The highest possible Dreb% you can put on the court, from among your 7 draftees, is 81%. And that's the best - If Andersen or Barkley is on the bench you're down in the low 70s, which is crazy low for a league like this. 

Now, you still have about 3500 minutes to fill, so you may be loading up on rebounding, but you don't have a ton of money left - by my calculations you had about 5.2 mil to spend on those 3500 minutes, so they won't exactly be the highest quality. You might have gotten some more rebounds, but they'll come with fouls, inefficiency, or both at that price, not to mention that you still needed a decent amount of guard minutes as well so you couldn't spend it all on rebounds.

So I  obviously can't see how you're filling it out, but given what you have so far, you certainly are well below average on defensive rebounding compared to the rest of the league. And I think 50% total ast is on the low side - I like to be between 60 and 70 personally (between 12 and 14 per person, to use your calculation) - but I do think your team's high efg% will make that not a huge problem.

In the end, as I said, your team is really hard to get a read on. And the last time you had a confusing, difficult-to-read ODL team, you won 55 games or so ;)

Been doing *alot* of thinking and analysis lately on some of the top centers and what order they should go in draft leagues.

I've been looking at 100% effective centers with 8%+ orb, 20%+ drb and efg% of 52% or higher.  Then I made a spreadsheet to figure out the **** WIS leaves out (like tov%, fta/poss, crb%) and started weeding some crap out.  Here's some food for thought for future leagues:


Wilt is the only guy to make an appearance with a season that is viable in the top 4 usage tiers (and has a good bottom tier one, but you're not drafting him for that).  This brings you incredible flexibility as later, if you find more talent coming your way that's offensive minded, you can use a tier 2, tier 3 or tier 4 usage Wilt to compliment accordingly.  If you find that you're coming up on more specialists type players, then you can go nuts with the tier 1 versions (44ppg is yummy, if you've never used it).  Mailman is kind of board light but has some excellent tier one seasons.


Of the guys in tier 2 usage, it seems to come down between Kareem, Howard & Shaq.  Kareem's got the minutes, low fouls and not a liability at the line going for him.  He doesn't, however, get to the line many times per possession.  Both Howard & Shaq do, yet they are terrible there.  Howard is the board authority while Shaq is the authority when it comes to not turning the ball over.  Both are possession based stats, so pick your flavor.  All 3 have excellent efg% (57%+).  Virtually all of Shaq & Kareem's worthwhile seasons are tier 2 usage.  There's a decent Moses season here, but you want the tier 3 one.  Olajuwon, sadly, doesn't belong in this discussion.  He gets to the line like Kareem, fouls more than Howard/Shaq, rebounds about like Shaq, turns the ball over about like Howard, and has a super inferior efg% to all of them. 

Some worthy thoughts here in tier 2 include a Mailman season, a Ewing season, a Zo season & a Duncan season.  None of these (with exception of Mailman) are really first round worthy, however, and the Mailman has some great seasons all over the place.  The Admiral has 3 seasons that fall into this tier, yet they are all inferior (total package) to a tier 3 season.  However, his 95-96 season is definitely intriguing... low tov%, good crb%.  Just kind of a blah efg%.  I've used it before and didn't care for it.


tier 3 usage is tricky, and I believe can be a thorn in an early drafter's plan.  Moses, several more Howards, and the Admiral all appear here with some excellent seasons... yet it makes the rest of your draft immensely complicated if you want to get everything out of the stud you can.  You want this guy to be your top usage guy (for many reasons I won't go into now) on the floor... but fulfilling the requirements to not run into possession penalties (both team & individual) make this really difficult.  Especially when you get into the 24% usages and below.  Still, I think Moses, Admiral, & even some Gilmore seasons are completely appropriate to be drafted 10-20.  Moses can still be called a top 10 pick, but I think it's more borderline now than it was.  Howard should probably almost always be the 10-11 season... and you might want to use Gilmore's excellent tier 4 usage season as it is a true board lord and isn't so foul prone (and still has amazing efg%).  Again, the Admiral's best season(s) fall into this bracket, not the one above.  Shawn Kemp is one of several guys that come later that fit well in this category.  There's a nice Bob McAdoo season here that's kind of board light and fta light, so it's definitely a 2nd day (at best) pick.  More like a mid 2nd rounder.   Walt Bellamy makes an appearance here, too, as kind of a surprise.  Poor defense, high fouls, high turnovers keep him from being anything better than a 3rd rounder (and that's probably pushing it).


