A lot of people have complained about how teams seemingly need large amounts of made three-pointers to be successful. I thought I'd take a look at some real-life NBA data and see how wide a variance we see in 3pm. Here are totals for the 16 playoff teams this season:


East

1. Cleveland - 602 3PM
2. Orlando - 841 3PM
3. Atlanta - 524 3PM
4. Boston - 499 3PM
5. Miami - 494 3PM
6. Milwaukee - 645 3PM
7. Charlotte - 460 3PM
8. Chicago - 352 3PM



West

1. Los Angeles - 532 3PM
2. Dallas - 558 3PM
3. Phoenix - 730 3 PM
4. Utah - 439 3PM
5. Denver - 544 3PM
6. Portland - 491 3PM
7. San Antonio - 554 3PM
8. OKC - 418 3PM


So there you have it - of the 16 teams, only one had fewer than 400 3PM. Nine teams had over 500 3PM, including the top three seeds in each conference, and each conference has a top three seed with 700+ 3PM.


The conclusion I come to: in real life, it's very important to be a good three point shooting team. While 1000 made 3PM is unrealistic, it's also pretty unrealistic to expect a team making under 300 threes to be effective. In the real-life NBA, you have to have balanced scoring, which means taking advantage of the three point line.


Now, the one area where WIS three point shooting is clearly unrealistic is the percentages. Phoenix led the league at 41.2 percent, and no one else even got to 39%. Now, a lot of this is explained by the fact that the $42 million cap clearly allows teams to be built with all or mostly all above-average players. I think that's mainly a good thing; in general, most people want to use their favorite star players, and most people want to see gaudy stats. Unfortunately, it makes it tough to be competitive with a gritty, win-ugly defensive team (especially because defensive ratings have seemingly been de-emphsized in the current version of the SIM.


The other thing that contributes to inflating three point percentages is part of a large problem: the over-inflation of shooting percentages, especially with uptempo offenses. Now, I like uptempo and I like offense; all of my teams are built to take advantage of the uptempo bump in FG percentage. But that FG percentage is simply being inflated too much. 50% seems to mean 55%; 55% means 62%, or so it seems. In one recent league, my team led the league in field goal percentage defense - at over 48%! And that was the best in the league. Every team in the league, I believe, gave up between 48-53% fg. Even accounting for mostly above-average players, that simply isn't how things should be working. In the NBA this season, teams allowed between 43-48.6% fg. For $42 million sim leagues, I think the spread should be somewhere around 45%-50%, to strike a balance between realism and fantasy.

As it relates to threes, the problem is that uptempo seems to boost 3pt% at the same rate as fg%, which of course overpowers three point shooting at an additional 50% rate. So while it SHOULD be difficult to succeed without a significant amount of 3PM, it should not be so easy to rack up 700, 800, 900 3PM with percentages from deep approaching or even above 45%. Ideally, I think, the 3pt percentage bonus from uptempo should be maybe half that of two point %, and the two point % bonus should be maybe half of what it is now.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: how to fix these things? Well, clearly significant updates are required to boost the playability of the NBA game. The most significant updates need to come in reigning in FG and 3pt percentages, and making defensive ratings matter again. There should be a larger variety of ways to win in the game, and players with certain attributes (like sky-high efg%) should cost more relative to their true value (right now, I think fg% has more to do with salary than efg%; that has to change). Will we get an update soon? I don't know. But that's what would be on the top of my list.



Another thing that would be interesting - a second open league option that promotes team-building more in line with realistic teams. In Simleague Baseball, the $80 million cap for open leagues is rather restrictive. It really limits the star power that can go on your team, and makes you penny pinch everywhere. I always thought it would be great if they had a $100 million open league option, which would allow for more usage of stars and not a bunch of no-name role players (of course, with the high volume of the MLB sim and abundance of theme leagues, this is less of a problem for that sim).


But for the NBA sim I think a second open league cap option - IMO it should be somewhere around 35-38 million - would be great. It would allow the owners that want to see a little more realism to get their fix, as the teams constructed would have more the feel of real-life teams than Dream Teams. It would be tough to build the super-efficient teams that dominate $42 million leagues now, and owners I think would be forced to find new ways to win (of course, this would work a lot better, again, if defensive ratings meant something again).

