Earlier today I was trying to decide between two players, thinking about which one I should put at PG and which one I should put at SG. Then I got to thinking about why a coach would ever use the better player at PG.

In Tark world at DI, a cursory glance at several Big 6 conferences left me unable to find a single player averaging 4 assists per game. In real life, 148 players in DI had at least 4 assists per game. 46 had 5 or more per game. In HD 5 or more assists per game seems like Player of the Year territory. Obviously in HD, players get far fewer assists than their real-life counterparts.

Given this, say you've got a guard who is a marginally better shooter and passer than a second guard. Even with the better passing ratings, is there any reason to put him at PG over SG? Ball distribution seems to be somewhat unimportant in HD, so would it make more sense to always put the better shooter at SG? This is not a criticism of HD, but a serious question. Has anyone else reached the same conclusion as me?

I'm not sure that assists tell us fully that ball distribution and passing doesnt matter - it may be that the stat isnt generated with the same frequency as in real life, but that passing ability and hoop IQ both matter a bunch.  That has been my working assumption - but I cant prove it

How and where I play my guards is dependent on what offense I'm running. In your example I would play the guard who is a marginally better shooter/passer at SG in a Triangle but at PG for a FB or Motion set. For a Flex I'd prefer to put my better passer at PG but it depends on the talent of the other guards.

Although assist stats may not show it, as fd said, my best teams have always had a good PG running the offense

prez - I would say in half the cases, my best player plays PG.  I do not differentiate between offense type when making that decision. 

Here is how I do it, I pick my PG first.  If I feel my 3rd best guy can do it, I will play him, if it takes my best guy, he will do it.  I have a team right now that my best PG is starting at PF, first  time I have ever tried that - makes for great fun IMO.

Where does that 'feel' come from, same place as everyone else gets it, IQ, sp, ath, bh, pa, stam, per, def, etc, etc, etc?  Most my teams Icould not even tell you if I run flex or motion or triangle, it plays zero role in my choices.

Which team is that?  Just curious to see what the player looks like.  The PG at PF.

http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/PlayerProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=0&pid=1632376

furry that is scary that you would know which team it was, nice catch!  Since we are doing a little more gameplanning and strategy discussion on the main board, I found this team's deptch chart planning to be a little bit of fun, take a crack at it, I in no way am sure I got it right, more experimenting than anything.  Levellie is the best guard playing PF, frazier is a high pot guy taking a year to learn the game, team lost two EE's at PF last season, so found itself a bit short, and the area had great guards and weak bigs, so I decided to try a 4 guard offense.

Name	Yr.	Pos.	A	SPD	REB	DE	BLK	LP	PE	BH	P	WE	ST	DU	FT	TOT
Luther Anderson	Sr.	PG	79	93	19	84	7	1	77	71	99	53	80	58	C+	721
Dario Zoellick	Sr.	PG	94	76	39	99	33	38	80	98	75	90	95	52	C+	869
Ethan Frazier	Jr.	PG	61	93	4	81	2	27	88	95	93	66	88	99	B	797
Nick Leveille	Sr.	SG	99	80	58	99	62	78	66	90	99	89	93	51	B-	964
Donald Paulin	So.	SG	69	72	13	71	2	13	85	64	59	34	72	65	C	619
Paul Harrison	Fr.	SG	95	64	44	83	24	74	90	69	82	16	66	71	B-	778
Timmy Lewis	Fr.	SG	93	78	36	92	5	63	53	66	88	32	54	44	C-	704
Eric Paden	Jr.	SF	79	75	51	84	42	69	80	67	67	55	79	63	B-	811
Larry Moore	Sr.	PF	73	41	92	91	65	89	7	52	66	80	79	44	B	779
Hoyt Tirado	Sr.	C	99	17	96	99	99	79	6	8	31	67	86	60	C+	747
Chris Edwards	Fr.	C	62	30	93	72	91	79	1	27	47	4	53	56	C	615
Patrick Fraizer	Fr.	C	57	31	62	46	59	39	5	24	10	74	75	50	D+	532

Is there a reason why Paul Davis:

http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/PlayerProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=0&pid=1606333

Never seems to get any assists?     Is that automatically going to happen when your point guard is one of your primary scorers?(First time I have actually had my PG slot be filled with a primary scorer)

I've made a post about the awful assists dropoff in the recent engine. There were many examples of returning pg's experiencing a significant decline in assist totals from their jr to sr years after the sim update. That said, it was never confirmed that assists actually helped your team. They may have only been backwards assigned after a made shot. So even with high assists counts it's not a given that great passing pg's were actually adding value although I would love to think that my favorite player all time was adding value to his teammates as a pass first pg.

I have been successful with scoring PG's in the past, so I don't really think it hurts a guy's shooting to play him at PG.  I generally play my fastest good ballhandler/passer at the point.  If he also has good PE, then he will also get his fair share of the distro, otherwise he is just in there to run the offense and distribute the ball.

Keep in mind that your PG's ratings should have a big effect on turnovers, too.  It might be interesting to look at A/TO ratios for PG's of varying skill levels facing similar defenders before trying to reach any conclusions about the importance of the position.

Do A/TO ratios matter if A is a backward engineered stat and has no effect on the success of the scoring players shot % and are only generated after a shot is made?

What's worrisome is that assist totals have drastically dropped off 2 seasons ago - so either the PA rating is valued less or assists were a bogus stat to begin with. The top pgs averaged near or above 9apg 3+ seasons ago and now there not even 1 player above 5.8apg after a 5 game sample in ALL of world 1.   

How did I never see these 9 APG PGs?  I mean I wasn't around for a LONG time under the old engine, but 6 was always about the upper bound of what I saw...

I don't remember seeing them either.  Wiggens, from my Brandeis team in Rupp something like 9 seasons back was among the national assist leaders. . and only averaged about five his senior year.  I don't remember allot of nine assist pg PG's.

Pretty much it's impossible for PG's to average a high amount of assists if they are taking a decent amount of shots but that has always been the case in HD. However I do not think that means PGs are overvalued. I remember 1 season when I had a freshman backup PG and my team was doing terribly after I expected them to do well, I was something like 1-7 to start the season. I moved the freshman PG with his bad IQ to SG and put the guy I had at starting SG to backup PG who was a junior or senior so he had good IQ and I went 19-2 the rest of the regular season. I made this chance because after reading the PbP I noticed a significant dropoff whenever the freshman PG came in the game. It's not only about assists that he gets it's that a low IQ PG will turn it over more often and WON'T get assists that a better PG will get. I can't say with confidence that there's a major difference between a 60 passing PG and a 90 passing PG but I'd guess that the 90 passing PG with the same IQ would be worth about .5 points per game more than the 60 passing PG. Which over the course of the season would be 1 or 2 wins.

I think assists fall in line with real life.  The leader in d1 in the 09-10 season had about 6.5 and i think only a couple guys had over 6.  They play more minutes IRL than they do here so it seems pretty realistic.  Also, here is Jon Henson, my guy who averages a lot of assists.