I'm not going down to tier 4.  The only tier 4 usage center you might consider on day 1 is the versions of Wilt and *maybe* A-Train.


With that in mind, here's my tentative ranking of the Centers for a typical $47-$52M draft league:

1.  Wilt - ultimate flexibility with usage tiering.  A true board lord no matter what version you go with.

2.  Howard - His boards, fta/poss & incredible efg% paired up with a tier 2 usage makes him the real sim superman.  Oh and his D is nice.  Oh and he can be a PF if you come across a great 100% C-only guy later.  Bonus!

3.  Shaq - Low tov% is the ticket here.  It brings the possession arrow back towards you even though Dwight is better on the boards.  Very cost effective for many of his seasons (94-95 is ridiculous in case you've never used it).

4.  Kareem - Yeah, I'm putting him ahead of Moses.  Several good seasons with a lot of minutes, reasonable tov%, reasonable crb% and a tremendous efg%.  Only downfall is his lack of getting to the line.

5.  Moses - Tons of boards, tons of minutes.  Nice fta/poss... since he has a lower usage ,that's no surprise.  Neither is his horrid tov%  54% efg% ain't the best ever, but he can truly be a compliment to another tier 3 scorer.  This is probably the one guy out of all of these you don't want to build around to feature.  Oh and he's 100% pf.  Bonus.

6.  Admiral - His sophomore campaign is just **** good.  55% efg%, lots of ftas, good boards, high enough in tier 3's usage to build around reasonably easy, not a terrible tov% and has 100 def.  Other seasons work well, too, and can even branch into the tier 2 versions if the right players aren't coming your way later.

7.  Mailman - He can be a tier 1 god or a tier 2 god.  He doesn't grab the rock like the rest of these guys, but he's good enough as long as you pair him with the right front court mate and don't forget that guards grab boards, too.  If he ever sniffed 35% creb% in the same season as 55% efg% he'd jump Admiral and probably Moses, too.  Oh he can be (actually is) a PF.  Bonus.

8.  Gilmore - great seasons at tier 3 & tier 4 usage make him a wonderful compliment guy.  He's mid/late 1st worthy.  I like his 4th tier usage season better than 3rd.  That tier 4 season is very nice to combine with a good tier 2 wingman, or a pair of tier 3 guys.

9.  Duncan - He's here for one reason:  His 06-07 season.  It's got the efg% & crb% of a 2nd rounder with not terrible fta/poss numbers and a not terrible tov%.  He doesn't get many fouls called either.  Defense is nice.  If he had more minutes, this would be a slam dunk.  He gets the PF bonus.

10.  Olajuwon - The only reason he makes the top 10 now is that the environment changed drastically and suddenly, it's harder to find good defenders that do other things, too.  He really needs to be paired with a Worm or Big Ben type and then immediately helped offensively with a high efg%, high usage mate in the back court (his RL teammate for a couple of years, Clyde the Glide is perfect for this).  Otherwise, building around the Dream will turn into a nightmare.  He gets the PF bonus.

