Posted by robocoach on 8/5/2011 12:51:00 AM (view original):
Dismissive, no. I honestly have no idea how some people win, so I could hardly criticise their approach. My approach tries to heavily manage the negatives, as we all have a very narrow margin to exploit, and I think a lot of teams just miss that approach to winning the possession war.


But I stand by my observation that the Sim makes complete bs out of the defensive ratings. Last team I had in the playoffs had four 80+ defenders and got bounced in the second round because of the 40 fta's we kept giving the opponent. (Make matter more if the Sim let us play zone defenses, even situationally.) I believe the Sim is designed to function around a putative average for NBA teams,  and our teams exceed that offensive average by a couple of standard deviations, and too much defens can end up hurting you more than helping you.



Does possess have four "s's? How can this not have a spellchecker?

I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe that higher defensive ratings lead to more fouls - what made you come to that conclusion?

I think that the conclusion is solely based upon any particular users experience with any certain combination of players. As an example I have a team right now in a league where four of my five starters have 90+ defensive ratings and one player has a 100 rating. Each player averages at least 35 minutes per game (Gary Payton; Scottie Pippen; Kevin Garnett and Ben Wallace) Not only does my team lead the league in least fouls per game, but the margin is exactly 1.5; as a team they only foul 14.1 times.

robo... one common mistake we have all made while learning the sim is to discount something without looking at the whole picture.  I know that's what you're trying to do, but you're not.  Just because a team with a lot of defense committed a lot of fouls does not mean that defense = fouls.  In fact, it's (for the most part) the complete opposite.  Perhaps you had guys with higher pf48 than you realized.  Perhaps you played a lot of teams built to put you into foul trouble.  Maybe you were in a tough division.  Perhaps  you were unlucky in the extreme.  Normally it's multiple circumstances working together that lead you to unfortunate results which lead you to believe something.

You brought up two names that couldn't be more different:  Barkley & Olajuwon.  Barkley is the stuff WIS dreams are built around.  To discount him because a couple of seasons having high fouls is terrible.  Barkley gives you three things that are incredible in the sim:  High FTA ratio, high rebounds for position (play him at SF.  Trust me, 99% of Barkley is > than 125% of most guys you'll find there), oh and an incredible efg%.  And then there's the fact that he's a dominant paint scorer, which provides a tremendous synergy with a heavy perimeter game (which in turn creates a severe foul problem for your opponent due to the inferior implementation of position defense.  The three seasons you want to especially look at are the 87-88, 88-89, & 89-90.  Of the three, the only one that's even foul prone is the 87-88.  Now the 90-91 is really good, too, because of the cheapness factor that comes from the lack of minutes... maybe not for this league, but in cheaper leagues, it is golden.

I assure you, the advantages you gain from that 87-88 season far outweigh the foul problems in the few games that occur.  Turnovers are a higher concern, yet again, the advantages far outweigh the negatives.  However, it's not so simple as drafting the guy and sticking him in with others.  It takes shrewd planning to take full advantage of Barkley, more so than most of the players in the database, yet when you do it right, it's... dominant when you get it right.  I showed this in this very league, how you could take a mid/late 1st round guy and turn him into the #1 pick multiple times.  That was before his salary got jacked up, however.

Olajuwon, on the other hand, provides none of these things (dominant efg%, dominant FTA ratio, dominant rebounding for position) while giving the same negatives.  The things he does shine at, however, are farther down the list of priorities (defense).  Yet he can be part of a great team if built correctly.  Unfortunately it's almost impossible to do in a draft league because of what else you need to surround him with.

50 win teams mean nothing.  It's easy to get 50 wins... there are enough bad teams out there that you can do what you say and get a 50-win team... but building that way is a sure fire way to be frustrated come playoff time.  My advice to you and anybody in the sim is to build your team to beat other playoff teams, not average and poor teams in the regular season.  It sounds obvious, but it's a very different thing.  You can have what you think is the best team in the league only to get a poor matchup you didn't anticipate in the playoffs and have an early 2nd round exit.  I've been down this road many times as has probably every owner in the ODL.  Learn how to build a team to beat the best teams and not worry about getting 50 wins... you do that and the wins in the regular season will come.

tarheel speaks the truth about... pretty much everything.  Listen to him, and you'll do well.

