I have 8 guys who are more or less interchangeable. They can all play more than one position effectively. I have one top player and the other 8 go back and forth as to who has the best game on a given night. Many of them are in the 80s for stamina, which is great on one hand but causes a problem on the other.

This roster, to me, argues for dispersing minutes evenly rather than using fatigue as the driver for playing time. I'd prefer to set all 8 of them as 19-23 or 24-28 minutes, but i have seen on this forum multiple times that specifying minutes per player damages performance. i have used it multiple times and seen it produce negative results.

What the sim should do with 19-23 is have that player play 9-12 minutes in the first half so that he has 10-11 left for the second half. But am i right that, instead, it shoves a lot of minutes into the first half to make sure that player hits the target for the overall game? If that's not the flaw, please explain.

What i'm stuck with right now is a player who is equal in talent to the one above him on the depth chart gets 12-15 minutes while the other guy gets 25-30. If the wrong guy has a bad night, I'm double-screwed.

Teach me. I'm open to any and all ideas.

I only use fatigue with my fast/press teams. And I generally have my best player coming off the bench at 3 positions. and they generally end up leading my team in minutes or are right up there. It is also harder to gameplan against them.

So, the way players work from a performance standpoint, if they are anything lower than fresh, it impacts their performance.

I don't know the "percentage" of impact .. but lets talk generally and just use 10% drop for each level for conversation purposes.

Fresh = 100%
Fairly Fresh = 90%
Tiring = 80%
Tired = 70%
Very Tired = 60%

So, if you play everyone at Fairly Fresh or higher it has minimal impact. If you do minutes, and if someone has a couple fouls (so sets out a bunch of time in the middle of the game), they can play long stretches late in the game to meet their minimum minutes, often playing at tired or very tired. That would be at 60% or 70% efficiency. (In my example .. the real numbers could be different)

The way fatigue works is that if the starter is above the fatigue setting, he comes back in. If you put him at fairly fresh, you can get close to even playing time in press and a little more playing time for the starters in man. Starters get more time in zone in fresh.

The main flaw with target minutes is fatigue and foul trouble. It doesn't work if you're running press or playing against press. Too much risk that one of your players gets in foul trouble and/or gets tired before it's time to sub out.
However, if the two teams involved are playing man and/or zone, target minutes can do exactly what you're trying to accomplish. The main risk is still foul trouble early, where a guy might get extra minutes in the 2nd half (and get very tired) if they get pulled early due to foul trouble. If you're confident that the foul trouble risk is low enough, then go for it--I've used target minutes before and they seem to work fine.
Another thing you can do if using fatigue is to set your bench players to "getting tired". They will sub in earlier and it will get them a few more minutes during the game (and they won't get tired because the starters will come back in when their fatigue goes back up). It won't even out the minutes completely but it will close the gap a bit.

Thanks for the guidance, folks. Makes perfect sense and aligns with my experience.

I never use minutes, but I do sometimes take a good player that has the attributes to play 3 positions (Usually PG, SG, SF .. OR .. SF, PF, C). I will use that player in the first of the bench spot for all 3 positions and set them to 'getting tired' as Fregoe suggests. Then that guy can get a bunch of minutes at all 3 positions. But, the starter will sub back in as soon as he is able, so I don't normally get to 'tired' on the sub.