honorable mentions:  Ewing, Zo, Kemp & Bellamy all suffer from the same problem:  Fouls.  Kemp rebounds better, Ewing & Zo are higher tier usage.  Bellamy just kind of makes baby Jesus cry but can do if you need a tier 3 big man later.  These guys are all valid starting in the third (Kemp in the 2nd is okay).  Amare is good later, but only for a team that has some serious rebounding (the Kidd or Rodman teams can look here).  Kevin McHale is like Amare, but can also be valuable at SF.  McAdoo is the guy here in the honorable mentions that I might put ahead of Hakeem.  The only reason not to is that his best season is kind of board light & is tier 3.  I think he's 2nd round material... and probably still better than Olajuwon (sim-wise).  Oh hey, Dirk... hard to compare him to the rest of these guys, but he's - for the most part - a tier 2, extremely low tov% god with reasonable efg% that wouldn't know an offensive board if it knocked him to the gym floor.  He's okay if you have Rodman.  Didn't that discussion come up earlier?  lol


Alot of this info can be helpful in other type of leagues as well.  Playing guys like Mailman, Stoudemire or McHale at C when you'd normally put them at PF can be a smart move (opens up the Worm Hole).  You can build basically the same supporting cast and change out the centerpiece and see which player fits your style more.

Any questions, thoughts or discussion?

I have so much to learn about the sim!! Some great posts in here. Thanks to all for the free education.

Instead of worrying about usage tiers, I try to build a team with a usage around 20%  (sum(player usage* min)/(team min)) but below 21%.  I'm sure you can tell me why it's the wrong approach, but it's been working for me lately.  Then, if my 5 best players have a usage much above 105 I will "bench" one of them in favor of a lower usage player, and hope I can keep a team on the floor with about 100-105-110% usage most of the time.  My thought is that even if you have the proper usage tiers on the floor, you might still incur a penelty if you have players taking more shots than they should. 

I'm a big fan of defensive flexability at this point, so I would avoid taking Chamberlain as long as possible, but, if he fell to #5, as he did in this draft, I would have to take him there.

My list for a 52 mil league would look like:

1.  Moses
2. Chamberlain
3. Garnett (100% SF!  Huge Def Flex)
4. Brand
5. Olajuwon
6. Duncan
7. Admiral
8. Duncan
9. Horace Grant
10. Kareem (and he falls right off of the list for a $47 mil league.  He's too expensive.)

HM: Howard (He's certainly in the top for quality, but for this list, both quanity and quality are important) Jerry Lucas (I'm as surprised and anybody; he's an offensive monster, but clearly not even or ever a 1st round pick unless and until people start taking him and winning with him)  Connie Hawkins (How good would a Brand, Grant, Hawkins front line be!?! )

Of course, unless I start having the kind of results ashamael has had, you should listen to him; I am clearly insane.

Yeah that's the wrong approach with usage.

4x 21% = 84 + 17 = 101 so you're good, right?

No.  You only have 9 usage points and will suffer both a team possession penalty and multiple individual possession penalties.

So yeah, usage is key.

Defensive flexibility is key, yet if a center is 100% at SF, they should be a SF and never considered a center.  Though Garnett's 07-08 season is rather tasty... I always think of him and Brand as SFs as that's where they give you the most advantage.

Lucas's best season(s) are all 4th tier or below usage, which I said I wasn't talking about.  4th tier usage is a support player and virtually worthless as a top pick.  He's an early 2nd rounder/late 1st rounder and has been for quite some time.  Not sure where you're getting thta info).  Hawkins falls into the SF category, as does Horace Grant (who clearly doesn't even belong on this page - he's again a support player, not a monster to build around).

ps - Kareem ain't too expensive.

Wouldn't Walton's 2265 minute season fit in there somewhere? I mean seriously, if he hads a 3500 minute season with those numbers, wouldn't he be 1st pick in the draft material?

a)  He doesn't have a 3500 minute season with those numbers (or any 3500 minute season), only a 2265 minute season
b)  He's 4th tier usage
c)  His efg% is only 53%
d)  His tov% is high

b) means he's a support player which is not what my post was about (it was about a center you could build around)

I'm not going down to tier 4.  The only tier 4 usage center you might consider on day 1 is the versions of Wilt and *maybe* A-Train.

a) means he's not worth looking at before round 2... he's a late 2nd round support guy at best.  Even if his usage was higher and his minutes were more, c) makes him inferior to Howard and d) makes him inferior to anybody but Howard