Hey all,

I am wondering if anyone (either on this thread or over sitemail) may be able/interested in helping me understand how the Play Dist. works in this game?

I tinkered with it in a few games last year, and had some disastrous results.

I know this question is sort of broad, but frankly, I don't think I even have the slightest clue how it works or how to set up a functioning one.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

i heard a suggestion once for newer coaches that i really liked, but i've never tried it... so take this with a bit of caution.

the suggestion i heard is this - set your total distro to the # of field goals you expect your team to take (say, 60), and then give each player distro equal to the # of shots you want them to take. to me, this sounded like a pretty good idea for newer folks, but there are certainly limitations - like if you decide you want some guy who got 5 minutes to take 12 of those shots - its not really gonna pan out so great. i would give this a shot, i think its a decent starting point, especially for someone struggling with the system - and you can step beyond it when you are ready.

what distro actually means IMO is best explained as the ratio of shots between two players when they are on the floor. for example, if one guy has 10 distro and another has 5 distro, then while they are on the floor together, the first guy should take twice as many shots as the second. well, really, its twice as many offensive possessions, not shots - and also, for some reason, distro seems skewed towards guards (a team with 5 distro for every player will see guards shoot a little more).

a couple general suggestions - 1) don't make your distro sum to 100, as then you won't be able to independently adjust a single player (if you want to raise a guy, you'll have to take away from someone else). 2) don't make wild distro changes game over game - the sim engine looks at your distro as 1 input. it also has an 'in game coach' if you will who adjusts your offense and defense according to the conditions on the ground (it is assumed that us, who give our input totally outside of (before) the game, do not and cannot reasonably have sufficient control to make all these adjustments ourselves). as a result, if you see like hey, my lead scorer X has a poor defender, if you go make a major adjustment - and so does the in-game coach (if you will), then the end result is a major over-correction. 3) who gets to take each shot is highly random and you shouldn't expect distro to flush out to actual shooting %s in a single game. you need to wait a good 7 or so games to get decent info on this, although you certainly get some info sooner and have to wait longer for detailed info.

here's a simplified form of what i do. i start with my best scorer, i make him a 12 (i like 12 as a starting point, you can choose 10 or 15, but i recommend keeping it in that range so you have decently fine grained control without running into the 100 cap). then i set the rest of the players who are of similar type (guards or bigs, i guess) - using the ratio of shots i'd want them to take while on the floor together. so if my best guy is 12 and the next guy is basically equal, hes a 12 too, or 11. say after that is a pretty good guy who i want my best guy taking 50% more shots than, then a fairly ****** guy who should be taking like a third of the shots of the best guy, and then a really ****** guy i want doing nothing, my guard distro might be 12-11-8-4-0. don't be afraid to have some 0s, 1 on a lineup is easy, 2 is pushing it (its fine to have 2 0s on the floor from time to time but it gets a tough when you have multiple 0 distro players starting and on the backup line).

then, i go to bigs, and do the same. usually, because guards are superior to bigs in this game, the bigs are lower - but, because bigs get the shaft on shots for some weird reason (where a big @ 12 and a guard @ 12 who play together will see the guard shooting more), not by as much as my anti-big rhetoric might suggest. so if i have a pretty good big, he might be a 10, and lets just suppose my other bigs suck so it shakes out to 10-5-3-0-0.

finally, i sort of consider how this breakout, the 'natural distro' (which is purely based on goodness of player, but has no team-level analysis), will impact the team. if this breakout has too much 3 point shooting, i'll do some tweaking from there, if its too little, i'll try to adjust my best guys up. there is also sort of a guard/big axis to balance on, i suppose, but in reality its really more about distance from the basket shots are coming in from. for most folks, thinking of it as guards vs bigs, with an eye on 3s (stay at 25% minimum, 3pta/fga, i'd say - shooting for low 30s as a mid point, something like that), that is sufficient. but in reality its a bit more complicated, like everything else i suppose?

anyway, in my example above, i'd probably end up too guard heavy and would adjust that 10-5-3-0-0 to something more like 12-7-4-0-0. generally - its better to adjust up at the higher end (until you get too high) instead of the lower end, so adding 5 distro, either add like 2/2/1/0/0 to those players, or like 3/2/0/0/0 or 2/3/0/0/0, but definitely not 1/1/1/1/1 or god forbid 0/0/1/2/2 (which would result in 10-5-4-2-2).

