If you follow the NBA, you'll notice a trend that has been growing the past several years: fg% - efg% in particular - has been ramping up & up, getting higher and higher. Yet, even with some of the ridiculous numbers we see in the real NBA, nothing that Steph Curry or Giannis AntetelongnameIcan'trememberhowtospellpo do are even in the same league, much less ball park, as what the State Farm™ teams do.
Hi, my name is Ashamael. You may know me from such threads as, "
What is usage%?" and "
Building Better Teams." I didn't come up with the State Farm strategy - all props go to the legendary jlg1983 for that - but I did learn it, master it, use it, and yes, even abuse it years before it became every team in every open league. I even posted
a running thread about it from its inception and detailed how it was done as well as shared my findings as I pushed the envelope further and further. I last updated it five years ago - and it was an old strategy then - so as you can see, this has been around for ages.
If you're out of the loop or don't understand what State Farm is, let me take a quick second and explain to you what State Farm is and how it works. Understanding how it works is critically important to knowing how to fix it. I've seen absurd suggestions from the community on how to solve this issue over and over, and while their intent is noble, many of the things they propose would hurt the beauty that is the concept of "What If?"
State Farm™: A Quick History Lesson
So prior to the dominance of State Farm, the predominant team building strategy was to load up on rebounds. More was always better. The aforementioned jlg1983 made a team called, "Why Do I Need Rodman If I Don't Miss?" that shot well over 60% from the field. It was pretty revolutionary. He took an idea, pushed it to the envelope, and absolutely broke the sim. He took and put nothing but high ast% guys on the floor together with typically high fg% and watched them go absolutely bonkers. His first team had over 150% between the starters and the 04-05 Shaq (60% efg%, 30% usg%) as the star. He pushed it and pushed it. I talked to him extensively about the details and the theory and started testing it as well. Another pair of owners that I recall, Smackdown(84?) & Sephy13, really pushed it at around the same time and/or for a couple of years. We all got incredible results, including the (then) 3rd best team ever 78-4 that easily won the championship. More owners began to use and abuse this tactic until it reached its apex the past couple of years with legends like Benhoidal & Kinoa dominating with it. Two of the best three teams ever are State Farm Teams, as well as two of the three longest winning streaks. Even the dominant strategies of years' past can't seem to consistently stay with the strategy in a playoff series.
How Does State Farm™ Work?
According to the knowledge base, the ast% statistic provides a boost for everyone on the floor once past a certain threshold. This makes sense, as good passers typically make easier shots for their teammates, and is therefore good design. It is how it is implemented, however, where that design begins to fall apart. There are three flaws with this design:
1) The boost works for everyone on the court, including the person with the high ast%. IE Stockton helps himself shoot better
2) The boost works as a step function, meaning that unless you have enough ast% to get to the next tier, there's no point in having any higher than the lowest amount possible in that tier.
3) It ramps up out of control at a ridiculous pace.
If you've ever noticed that WIS ast% is always different (lower) than a place like BBall reference lists it, it is because of point #1. WIS purposely leaves a player's own FGM in the equation to make this happen. Now, I don't
really have a problem with this since there is also a penalty for not having enough ast% on the floor - not to mention it keeps high ast% guys like the aforementioned Stockton from suffering from a penalty since they would likely be all of the ast% bonus needed themselves - but it is somewhat confusing. Since this is the system we're used to, I believe it should remain so.
The step function problem is twofold: not only is 67% ast% pointless - if you can't get to 70%, you might as well only have 60% - it unnecessarily complicates how the boost works. How does the boost work? Here's a quick rundown:
The sim is a probability engine. Think of rolling a dice or flipping a coin. It has a series of checks it makes, and with each check (roll, flip, etc), it moves to the next step. When it comes to whether a shot goes in, it factors in several things: Pace of offense, a player's fg%, the aggregate defense of the opposing team, the style of defense they are playing (halfcourt vs press; positioning), the specific defensive rating of the player(s) guarding the shooter, and some other factors I haven't mentioned. The important one, in this case, is the aggregate ast% of the shooter's teammates - including the shooter. All of these factors are coefficients used to determine whether the shot goes in.
You Mentioned a Fix?
The situation is complicated because you do want to reward having good playmakers on the floor. Having Chris Paul
and Lebron James on the floor at the same time
should warrant better shots for a squad than simply having, say, Lebron James and Mario Chalmers. So what you want to accomplish is change the coefficient that having ast% provides in such a way that it still provides a bonus (and penalty for not having enough. At one time I didn't think that was necessary but I do now) but that bonus grows at a diminishing rate instead of an expanding rate. I can't claim to know the intent of the person who coded it in the first place, but my guess is that they probably intended that as well but just flipped something simple and it made it grow at a faster pace instead of slower.
