Series on how to create your team in SIM Leagues.

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GoNy
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Series on how to create your team in SIM Leagues.

Post by GoNy »

Hey guys, I decided to come up with a series on how to have a a competing team in SIM play.

Part 1.

Usage is one of the most complex stats in sim Leagies. Even people who think they have a good handle on it often have the wrong idea.

What is Usage%?

From the knowledgebase:
Usage% is the player's possessions (FGA + FTA * 0.44 + Turnovers) per minute as a percentage of his real-life team's possessions per minute. This value indicates how often a player either shot the ball, drew a foul, or turned the ball over. The SimEngine uses this value in relation to the other 4 players on his team to determine how often each player gets the ball.

So, with this in mind, the higher the usage of a player, the greater the CHANCE your team's possession in this sim will end with that player making a FG attempt, getting fouled or turning the ball over. With that in mind, you probably want to make sure your highest usage players are your most efficient offensive players (shoot a high fg%, get to the line a lot, and don't turn the ball over as much.

Also keep in mind that there will only be so many possessions in a basketball game. It is a flat-out waste to draft way more possessions than you can ever use in a game, so you're better off spending some of that money on lower usage guys who specialize in other areas (rebounds!) that can help you.

So how much usage is too much? How much do you need?

The first thing you have to realize is that there are two penalties to avoid, and you need to use different strategies to get by both of them.

The first is the team possession penalty. Here, total usage% means absolutely nothing. You can't just add up the five players on the floor's usage and have it right. Usage is broken up into different tiers that give different point values. Here is that table:
Tier 1: Usg% >= 32.5 = 8 points
Tier 2: Usg% 27.2 To 32.5 = 6 points
Tier 3: Usg% 22.1 To 27.2 = 4 points
Tier 4: Usg% 17.5 To 22.1 = 2 points
Tier 5: Usg% 13.7 To 17.5 = 1 point
Tier 6: Usg% < 13.7 = 0.5 points

That table will be extremely useful to you when building your own teams and analyzing other teams. It's a good idea to just memorize it. Now here's how to use it: Take your five players on the floor and find out which tier they fall into. Add up the POINTS. This is what's important. You need 10 points on the floor to avoid the team possession penalty.

Now before I go any further, let me go into more detail about the possession penalty is and why it's bad. As I said before, there are two kinds of possession penalties: Team & Individual. When a team gets into a possession penalty situation, their players don't shoot as good and they turn the ball over more often. The same thing happens to a player when they get into the individual possession penalty. Obviously you can see that you want to avoid this as much as possible.

The team possession penalty is the easier penalty to avoid. All you need is 10 usage points on the floor to avoid it. That's it. So you can literally have one guy with 32.5% usage or higher on the floor with 4 specialists who have a usage of 13.7% or lower and not hit the team possession penalty. If you add that up, you'll see that number is less than 100%. That's one reason why you can't rely on what I dub cumulative usage (or adding the usage up of all five players on the floor). You can actually have 100% or more usage on the floor and below the possession penalty. How? Let's say you have four guys with 21 usage & a fifth with 17. That adds up to 101 usage... but only 9 usage points. This team will hit the team possession penalty. That's bad. Don't do that!

Now... you've got the team penalty & how to avoid it down, right? Just get 10+ usage points. But what about the individual possession penalty? How do you avoid that? That's where cumulative usage comes into play.

Think about what usage means (as defined earlier) a minute. If you have less than 100% usage on the floor, someone is going to end up with more possessions in the sim than the did IRL. That triggers the individual penalty. This occurs on a game by game basis, not the season total, so realize that at any point, sim randomness & outliers can and will screw you. To ensure that you will never hit the individual possession penalty, you would likely have to waste a great deal of salary by spending too much on usage, ending up with several players who won't get their RL possessions. But you can achieve a reasonable balance where it is unlikely that you will have too many players hit the individual possession penalty while not wasting too much of your salary on it.

By playing uptempo & working hard on the possession battle (boards, turnovers), most of your guys WILL end up with more shots than they did IRL. I've found great success recently in aiming to have more than 100% cumulative usage (but less than 115%) on the floor at all times

Conclusion:
I aim to have 10 usage points on the floor at all times (making sure my backups are in the same tier as the starter, or at least high enough that the lowest lineup I can run will have 10 usage points). I'm shooting for 105%-115% cumulative usage in my starting line-up with a minimum of 90% usage possible on the floor when backups are in the game. So far, this has led to much more consistent success than when relying on usage points alone.