My team right now is centered around strong interior defense with solid rebounding (Wilt, Nance, and Kemp), one major gunner (Archibald), and my solid passer (Mark Jackson).  Taking Tiny and Jackson allows me the opportunity to go with a cheaper Wilt that still gives me rebounding and efficient scoring, but isn't going to break the bank...this team is a little different in its approach for me so we will see how I screw this up...although I have not set in stone which versions of which players I am going to use except for Nance, Kemp, and Jackson.

Well, thanks to trades I actually have all 7 guys drafted now. I'm not super happy with the team, but it has its positives and could surprise.


PG: 89-90 Magic 24.8% usg, 52.6% efg, 18.6% crb, 35.8% ast, 89% FT (637 FTA), 106 3PM, 69 D
SG: 83-83 Darrell Griffith 26.4% usg, 52.2% efg, 12.7% crb, 11.7% ast, 91 3PM, 53 D
SF: 09-10 Gerald Wallace 20.4% usg, 51.1% efg, 27.1% crb, 77% FT (544 FTA), 90 D
PF: 10-11 Kris Humphries 17.5% usg, 52.7% efg, 41.7% crb, 59 D
        85-86 Charles Oakley 19.2% usg, 51.9% efg, 41.1% crb, 70 D
C:  70-71 Tom Boerwinkle 16.7% usg, 50.1% efg, 44.8% crb, 19.1% ast, 62 D
      10-11 Joakim Noah 16.9% usg, 52.5% efg, 34.3% crb, 80 D

Strengths: this might be the best rebounding team I ever put together. Initially I thought it would be because I would have 81-82 Magic (25+% crb) and Wallace at the 1 and 2. But the way things developed I had to go with the higher-three, higher-usage Magic and bump Wallace to the 3, and still ended up with a great rebounding team because my frontcourt is pretty beastly in that regard. My starting lineup will be 140+ in crb%. Also, it's relatively efficient across the board; no efg% under 50% at all, but also no super efficient scorers (except Magic, when you throw in his free throw shooting).

Weaknesses: more than I would like. Kinda high on fouls (consequences of not getting a good big early), kinda high on turnovers. My highest-usage scorer - Griffith - shoots almost no free throws, so he isn't as efficient as I would like overall. He was a salary-concern pick, and while he fit my team needs in terms of usage, without having to pay for too many assists and rebounds (which I had plenty of), I would have much rather had Ginobili, but just couldn't make the salary work to my satisfaction. My strategy last year in the ODL was to rely heavily on platoons and bench minutes, since lower-minute guys are better values (stupid sim), and I'm doing that again this year - the goal is to not have to play any true scrubs, while sacrificing a little bit of the team's high-end potential. It worked last year, but I liked that team better; this one might not really gel.

I have noticed that one common characteristic of the top 25 team list is the degree to which managers use players out of position. I am sure Wilt at C andShaq at PF is a great combo, but it is kinda close to cheating, or alternately, being really good at managing the Sim. (One great thing about baseball is that you can't play guys out of position without incurring some serious gameplay penalties, and in any case, most leagues will mandate that you must play some only where he played in RL.)

Barkley has high positives; BUT, he also has high negatives: minus zone in AT ratio, fouls a lot, and his high dollar cost is partly do to a ridiculous # of FTA's which he will never get in the Sim. Where he goes- top 5 pick routinely- there are plenty of guys with high positives and no negatives, so I just don't see THAT Sim value for him. Now in real life, given the mental attitude, he was one of the greatest ever, I just don't see him being a top 5 sim pick.

1st of all, the top 25 team list is all open leagues and progressives. Open leagues are crap (not that there aren't good teams - the teams are just homogenous, outside of guys like Ash and Malone (and others, those are just examples) who use them to experiment some) and progressive/regressives are just an entirely different animal (usually the best teams are dominant, the worst awful). I would just ignore it.

2nd, playing guys out of position is not even close to cheating. Guys lose effectiveness when they play positions they're less than 100% at. Hard to tell how much they lose, but at least a little bit. And any problem with guys being able to play weird positions is due to the guys in charge, who get to set the position effectiveness. But even yoru example is not that extreme - David Robinson and Tim Duncan shared a frontcourt, not that much different than if Shaq and Wilt did it - both guys were pretty athletic, Wilt could have guarded a lot of 4s and Shaq could have in the early part of his career. I don't really think it's a problem.

As for Barkley - he used to be a top pick, cause he was great value for dominant offensive production. Now, his salary is up significantly and his defense is down, meaning less value and more negatives. I probably won't use him in the ODL anytime soon, cause others value him higher, but maybe in the funk52 I would. But there's no denying that plenty of people - especially ash - built great, championship teams around him, even with all the fouls and turnovers.

