Posted by dBKC on 7/22/2025 3:20:00 PM (view original):
The high usage comment got me wondering, what does everyone normally set as their usage cap in a salary capped league? I’m at 115% for my starters, with my bench being about equal. It’s a little on the high side for what I usually do, but I don’t have a super efficient main scorer that I’m trying to maximize so I’m okay with it. Does anyone have success running at 115? I normally try to cap it at 105ish, but I also don’t think 115 is crazy high.

and thanks for the evals!

I never even think about a cap, I’m usually struggling to stay above 100 for all 48 minutes.

I have wanted to build a team with three or four high usage, high eFG% shooters and then use Bill Russell so I can benefit from his defense and rebounding and a bit of passing and he will hopefully shoot less than irl.

Thanks for the evals Kevin! They were a fun read, I think you are on the money with a lot of these. Cool to see how your perspective has changed with more seasons under your belt.

My team is built to start Hali / Jay Will (Only 10 MPG) / Rob Will (97% at SF) / Mailman / Mitch Rob, which is a really strong lineup in their limited minutes together. Rob Will is drafted so high because his contributions are very rare at SF. Buck helps shore up my rebounding and will split time as a backup SF/C. Sometimes you live with lower positional effectiveness to suit your team needs, which in my case was rebounding. Moncrief is a dominant guard defender who partly makes up his eFG% by taking and making lots of free throws.

Most of my teams end up being low usage, because in my opinion, you're getting more production for your $$ in other areas by just getting "enough" usage. My starting lineup typically has 95% - 105% usage, and I try to keep the total above 85% with reserves. There is a penalty for having less than 100% usage on the floor, but it seems to not matter very much in my experience unless you're at 90% or lower.

I think in a high cap league like this, it's less about the cost of usage and more about who is stealing shots from whom - like if you drafted Steph and the Logo you would be wincing every time West took a shot instead of Steph

Posted by copernicus on 7/22/2025 4:54:00 PM (view original):
I think in a high cap league like this, it's less about the cost of usage and more about who is stealing shots from whom - like if you drafted Steph and the Logo you would be wincing every time West took a shot instead of Steph

That’s kind of where I’m at. I don’t care if anyone steals shots from Wemby. This is kind of an experiment for me, we’ll see. But I also don’t think a lineup with Derrick White, Trayce Jackson Davis, and Tree Rollins starting is too terribly high on usage.

Those aren't usually the kind of lineups I build, but I think that makes sense with someone like Wemby. JC also just made the finals with a very high-usage starting unit.

I assumed that if you go over 100%, then everyone gets proportionally less (i.e. a 30% usage players in a 120% usage lineup would get 25% of the team's usage). No idea what the actual mechanism is.

Figured there was a tradeoff between paying for more usage than you can use, and risking having too little usage for any possible lineup.

Posted by K123456789 on 7/22/2025 5:33:00 PM (view original):
I assumed that if you go over 100%, then everyone gets proportionally less (i.e. a 30% usage players in a 120% usage lineup would get 25% of the team's usage). No idea what the actual mechanism is.

Figured there was a tradeoff between paying for more usage than you can use, and risking having too little usage for any possible lineup.

Fair. I usually try to stick to 101-105, but whatever I was doing hasn’t been working lately, so let’s see if I can block enough shots to cheese out some wins

thank you K-9 evals are always welcome & enjoyable to read! GL