Posted by mrslam34 on 1/29/2020 8:58:00 PM (view original):
I always thought the process was something like this, although I could be wrong:
1. Team passing (weighted by position) impacts whether a shot attempt is made. Better passing leads to a better overall FG%.
2. If a shot is made, RNG determines whether whether to award an assist.
3. If an assist is to be be awarded, RNG determines which player is given the assist (obviously weighted by passing skill and possibly position).
If this is anything close to correct, the actual awarding of the assist is window dressing in that the decision about whether the shot is made is determined prior to the assist decision. However, passing is very important both to avoid turnovers and increase FG%.
this is a good, concise summary of the situation. for the folks who i confused, sorry! (probably because i suck at writing!). i want to talk about the beginning of an offensive possession - i think this will provide context and hopefully illuminate the situation.
- when an offensive possession starts - simplified - the first major thing that happens is the game calls the RNG to decide which player has the ball. this isn't like, a totally random function or anything - the odds on who gets the ball is based on distro and many other things, but you do need to roll the dice to pick a player.
- once a player is picked, he can't pass. most of the time, he shoots - occasionally, he'll turn it over or there will be a foul. but there is no passing - a player is chosen and he basically shoots straight away.
- when the player shoots, in essence what the game is doing is computing an offensive score and a defensive score, comparing them to get a % chance for a made shot, and then the RNG is called to decide if he makes or misses. the offensive score is almost entirely based on the shooter's ratings - things like per, lp, ath and speed - but a small (less than 10%) part of the score is based on the passing and IQ of team mates. for a little more than half of the existence of HD, even that small factor didn't exist - the rating of the team mates (including passing and IQ) had zero impact on the shooting %.
- so, for most of the existence of HD, a shooter's team mates had NO impact on his shooting %. for example, suppose there is a big man taking a shot against a defender, and his PG and SG both have a whopping 100 bh and pass, with a+ iq - and that big man has a 54% chance to make the shot. well, if you redid the shot but gave the PG and SG 50 bh and 50 pass, and c- iq - the big man would STILL have a 54% chance to make it! as a result - we know that no matter how the sim engine worked, for most of the existence of HD, assists were 100% window dressing.
- in today's game, if a C is shooting, the PG, SG, SF, and PF's passing and IQ are combined and have a small impact on the C's shooting %. however, its not like someone passed the C the ball. there's no action for something like, a PG drives, draws 2 defenders, and find the wide open C three feet from the basket. there's no action at all - the C's shooting % just gets a small tick up if the rest of the team's pass/iq are good (its possible the C's pass/iq factors in as well, we don't know that detail).
- in both the old HD and today's HD, after a made shot, an RNG is called to decide if an assist happens. like the rest, this isn't a totally random factor - it looks at ratings like bh, pass, iq, and makes a guess at what a realistic rate of assists would be for a team like this - the goal is to make the window dressing look realistic, so of course a higher passing team is going to have more assists! this is why assists look kind of real, why teams who would assist more (if assists existed in the sim engine) have more assists.
- anyway, if the outcome of that RNG is: yes there's an assist, then the game calls another RNG to decide which player gets the assist - weighting players based on position and ratings like pass, iq, etc.
- two important things to take away there. first, the assignment of the assist does not tie back to any action by any player, it is simply a made up number designed to look realistic even though the sim engine otherwise has no concept of assists. two, the assignment of an assist is not even related to the contribution each player is making to the shooting % of the shooter - those two functions were built independently and basically have nothing to do with each other. it just happens that both rely on similar attributes, like passing, so the assist numbers probably look halfway decent. that's their job - after all, window dressing isn't dressing if it looks like garbage!