Gill -- that is a beyond informative and helpful response. I'll have your post pulled up when I am getting ready to start cutting up the distribution.

Seriously, thanks so much! I owe you a beer!

I never use 100 distro. I feel it's fine if one chooses to use all 100.

I don't have a target number. Every season/team is different. But my distro usually equals somewhere between 49 and 70. I start with who I want you be my main scorer and give them a 15 and stair step it down from there. If I have a team that has a lot of scoring options, it gets up to 70ish because lots of players get distro. If I don't have a lot of scorers it lower because my drop of after the "15 guy" will be significant and a lot of players get 0 or 1.

Posted by mullycj on 2/1/2020 6:58:00 PM (view original):
"1) don't make your distro sum to 100, as then you won't be able to independently adjust a single player (if you want to raise a guy, you'll have to take away from someone else)"

Disagree with this. This is my own preference but I ALWAYS start my having my dist add to 100. I then adjust each players number by their expected minutes played. So for example, the starting guard with 20 dist and 25 mins played will have about double the REAL distribution of his backup with 20 dist and 15 mins played.

Since my distribution is simulating total shots taken in a game of course if I increase 1 player I should decrease another.
Everyone is different but this get me to what I would want the box score to look like for shots taken at the end of the game.

i really have no objection to 100 distro, i think there's a lot of legit ways to play, especially something like distro which is built to be relational. i just recommend avoiding it to new coaches because i think it makes it harder to make adjustments, and if you aren't already used to doing it one way or another, i guess i see no reason to go the 100 route. i wouldn't recommend experienced folks change their method over it, unless they have problems making adjustments.

i tend to get pretty close to 100 as there is just something inside me that prefers
21-14-14-7-7
to
3-2-2-1-1

also, i never put any player at zero, not sure where i got that from (i guess fear of weird things... because putting all players at 0 has a special effect so maybe one player at zero does too?) but the worst guys are 1 for me

also, i wouldnt say im superstitious, but im probably wellaboveaveragestitious. for distro or practice minutes i never use the numbers 6, 13 or 16... never. and some others i dont care for too much either, but those are the main ones.

on a more serious note .... i am very big on adjusting to the actual scoring numbers and shooting percentages once i get 5 games in or so. thats a topic, that could get some good discussion here i suppose.

actually i should say that what i prefer is
22-15-12-8-5
instead of 3-2-2-1-1

me and a buddy were rating kids for little league to help with a draft.

his system
3= kid can play
2=ok
1=awful

i wanted 10 point scale. we compromised on 5 point scale.

first kid comes through,
he says "I got 3, what do you have?"
I said " im thinkin 3.4, but maybe hes a 3.2, lets call it 3.3"

Posted by oldave on 2/2/2020 12:17:00 AM (view original):
i tend to get pretty close to 100 as there is just something inside me that prefers
21-14-14-7-7
to
3-2-2-1-1

also, i never put any player at zero, not sure where i got that from (i guess fear of weird things... because putting all players at 0 has a special effect so maybe one player at zero does too?) but the worst guys are 1 for me

also, i wouldnt say im superstitious, but im probably wellaboveaveragestitious. for distro or practice minutes i never use the numbers 6, 13 or 16... never. and some others i dont care for too much either, but those are the main ones.

on a more serious note .... i am very big on adjusting to the actual scoring numbers and shooting percentages once i get 5 games in or so. thats a topic, that could get some good discussion here i suppose.

