To those who study the Big Board, this is no new news. The two Jrs below are #51 and #60 on the draft board. If you were to ask me which one I preferred I would have chosen #60. However, the board see it otherwise. The only thing I see is the LP/PER combo of Neal which is 23 points higher despite the fact that the rest of the meaningful ratings favor Weatherford by 27 points. Is there something else I may be missing is this simple example? Do others agree that the combo is overvalued?

Eugene Neal #51
Sidney Weatherford #60

	Neal (51)	Weather (60)	Diff
ATHLETICISM	73	92	-19
SPEED	77	73	4
REBOUNDING	84	61	23
DEFENSE	69	96	-27
SHOT BLOCKING	61	70	-9
LOW-POST	93	58	35
PERIMETER	85	97	-12
BALL HANDLING	64	73	-9
PASSING	69	59	10
WORK ETHIC	49	79	-30
STAMINA	70	86	-16
DURABILITY	59	43	16
FT SHOOTING	C-	C+
Total	853	887	-34
Meaningful	675	679	-4

The draft board difference has nothing to do with the LP/PER perse. You need to keep in mind that Neal is being evaluated as a big or SF, and Weatherford is being valued as a guard or SF. Additionally Neal actually rates as a better SF ever so slightly due to his more balanced skill set in rebounding and LP.

while i agree that difference in positions can explain some of this, in general to the original question, of course LP/PER combo is overrated. its one of the first things one sees when trying to understand the big board - actually i would say this was clear to me well before the big board even existed, well before i was even a top 50 d1 recruiter in the game. i don't even recruit those really high lp/per guys a lot of times because they are just trash, when you factor in how expensive they tend to be, how long they tend to stay, and how brutally costly EEs are in 3.0. heck i mostly passed on them in 2.0 - or else i'd just hold one of their lp/per down around 50. but to recruit them and grow both ratings would fit my definition of insanity, more or less.

nothing in the past 6 years or so since i decided to really get into d1, since 3.0 came out or any of that, has done anything to change my opinion on that subject. although looking at the big board did make me feel it more strongly. but i have despised the high lp/per players for far longer than that, even down in d2 before potential existed, because they were always overrated by everyone else in recruiting and just not that good. the first insanely elite d2 lp/per player i had was so frustrating, i got so mad at my team that when we got to the final 4 against the legit #2 team in that world, i threw my hands up, 0'd out the distro for the entire team, put them on uptempo, and walked away. they were so good they won by 40 anyway, that almost did it for me, i almost walked away from the game after that (i left them untouched for the title game and they won by 26, it was ridiculous). anyone who knows me here even a little bit knows how specific i am, like to where its a mental disorder, and also about my hatred of uptempo (while pressing at least). this would be the closest i ever came to throwing games on purpose, but it wasn't on purpose - i wasn't frustrated because the team was bad - it just was that i conceded that the game made so little sense to me at that moment, that i was not actually capable of putting together a better lineup than an all-0 distro uptempo lineup. which was my definition at the time of the worst possible coaching job. with the sum total of everything i'd learned about the game and about that team over the course of the season, my best was no better than my worst. up was down, nothing mattered, it was me admitting complete and total defeat (again, very unlike me). later i realized that mostly it was the high lp/per sf i had who was making me insane and if i just tracked him down and murdered his whole family, i could continue on with my sanity in tact. so i eventually got through it. but yeah, when you throw EEs on top of that and d1 where people are really competitive about recruiting and for those high lp/per guys, its like - no thank you!

well that was an exceptionally bad answer as far as answering the question goes so real quick ill say:
1) lp/per not as a combo but individually are massively highly valued on the board, and having both is where you really suffer because almost all the great players have 1 so if you also have 1, you don't stand out and get taken really early. the combo guys do but there's nothing 'extra' about the combo, its just a linear formula - i believe - and you just get points for each point of lp or per and when you have the combo you get the exact same amount you would have gotten for the lp by itself and per by itself added together. if that makes sense. but because they are both so valuable, for all positions / big board formulas, having so much of both is always going to have a big impact on the big board ranking. so i definitely agree with what mully is seeing. a natural consequence is that the best players without lp OR per can be awesome due to their complete invisibility to the NBA / big board despite their awesomeness (and this is true, the best reb/def bigs are awesome and guaranteed 4 years, and a guard with 95 ath/spd/def/bh/pass/sta is a god even if they can't score. plus that dude just needs 50 lp/1per or 1lp / 50 per to be quite effective as a mid tier scorer and that is enough to keep them off the board, so while 1/1 lp/per would still be a very good player, the 1/50 makes them elite).

2) also high lp/per players i believe may be especially effective at drawing the defense's attention, i don't mean from the human coach, but from the in-game coach. and despite their awfulness as individuals, they may contribute to good teams. individually, when you take a premium scorer with 50 or less in either lp or per, and max that lp or per, it roughly adds nothing to them. that is pretty clear, diminishing returns are already kicking in strong enough that the impact on shot selection washes any benefit to increased shooting ability (and actually, the impact on shot selection for some players, namely 3pt scoring guards you need a lot of 3s from, is such that adding the off-rating, namely lp, can actually be a negative on its own - not even factoring in EEs or how hard people recruit the guy or any of that). but those high lp/per players might help the team a little, help draw the defense so the other players can perform better. i haven't really been able to rule that out (or in). the workings of the in-game coach are still very nebulous to me but that is where i am thinking there could be impact. a lot of the stuff we are told doesn't exist in this game but i am skeptical it doesn't exist, i put into that in-game coach bucket so really what in my head i conceive as the in-game coach might be a much bigger thing than it actually is. i'm just saying i'm not 100% opposed to the possibility that high lp/per players have value to the team (over a scorer of the lp or per variety), even though i absolutely despise them as individuals.

Thanks Gill