Walton 93 defense Bobby Jones 100 defense. I'll make a point of seeing how much they foul in the Sim vs RL.


Baseball players absolutely think playing guys out of position is "smelly" at best. Most Sim leagues will insist that a guy only play where he is rated and some, like the Beer League, mandate a player is only used if he played x games, or y %of his career, at the position. Keeps anyone. for example, from moving a 30 HR guy from 3rd to SS (not recommmended defensively, but you can get away with it with an above average glove) and playing another 30 HR guy at 3rd, just because in RL the guy played one game at SS after an ejection or something. Basketball is an entirely different thing of course, but I would not have a problem playing in Leagues that insisted that players only play positions where they are 100% rated.


BTW Oakley in the 5th is a steal.

Yeah I'm an Oak fan - using his rookie year. High fouls, but great everything else.

It's not about limiting the bad as much as overpowering with good.  fouls and to's are really not that bad as they tend to even out.  what really is good is eFG combined with usage + drebs + ftas and defense.  Most important is salary efficiency.  if you are wasting money anywhere, you are vulnerable.  low defense = very vulnerable.
dman recently beat the OL to smithereens using all top tier defenders on all of his teams.  Ash taught most of us here most of what we know about the sim, although he needs to get back to the ODL again.

As for my team here, I screwed up my first pick, so I'm just having some fun with 3's to see if I can hang with the overwhelming rebounding and fg% teams being built.

here's some evals...ill try to actually finish them this time


ljemd - Michael Jordan, Isiah Thomas, Elvin Hayes, Walt Bellamy, Elgin Baylor

- ljemd is fairly new to draft leagues so I'll try to be nice here...on second thought...nah f*ck that. That's my favorite player of all-time getting the screw job yet again from an owner that doesn't know how to build around him. When you get someone like Jordan you need to do your very best to maximize his scoring ability. You don't surround him with low efg%, high usg% ********. It's tough to decide which pick was the worst, but I'll go with Baylor. You can apparently win games with him(appleseed) when he's on the right team with players that compliment him, but he should never be teamed up with Jordan(just ask sappy how that's working out for him in the ncih52). I don't think I'm alone in thinking this will be the worst team in the ODL. My only hope is that this teams failure's will prevent future owners of the GOAT from making the same mistake. He deserves better.

ncih - Dennis Rodman, Dirk Nowitzki, Willis Reed, Rajon Rondo, Stephen Curry

- Is it just me or does Rodman and Dirk get paired in every draft league? Dirk always slips to the end of the second round because owners don't feel like having to deal with the weak boards he gives you from the 4. This of course works out perfectly for the Rodman owner that is just waiting to pair him up with a high usage scorer. They were just meant to be together. You needed an ast% monster at point, and while I thought you should have grabbed a guy who amazingly wasn't picked yet, Rondo was a nice pick-up who allowed you to not have to think much about defense with your sg pick. The sg spot screamed for someone who could be the teams 2/3 scoring option while helping Rondo with the passing a bit. Curry, despite the crappy TO/FL numbers, fits really well. Like any draft team with Rodman on it, I'd be surprised if they don't make the playoffs.

banditone - Moses Malone, Swen Nater, Kevin Porter, Glen Rice, Rick Barry

- banditone got off to a great start with the beastly board combo of Moses and Nater. With boards taken care of you really could have picked almost any 1,2, or 3 you wanted. Instead you went with a somewhat one-dimensional player who you could have got in the 5th. I understand the need to get a pg who can feed Moses but you can get ast% at any time in the draft. The 5th round is almost over and there are still a handful of pgs that are better than Porter who hasn't been picked. Hell, he isn't even the best Porter to have. Please tell me you grew up with a huge Kevin Porter poster on your wall or he won you a huge bet back in the day. They would be the only reasonable explanations for taking him that early. I liked the Rice pick, he's still a beast. The Barry pick only makes me more confident to pick this team to miss the playoffs.

jcred5 - LeBron James, Thurmond Nate, Elton Brand, Sam Lacey, Jeff Hornacek

- How does Nate Thurmond keep getting picked in the 2nd/early3rd round? Do any of these teams end up making the playoffs? My memory sucks(thanks pot) but my guess is no. I get the appeal, great defense and boards. But his shittty offensive game coupled with his desire to be a scoring option doesn't make him worthy of the high pick imo. I do like Hornacek in the backcourt with James, he's a very efficient player that sometimes won't get drafted due to the draft depth at sg. I'm a big Lacey fan as well. He doesn't hit the offensive glass much but he doesn't hurt you with fouls and sports an impressive ast%. LeBron is certainly good enough to carry a team to the playoffs but I just don't think he has quite enough talent around him to do it this time.

