Posted by dahsdebater on 7/27/2012 3:47:00 AM (view original):

Posted by disasteruss on 7/26/2012 7:55:00 AM (view original):
bdpoor, I think what he really means is just that the 45% shooter might be shooting a worse percentage but just gets to the line more, so thus is a more efficient scorer than he might seem bc of his %. But it should be pretty easy to look at PPG and minutes played to see that discrepancy.

Scoring efficiency isn't just about FG%. Points per minute and points per possession are very important, too

I fail to see how points per minute is a meaningful measure of scoring efficiency.  Anything volume-dependent is an inherently bad measure of efficiency.  Just look at AI's stats...

If you fail to see how a guy who scores 20 points in 10 minutes played versus a guy who scores 10 points in 20 minutes played over the course of the season is significant, I'm not sure what to tell you. Yes, it is affected by volume, but that doesn't make it meaningless. Maybe I shouldn't have used that in the sentence following the word "efficiency".  I was just trying to point out that FG% isn't the end all, be all for judging how good a scorer a player is.

Do missed shots on foul calls count against FG%? I didnt think it did but I could be wrong.

Posted by reddyred on 7/27/2012 9:27:00 AM (view original):
Do missed shots on foul calls count against FG%? I didnt think it did but I could be wrong.

They definitely do not count against FG%.  Check out the boxscore below.  My Center, Persaud, was 0/0 in the game with 2 FT attempts.  If you look at the pbp, he got fouled while shooting (and missing) 30 seconds into the game.

http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=8470492

Posted by gillispie1 on 7/27/2012 12:52:00 AM (view original):

Posted by killbatman on 7/25/2012 2:29:00 PM (view original):
I wanted to elaborate on a point red made about stats vs. ratings.  I'll go almost completely by ratings at the start of the season..I might consider past seasons' stats a little, but not much.  Then maybe about 5-6 games into the season, I'll start monitoring the stats and giving them more and more weight in my mind.  Call it superstitious if you want, but I definitely watch for streaks in this game (e.g. the infamous SR slump).  I'm much more likely to bench or lower the distro on an underperforming player than to just sit back and hope he turns it around. 

Lineups seem to "click" in a way I don't understand sometimes, so I think it's important to watch the results.  I'm a big believer in tweaking the distro throughout the season and eventually settling into a "best lineup" before the postseason starts.

this is a pretty controversial issue in HD - do you set distro/depth chart by ratings or by stats? i guess the logical answer, in many peoples minds is, just play by the ratings, that is all that goes into the game (and settings). and i see the merit in it. plus, early on, stats mean SO LITTLE. you might have a guard shoot 6 shots a game, a decent number, and after 7 games hes got 42 attempts. its really easy on that small of a sample for him to miss a few extra - just making or missing 2 extra baskets at that number of attempts has a 10% swing! (2 extra makes over expectation is 5% higher). and thats a VERY VERY moderate variation on 42 attempts. so you might have a 45% shooter shooting 35% or 55% and really that is not a big deal, on that sample size.

i personally am a coach who makes changes based on actual outcomes, but i usually wait at least like 10-14 games (and at 10 i usually still won't tweak more than maybe 1 because i still want to extra data). my reasoning is this - none of us are perfect. and nobody knows WTF is going on inside that sim engine :) so you might be a good coach and think your 70 ath 70 spd 80 per guard might be better than your 40 ath 85 spd 85 per guard, so you give him more distro. but maybe hes under performing, because you were incorrect in your assumption! after a couple hundred attempts, its hard to write it ALL off as luck, so i do start to adjust.