That's a lot of words without examples. I'm going to share a spreadsheet I made that has examples and explain what each column means and how this fixes not only the State Farm™ problem but also solves the step function tier bullshit.
Spreadsheet
The left column (A) is the cumulative ast% of the five players on the floor (as that's what matters, not what your entire team does). I started at thirty because while it may be possible to go below 30% ast%, I don't think it'd be very easy to do, and you'd have no reason to ever do it. I went up to 200% because at the time I originally worked on this, it wasn't possible (and still isn't, I don't think, but we can get damn close).
The next column (B) is the new coefficient. This is the new number that the sim engine would use to determine a boost (or penalty) to the field goal's chance of going in.
Coefficient = 1+(ast%-50)/(6.5*ast%)
This makes 50 ast% on the floor neutral, providing neither a bonus nor a penalty. The further away you get from 50 cumulative ast%, the bigger the penalty or bonus is. However, the rate at which that penalty or bonus increases gets smaller. IE - diminishing returns. Here's some examples:
30 ast% on the floor: a 10.26% penalty (column C). IE a 50% chance of a shot being made is now a 44.87% chance (column E). 55% = 49.36% (column F), 60% = 53.85% (column G). ETC
35 ast% is a 6.59% penalty
40% ast is a 3.85% penalty
45% ast is a 1.71% penalty
48% ast is a 0.64% penalty
49% ast is a 0.31% penalty
50% is neutral
51% ast is a 0.30% boost
52% ast is a 0.59% boost (already see that the total increase is higher but the increase from 51 to 52 is lower than 50 to 51 - ie column D)
55% ast is 1.40% boost
60% ast is a 2.56% boost
70% ast is a 4.40% boost
80% ast is a 5.77% boost
90% ast is a 6.84% boost
100% ast is a 7.69% boost
For reference, that same 50% shot to go in is now a 50.7% chance to go in at 55% ast. It's 51.3% at 60, 52.1% at 70, 52.9% at 80, 53.4% at 90 & 53.8% at 100. Check out further down the table:
125% ast is a 9.23% boost [50% shot has a 54.6% chance of going in]
150% ast is a 10.26% boost [50% shot now 55.1% shot]
175% ast is a 10.99% boost [50% shot now 55.5%]
200% ast (impossible) is a 11.54% boost [50% shot now 55.8%]
Contrast this to the 20-30% (or even more!) fg% boost we see from current State Farm™ teams of 150+ ast%. It seems significant of decrease to me, yet the bonus is still enough that it is probably worth stacking some ast%, but there's no clear point at which you can say, "THIS is the optimal spot for the amount of assists to get."
These numbers can be adjusted one way or the other by changing the 6.5 to another digit. I played around with many different combinations and this just seemed like the best balance to me.
Conclusion
Assists are expensive and do very little unless you have too much or too few. This kind of change brings them back down to earth in the first case while incentivizing getting some playmakers on your squad while making it not worth the salary to make it your primary focus. It also gets rid of the stupid assist tier issues, making team building more intuitive and less punishing. If your backup point guard brings your five on the floor to 49% with my way, you're still penalized, but you're not destroyed.
These are the changes that need to be made to fix this. Salary restructuring (which needs to happen regardless) and banning clones will
not fix this. I know this because I have won multiple no clone leagues at varying caps (including a recent $59m one) with State Farm. The changes need to be made in the engine directly to the boost itself.
As I said, the numbers can be played around with in regards to the amount of the bonus or penalty provided. This is more of a change in the way of thinking that needs to occur when they rebuild the engine - or even if they are able to make this change before that.
I will close by saying that if admin does decide they can make this sort of change, they should give the community fair warning: there are
many managers employing this strategy over multiple teams currently. It's been a legitimate strategy for almost a decade at this point, so giving a 40-50 day warning before the change goes live (to finish any ongoing seasons). The last time two times a major change like this was made, the owners using the strategies were just left out to dry with bad teams (6 minutes of hell - also made by jlg1983 - and the low usage/high efg teams ran by ashleyscott, for example).
I'm happy to answer any questions and am willing to discuss anything mentioned above in this with anybody. I'd say there are very few people who have played as many State Farm teams as I have (I also keep spreadsheets of results), so if you come at me with something, you need to come prepared.
Let's fix this major flaw with the sim!