5 games in is too soon IMO. there is definitely stuff you can glean in less than 5 games, especially about rotation but some stats like team rebounding aren't so bad. individual shooting percentages are among the worst. i personally won't even bother looking at that stuff until at least 7 games in (adjusting slightly if i do), and preferably 10-14. even on an entire season basis, i am never just playing the numbers. i do adjust to them a good bit though by the end - i think pretty much everybody should (and probably a bit more than i do). there's a couple challenges though.

other than the sample size, you also have issues like the changes in your team and players over the season (especially if you are starting youngins for growth) and the difference between how your team performs against mediocre and top competition (which often implies there is a gap between how your team performs in the regular and post season, for high end teams at least). so, i guess i would hope for a mix, partly adjusting to the numbers, partly adjusting to what you perceive to be the reality on the ground for the post season (not talking about the game-to-game game planning part - but how you assess the situation given your final, post-season ready team and the competition they'll face).

I like to have distro in the 60-70 range so that I can kick a guy up without reducing others. For example, if my opposition has a clear weak spot for one game.

I would resist adjusting distro too often based on just a few games. I try to look at distro and results each time grades come out - that is four times per season - looking at who is doing great and who is just not producing effectively on offense. But, as others note have to watch out for effects from other changes - like the opposition and how your depth chart is arranged etc

late in the season, it can be very useful to look at performance in league games and consider adjusting distro- that reduces the effect of possibly weak OOC opponents....if a guy is shooting 33% maybe he is getting too much distro - if he is hitting 50% of his threes and his good skillz, maybe he should take some more...

Posted by fd343ny on 2/2/2020 2:31:00 PM (view original):
I like to have distro in the 60-70 range so that I can kick a guy up without reducing others. For example, if my opposition has a clear weak spot for one game.

I would resist adjusting distro too often based on just a few games. I try to look at distro and results each time grades come out - that is four times per season - looking at who is doing great and who is just not producing effectively on offense. But, as others note have to watch out for effects from other changes - like the opposition and how your depth chart is arranged etc

late in the season, it can be very useful to look at performance in league games and consider adjusting distro- that reduces the effect of possibly weak OOC opponents....if a guy is shooting 33% maybe he is getting too much distro - if he is hitting 50% of his threes and his good skillz, maybe he should take some more...

This is a very solid post

I’m personally an 100 guy. I start everyone with a multiple of 5 and go from there. With 100, it’s easiest to get very specific with changes and to also think using usage rate and FG%. I disagree with the argument that using 100 is bad because it’s easier to adjust when you want to increase someone’s shot amount. Well, when you do that you’re automatically taking shots away from other people, so why not manually choose who the shots are coming from.

Distro isn't exact tho. If you take away from one player to give to another, it doesn't mean that will show up in the pbp that way. Especially with distro being a ratio, distributed by the unit of 5 on the floor at a given time, and the ratio changes every substitution. Using 100 (or any set of numbers).... you can not adjust "one player down and one player up" and EXPECT only those two players to be adjusted. Every number change you make can and will affect the entire team collectively. Depending how the game plays out.

But I agree that using 100 isn't "bad". It's just another valid choice to use

Posted by topdogggbm on 2/2/2020 6:23:00 PM (view original):
Distro isn't exact tho. If you take away from one player to give to another, it doesn't mean that will show up in the pbp that way. Especially with distro being a ratio, distributed by the unit of 5 on the floor at a given time, and the ratio changes every substitution. Using 100 (or any set of numbers).... you can not adjust "one player down and one player up" and EXPECT only those two players to be adjusted. Every number change you make can and will affect the entire team collectively. Depending how the game plays out.

But I agree that using 100 isn't "bad". It's just another valid choice to use

It is not about whether it is exact, but I am saying if you just add to one player, everyone collectively goes down, whereas if you have 100, people can collectively go down as well if you change it that way, but one is forced to pick who's individual distro goes down.