the other part i mentioned is, nobody REALLY knows what the sim engine is doing. you might have a better scorer who is getting penalized by fighting the best defender, a slightly worse scorer getting penalized fighting also a really good defender, but your 3rd scorer might be playing backup or sf or something, and wind up with easier competition. so, he might pull the best stats on the team, and he might do so even if you ran the season a million times. plus, there are definitely times the sim engine just does some weird stuff. so i think its unrealistic to think there is nothing to be gained by looking at the actual outcome. YOU JUST REALLY HAVE TO BE CAREFUL OF SAMPLE SIZE!! especially on fg%. you can do it on mpg and stuff a lot easier if you check the box score carefully for fouls etc.

in the end of the day, if i am highly confident i understand the abilities of a player who is under perfoming, i still generally stick with my gut, ratings wise. i mean often ppl go damn, that guard i expect to be 45/40% is 40/35%. you know how likely that is in a simple bell curve? quite likely. so you can kind of turn to stats here and there, especially the less certain you are about what you are doing. but when you are confident in your understanding of the mechanics and ratings, you have to 80-90% rely on what should work and 10-20% on the actual results.

I like hearing your thoughts on this.  Completely agree about sample size, and that's why I didn't really offer any guidelines about stats like I did with ratings.  It can be tough to separate these two:
1. player is systematically underperforming and I don't understand why
2. player is temporarily underperforming due to the nature of stat distributions, or other factors like competition

I definitely rely a lot on my gut to judge how to react.  Like you, I feel pretty confident at this point that I can judge a player by his ratings.  But if something isn't making sense to me, I've learned it's usually better to make a change.  They don't hand out trophies at the end of the season for "best team if things had gone like I expected them to."

Posted by disasteruss on 7/27/2012 7:05:00 AM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 7/27/2012 3:47:00 AM (view original):

Posted by disasteruss on 7/26/2012 7:55:00 AM (view original):
bdpoor, I think what he really means is just that the 45% shooter might be shooting a worse percentage but just gets to the line more, so thus is a more efficient scorer than he might seem bc of his %. But it should be pretty easy to look at PPG and minutes played to see that discrepancy.

Scoring efficiency isn't just about FG%. Points per minute and points per possession are very important, too

I fail to see how points per minute is a meaningful measure of scoring efficiency.  Anything volume-dependent is an inherently bad measure of efficiency.  Just look at AI's stats...

If you fail to see how a guy who scores 20 points in 10 minutes played versus a guy who scores 10 points in 20 minutes played over the course of the season is significant, I'm not sure what to tell you. Yes, it is affected by volume, but that doesn't make it meaningless. Maybe I shouldn't have used that in the sentence following the word "efficiency".  I was just trying to point out that FG% isn't the end all, be all for judging how good a scorer a player is.

It's not so much about efficiency, just about taking advantage of scoring opportunites regardless of where they come from. At this point in HD where athleticism seems to be just about the most important stat, it often becomes difficult to find the perfect player and often we sacrifice things like perimeter or LP, but if the player can draw fouls, it becomes just as useful.

There's a 2 way street here. on one hand your guys shooting % is going to be lower, because his low stats don't support high %. On the other hand, if he can draw a foul on a shot he would have missed, it's still another attempt at points, plus if you have enough guys who can draw fouls, you might be able to get your opponents into foul trouble which puts their starters on the floor less often.

FT% might be anti efficiency, because of how many shots you miss with low ratings, but at the same time, it brings you an opportunity to get 2 attempts to score per shot (the shot itself and FT)

So as I said before, if the player is only shooting 5% less, but he gets maybe 5 more FTA per game, it's something to take into consideration, because if you reduce his distro, it might have a double impact (less fouls drawn/ less foul trouble for the other team) and (less FTA)

Posted by killbatman on 7/27/2012 12:54:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 7/27/2012 12:52:00 AM (view original):

Posted by killbatman on 7/25/2012 2:29:00 PM (view original):
I wanted to elaborate on a point red made about stats vs. ratings.  I'll go almost completely by ratings at the start of the season..I might consider past seasons' stats a little, but not much.  Then maybe about 5-6 games into the season, I'll start monitoring the stats and giving them more and more weight in my mind.  Call it superstitious if you want, but I definitely watch for streaks in this game (e.g. the infamous SR slump).  I'm much more likely to bench or lower the distro on an underperforming player than to just sit back and hope he turns it around. 