malone9975  - Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Nance,  Shawn Kemp, Mark Jackson, Nate Archibald, 

- I assume everyone is using 66-67 Wilt, so it surprised me to hear you might use a cheaper Wilt to cut costs. I've never had the pleasure of having him in the ODL but it seems his salary causes major problems. If I get Wilt, I want the best one and will build around that season, total minutes and salary cap be damned. But the good thing is no matter what season you use, it's gonna be an awesome one. Nance/Kemp is a sick combo that is probably better for 52mil but is still amazing at this cap. I'll be curious to see how Tiny does in this league. He has big time scoring ability(free throws esp) but with Wilt and Kemp you were already pretty high with the turnovers. Jackson is a real good pg that I'll either love for this team, or hate, depending on what Tiny and what Wilt you use. I can't really make any predictions for this team yet until I see what you do here, should be an interesting team either way.

98average - Dwight Howard, Robert Parish, Horace Grant, Vince Carter, Nate McMillan

- Wow...as good as the last teams frontcourt was, this one is even better. I'm starting to think drafting a frontcourt first may be the way to go. The talent is so much deeper at the guard spots. Vince is gonna drive you nuts when he shoots you out of few wins with his usual 8/30 games. Still, he was a good pick in the 4th and you did need some usage from one of the guard spots. Nate is a solid pick that compliments the rest of the team nicely. The team defense is very good if you're into that kinda thing(im not). I do fee like you could have done better with the back court. Of course, they both have great partial seasons so you may be adding someone that will change my mind about that. This team is pretty much a lock for the playoffs and should make a run at the chip.

dh555 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Marcus Camby, Steve Nash, Peja Stojakovich, Calvin Natt,

- Now this is my kind of team. Amazing inside-out scoring with Kareem/Natt and Peja/Nash. The usage balance is perfect. Plenty of 3s with more to come from the bench and not too bad on fts either since Peja and Nash always shoot more fts than their stats suggest. Solid but not great on the glass. Defense could be better but they should have enough offense to make up for it. This should be an awesome offense and the owner deserves a pat on the back for a job well done. I smell 50+ wins and a disappointing loss in the 2nd round.

It's not about limiting the bad as much as overpowering with good.

THIS.  I don't think the essence of the sim has been captured in so few of words.

1st of all, the top 25 team list is all open leagues and progressives ...  I would just ignore it.

To a point, absolutely.  However, keeping an eye on the top 25 (and recognizing the type of league and level of competition within that league) can keep you up to date on what is working and not working in the most base level of the sim.  Understanding that goes a long way toward being successful in theme leagues.  I continue to play in OLs to keep me sharp for the themes... also to see how new ideas come into the sim and how they play out.  It's a testing ground for the most part... though I do tend to build some fun theme-like ideas (my wilt triple double attempts come to mind).  But I've discovered players from looking at those teams I might never have considered (I learned about Luther Head from seeing a Tianyi team back in the day... I almost never use him now, but 3 years ago he was awesome with what I did).  I don't think it's helpful to look at the top 25 and play in open leagues... I think it's essential.  But there's only so much you can learn there...

the degree to which managers use players out of position. I am sure Wilt at C andShaq at PF is a great combo, but it is kinda close to cheating

You misunderstand the power of the Wilt/Shaq combo.  It's not playing them at the same time... it's taking two seasons that match up minutes wise to create one super being that can play the entire game.  The 1946 minute Shaq season with the 1787 Wilt season = 48mpg of a 1st tier usage god.  The shaq part has higher efg% but less boards... And the Wilt part has higher defense with less fouls.  You can literally put them on a team by themselves and surround them with bottom tier gods and have an incredible team.  I've won two championships like that (2/2).  When I started adding higher usage guys to compliment, things went south.  Very strange considering how the sim should work.  It's something I've discovered through experimentation in OLs, though, and will use that experience in themes.