Keep in mind that this sim is about getting the right balance between all of the necessary stats. Usage isn't the only thing you should worry about, but it might just be the first thing you should worry about.

Hope this help, keep a look out for my next article on Shooting Struggles.
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FlDuckFan
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Re: Series on how to create your team in SIM Leagues.

Post by FlDuckFan »

+5 article

Ok this helps me a ton, it makes what Ownage said about my team even more clear. Turnovers are a killer and negate any plus' my team has. Simmons is a stud but the young guys on the team are killing me with their inefficiency.
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GoNy
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Re: Series on how to create your team in SIM Leagues.

Post by GoNy »

FlDuckFan wrote:+5 article

Ok this helps me a ton, it makes what Ownage said about my team even more clear. Turnovers are a killer and negate any plus' my team has. Simmons is a stud but the young guys on the team are killing me with their inefficiency.

I did this because what you stated... wait till the other parts come out.
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Re: Series on how to create your team in SIM Leagues.

Post by The Bean Regime »

I'll be honest. At first glance, I am not seeing how this is helpful. Or more particularly, what this is telling me exactly. Plugging in values for different teams, I didn't see enough discrepancy between the Knicks, Grizzlies, and Sonics except for the Knick's bench likely causing the team possession penalty. But, of course, you put in 5 guys where none of them are particularly gifted offensively, you're going to be in trouble.

Maybe I'm just being dumb. Always happy to see people trying to help others.

Also, you mention RL multiple times for the individual penalty, and I'm not seeing the relevancy. I was in a league that used a program based heavily on real life and would run side by side to the NBA seasons (1 season behind. So while 2017-18 NBA season was going, this would be going simultaneously using stats from the 2016-17 NBA season), but FBB doesn't use real life impact at all.
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GoNy
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Re: Series on how to create your team in SIM Leagues.

Post by GoNy »

The Bean Regime wrote:I'll be honest. At first glance, I am not seeing how this is helpful. Or more particularly, what this is telling me exactly. Plugging in values for different teams, I didn't see enough discrepancy between the Knicks, Grizzlies, and Sonics except for the Knick's bench likely causing the team possession penalty. But, of course, you put in 5 guys where none of them are particularly gifted offensively, you're going to be in trouble.

Maybe I'm just being dumb. Always happy to see people trying to help others.

Also, you mention RL multiple times for the individual penalty, and I'm not seeing the relevancy. I was in a league that used a program based heavily on real life and would run side by side to the NBA seasons (1 season behind. So while 2017-18 NBA season was going, this would be going simultaneously using stats from the 2016-17 NBA season), but FBB doesn't use real life impact at all.

I hear you,
This basically explains how there is one ball, and your team needs to be balanced. You can't have to many one way players on your team. because they will waste away. You have to build your team so that the usage is spread evenly. Scorers, Rebounders, Assist etc...if you have five scorers on your team and no one one to grab boards or dish the ball it wont work. when you selecting options you want the person with the best handles to have the ball the most, just because your scorer, scores alot if he turns the ball over alot he shouldn't have the ball in its hands all the time. again this system is based on how I have played SIms since the early 2000's. for someone who has been in the league for a while and can't win there is a problem. They need alittle help, thats why i wrote this.
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GoNy
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Re: Series on how to create your team in SIM Leagues.

Post by GoNy »

when can i claim this?
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Re: Series on how to create your team in SIM Leagues.

Post by Oregon Ownage »

GoNy wrote:when can i claim this?
Due before the regular season

+5 to any category less than 75
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GoNy
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Re: Series on how to create your team in SIM Leagues.

Post by GoNy »

Frank N.. Assist or Steals
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Re: Series on how to create your team in SIM Leagues.

Post by Oregon Ownage »

GoNy wrote:Frank N.. Assist or Steals
Jumped to a B+
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Re: Series on how to create your team in SIM Leagues.

Post by GoNy »

Oregon Ownage wrote:
GoNy wrote:Frank N.. Assist or Steals
Jumped to a B+

Nice
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