Lineups seem to "click" in a way I don't understand sometimes, so I think it's important to watch the results.  I'm a big believer in tweaking the distro throughout the season and eventually settling into a "best lineup" before the postseason starts.

this is a pretty controversial issue in HD - do you set distro/depth chart by ratings or by stats? i guess the logical answer, in many peoples minds is, just play by the ratings, that is all that goes into the game (and settings). and i see the merit in it. plus, early on, stats mean SO LITTLE. you might have a guard shoot 6 shots a game, a decent number, and after 7 games hes got 42 attempts. its really easy on that small of a sample for him to miss a few extra - just making or missing 2 extra baskets at that number of attempts has a 10% swing! (2 extra makes over expectation is 5% higher). and thats a VERY VERY moderate variation on 42 attempts. so you might have a 45% shooter shooting 35% or 55% and really that is not a big deal, on that sample size.

i personally am a coach who makes changes based on actual outcomes, but i usually wait at least like 10-14 games (and at 10 i usually still won't tweak more than maybe 1 because i still want to extra data). my reasoning is this - none of us are perfect. and nobody knows WTF is going on inside that sim engine :) so you might be a good coach and think your 70 ath 70 spd 80 per guard might be better than your 40 ath 85 spd 85 per guard, so you give him more distro. but maybe hes under performing, because you were incorrect in your assumption! after a couple hundred attempts, its hard to write it ALL off as luck, so i do start to adjust.

the other part i mentioned is, nobody REALLY knows what the sim engine is doing. you might have a better scorer who is getting penalized by fighting the best defender, a slightly worse scorer getting penalized fighting also a really good defender, but your 3rd scorer might be playing backup or sf or something, and wind up with easier competition. so, he might pull the best stats on the team, and he might do so even if you ran the season a million times. plus, there are definitely times the sim engine just does some weird stuff. so i think its unrealistic to think there is nothing to be gained by looking at the actual outcome. YOU JUST REALLY HAVE TO BE CAREFUL OF SAMPLE SIZE!! especially on fg%. you can do it on mpg and stuff a lot easier if you check the box score carefully for fouls etc.

in the end of the day, if i am highly confident i understand the abilities of a player who is under perfoming, i still generally stick with my gut, ratings wise. i mean often ppl go damn, that guard i expect to be 45/40% is 40/35%. you know how likely that is in a simple bell curve? quite likely. so you can kind of turn to stats here and there, especially the less certain you are about what you are doing. but when you are confident in your understanding of the mechanics and ratings, you have to 80-90% rely on what should work and 10-20% on the actual results.

I like hearing your thoughts on this.  Completely agree about sample size, and that's why I didn't really offer any guidelines about stats like I did with ratings.  It can be tough to separate these two:
1. player is systematically underperforming and I don't understand why
2. player is temporarily underperforming due to the nature of stat distributions, or other factors like competition

I definitely rely a lot on my gut to judge how to react.  Like you, I feel pretty confident at this point that I can judge a player by his ratings.  But if something isn't making sense to me, I've learned it's usually better to make a change.  They don't hand out trophies at the end of the season for "best team if things had gone like I expected them to."

agree completely. this is exactly why i am a huge advocate of taking game planning seriously, regularly - its the only way to get comfortable enough to be able to have good intuition about what you are seeing compared to what you expect to see. its possibly the hardest thing in the whole game - deciding if a player is good/bad for real or if its the statistical distribution.

as many coaches have pointed out, a whole season is a small sample, so if you just looked at 1 dude, its virtually impossible to know. but if you watch enough players over enough seasons, you start to get a good feeling for what to expect, what kind of variation to expect, and then you can identify when things are out of whack. its still never a game of certainty, but in any game of chance, you are better off to have better chances :)