Barkley has high positives; BUT, he also has high negatives: minus zone in AT ratio, fouls a lot, and his high dollar cost is partly do to a ridiculous # of FTA's which he will never get in the Sim

Again, read Badja's statement.  About the FTAs... it's not about achieving real life nubers; It's about getting the opponent into foul trouble.  I would say that half of my losses with any given team can be blamed on foul trouble.  If your highest usage player is a god at getting to the line, you cause foul trouble.  If that guy is a paint monster (60%+ from teh paint) and you surround it with bombers, you sort of glitch the sim because there is no proper way to defend it with defensive positioning, resulting in even more fouls.  Glitch isn't the right word, but it's all I can think of to demonstrate the point.  It's a design flaw of the sim, and you're taking advantage of it.

Where he goes- top 5 pick routinely- there are plenty of guys with high positives and no negatives, so I just don't see THAT Sim value for him. Now in real life, given the mental attitude, he was one of the greatest ever, I just don't see him being a top 5 sim pick.

a) there are no players with zero negatives.  Best five sim players (about, anyway):  67 Wilt - not high enough usage to really build around, so he's a support player that costs $12.5M.  And his tov% is attrocious (again due to the lower usage). He sucks from the line, which he'll get to about half as much as IRL.  92 Rodman - low usage specialist.  You're using a high pick for a support player.  That's always tough.  His tov% is weak because he doesn't take many shots and his fouls are higher than you'd like.  He also sucks from the line.  ANY Jordan:  not enough threes for a perimeter position.  Best seasons are not FTA dominant.  MOST Lebrons have lower efg% than you want for someone who has 34% usage... the couple that are really good are expensive for the minutes.  The higher minute seasons have lower efg%.  79 MOSES has a high tov% and a lower usg% than you want out of someone you're paying $10M+ for.  Now are these weaknesses crippling?  Absolutely not.  But they are weaknesses.  There is no perfect player in the sim.  That part WIS got right.

b)  Chuck is NOT worth a top 5 pick anymore.  The only reason is his salary.  What you used to could get for $8.5M you now have to spend $10M+ for.  And it's again for a tier 3 usage guy which makes it hard to build around.  The environment changed, hurting Chuck's value.  He does have some really great other seasons that are still high first round worthy... yet they are more toward the middle rather than the beginning.  That 87-88 is still beastly in higher cap leagues.  Hey this is $47M now, isn't it?  Hmmm...

Baseball players absolutely think playing guys out of position is "smelly" at best.

This isn't the baseball sim.  If it was, we'd probably have much more attention and a better product.  Since all we got is what we got, you make do with what you can.  To be fair, though, the position effectiveness works pretty well as a deterrent.  99% ain't much of a drop off... but you're not going to abuse the sim by putting someone like Wilt at SG since he'll only be 70% or so from there... and that's wasted salary.  Which brings me to the final point here:

Most important is salary efficiency.  if you are wasting money anywhere, you are vulnerable.

Couldn't have said any better myself.

although he needs to get back to the ODL again.

Thought I'd give somebody else a chance to win a few ODLs!  ;-P   No really I just bought a house and the past several months have been really hectic for me, as the whole process has been way more time intensive than I ever thought.  Just got internet at home, so I should be good for the next one.  So better win this one!  I'm going to go for 5/6 soon.

you'd be surprised how many limitations the baseball Sim has, even aside from trying to match pre and post 1920 players. It can be "gamed' a lot of different ways, which is why theme leagues have so many restrictions.


The best Sim by far is HBD, and that is just math:  24.95 for a season, 32 teams in a world, almost 200 worlds.  WIS actually never ceases trying to make it a better product. They actually try to reply to customer complaints too, which really allows you to realise how little programmers understand about baseball.


I haven't noticed anything so limiting in the Basketball Sim that you have to address it in theme leagues the way you do the (many) BB Sim issues. I constantly try to get managers in the BB\HBD sims to try the Basketball Sim- it demands less money, less time, fewer players, and seems to have altogether a better bunch of people playing in it the the baseball communities.



And two purely basketball questions:

1.) I also am taking a lot of losses at the free throw line. Scary thought: is this simply in part random to the Sim and we can't completely control it?

2.) If salary efficency is that important, shoudn't Peja's 03-04 season go first in every draft?

1-  The SIM has gotten really bad IMO at the free throw line.  Especially when you are on the road.  I have lost several big games because 75%ft shooters go 5/13 from the line.  I think it is really uncontrollable and the reason Ash is so against drafting high ft % players.  As you say, scary and random.

2- Perhaps the best answer is: he used to be!  Peja was a sim god 5 years ago.  Now he is too pricey for a SF with relatively low boards, ft's and defense.  The best values in the sim are board lords with low usage.  Incredibly cheap.   What salary efficiency is about is you are not drafting 3000 assists or 12000 points, ie wasted money.