I'm sure this has been discussed before, but if you sign a guy, promised him to start, but then don't start him, what happens? A hit to his WE I assume? Is there a certain magic number of starts needed to meet the promise?

Yes his WE will drop and he may transfer.

Most players are happy with 21 or 22 starts out of the 26 regular season games.

joe,  i used to use an 80% rule for starts and minutes, and that never failed me.  but toward the end of oldave1.0 or perhaps even since i returned last fall i read things that contridicted that.  (but i still dont recall personally having situations that contradicted that)

Have you seen or heard of verifiable cases where a player was not happy with 80%?  
now, i can see situations where a player would get unhappy with 22 out of 26.... namely if he only starts 6 of the first 10, i think wed all agree he is likely to get ****** at that point and i never testd it enough to know if you can get him un-****** by starting him in the last 16 games.

Also, i know promises dont carry into postseason,  but i think i recall that i suspected that a players last evaluation of whether he is ****** or not comes at game 23 or 24 or around the last grade report.  but that is just a vague recollection.   also cant recall if players are continually evaluatiing their pissedness,  such that you can get angry email at any point as soon as you drop below a threshold... or do they just evaluate that a few times per season?


the one thing that shocked me was the player who got injured and had a very low du and recovered very slowly.  i had only promised him 15minutes not starts, but i think he was getting 18 min prior to injury, and then i sat him for 5 games while his health returned and he got ******.  i was able to get him unpissed by getting him back into the rotation at that point (which id prefer not to have done as he was still 80%).   I would think that is a major factor to consider with promised starts,  if dude twists an ankle,  youre probably gonna have to play him in at least soem of those games when he is at 60-70%.

I think starts <> minutes.  I have never had any problems with 80% for starts, as long as they stay above 80% the entire time.

But for promised minutes, I have had plenty of kids that needed 90% to be happy..even though 80% will work for many.  My impression is 90% is the upper limit on minutes.

thanks spas... good to know

Regarding Starts
1) Important to avoid 2 consecutive non-starts. That will tick him off even if you started him 10 games in a row (happened to me)
2) Try to keep OVER 80% all season. It is true you can probably bench for 4 games, but spread out strategically. Some can get ticked off to the point that they never recover, so be careful.
3) Conference Tourney games DO affect trying to recover WE. I had a guy lose 30+ points on his WE after game #24, then I started him the rest of the way out. He had no change until AFTER the 2nd Conference Tourney game, where he then recovered most of his WE points.
4) I do not know if not starting in a Conference Tourney game would affect negatively. I would suspect not, or it likely would have been brought up in the past.

good stuff bob.  didnt know that...especially #3

I don't think #1 is right. Percentage of games started is all that is important in my experience.

Quick case study. I promised a start to a guy with 31 WE this season. I did not start him in game 3, then again in game 8 (his WE had crept up to 33 by this point). After the game 8 non-start, he got ******, WE dropped, sent me an email. I put him back in the starting lineup. After game 12, his WE goes back up (to 31, where it started the season, not where it had risen to). So in long run he's OK, but I probably lost 3-4 points of WE because of that drop.

I guess my conclusion is that 80% is a good estimate but not a hard number. He did not get angry after he missed game three (obviously was 66% at that point). His WE also did not get better until after game 12, even though he was at the 80% threshold after game 10.

From prior experience, if you start a guy the whole non-conference schedule it's OK to sit him 2-3 times during conference play.

my experience had been that if he never drops below 80%, youre ok.   there are some scenarios where you might be able to let him drop below 80%,  but i use 80% because it has been safe for me  (at one time i felt it was more like 75%,  and dont recall if that ever failed me,  but 80% felt safer)

i would agree that once it falls below 80% and he gets ******... the idea of just getting him back to 80% is usually not enough.  

some folks have told me that if you give them 100% of the promise moving forward from the time he gets ******, he will eventually get un-******.  and i havent seen anything to suggest that is not correct.

One issue is the player doesn't "check" the percentage every single night, as far as I can tell.  I haven't really tried to pinpoint exactly when the checks happen, and that might vary by player anyway.  But I think that is why you see players not complaining with, e.g. 2 starts in 3 games like in mrg's example.  

Something that could have happened there is the player checked after 5 games and was ok with 4/5.  Then he checked again after 8 games and wasn't happy with 6/8.  Just speculation.