Two excellent posts, tarheel. This question of just how much the sim fascination with 3s departs from real life has been on my mind, especially with Orlando breaking the record for threes made in a regular season.

I don't think there's good way around inflated 3 pt. %s in open leagues, though, given the lack (by design) of player exclusivity. Consider - in a WIS open league, all the best three-point shooters of all time are theoretically available to any team. Each owner is free to consider drafting Nash, Allen, Reggie, Peja, etc. - not to mention playing Troy (ahem) Murphy at SF) - and the result is bound to be ridiculous shooting percentages. The outcome is much more realistic (although still a bit inflated) in just about any draft league, especially progressive leagues where you're limited to players from a certain year.

Thanks tarheel. A couple of refreshing posts that don't rant and rave all over the map.

Quote: Originally Posted By slymonium on 4/17/2010Thanks tarheel. A couple of refreshing posts that don't rant and rave all over the map

Yes agreed, Tarheel some really good insight. One thing would love to see is the SIM know the difference between a 3pt shot vs. a 2pt shot in terms of fouls.

just a thought - isnt it problematic that the sim models on contemporary play but purports to be about "what if" players from various eras played together or against each other? it works out Ok for paint players but I'd like to be able to play perimeter players from days gone by like Clyde Frazier or Jerry West and have an 'even' playing field vs contemporary players

that sounds familar...

tarbaby, excellent suggestion! a simple fix that requires little effort nor time from tech to complete.

create a 37 mil open league. that changes the playing field instantly in many respects and all but wipes out the 5-player cookie-cutters.

rice, allen, peja, nash, i imagine, will still dot the landscape, but usher in granger, durant, kenny smith, even a little joe johnson. would maybe breathe some new life into the league. lower cap teams are fun to build. but best of all, the sharks in both the open and theme leagues would come together to compete in it, i believe, and create new rivalries. how friggin' cool is that? trash-talkin themers vs. the ravenous robots. lol. christspeak vs. uvasooner. garyman vs. chaos (remember him?) lol.

i'm gonna hold my breath on this one...

as far as monkee's hope of infusing the oldies on a level playing field as well, this would help some. west and goodrich would be a kick... but they'd lack the 3's (as do wade and kobe, efficiency wise).

buy gold and silver, boys. all u can get.

Quote: Originally Posted By scudmissle on 4/18/2010
buy gold and silver, boys. all u can get.

Have plenty of it, in terms of stocks not physical

great post(s), 'heel. Lot of good input from others, too.

Quote: Originally posted by felonius on 4/17/2010just a thought - isnt it problematic that the sim models on contemporary play but purports to be about "what if" players from various eras played together or against each other? it works out Ok for paint players but I'd like to be able to play perimeter players from days gone by like Clyde Frazier or Jerry West and have an 'even' playing field vs contemporary players

I think the older perimeter players are a little more playable than people think - I was just in an open league where the league champ had the most expensive Nate Archibald. If Tiny can be that effective I'm pretty sure West can too - less sure about Frazier, since you have to pay for rebounding and assists that he simply won't produce at the levels you pay for. But anyway, the one big strike against the old guys is that there was no three point line. So they have the made-up three point totals, which is helpful, but already a blatant departure from fact - it's not like they can just make up a Jerry West season with 180 3PM, they just have to kinda keep everyone the same with no real concept of who the three point shooters would have been.


So since they can't make threes, they can never match the modern guys in efficiency per dollar. If they do what I think they should - take fg% out of the equation for salary purposes, to be replaced by efg% - you would see older players become more affordable by comparison, and more usable in the SIM.

The other thing they need to do, they started already but didn't take far enough. They added the fg+ values, which as far as I can guess are accounted for - very slightly - by the SIM, but not enough to matter much. The next step is to base salary values on efg+ instead of just efg, and make players perform based on the era-adjusted values instead of the raw values.



The thing is, something like this will take a lot of tinkering. There's a good chance that the initial re-programming will throw things way out of whack, and we'll see a bunch of 54%-shooting Dolph Schayes chucking their way to championships (sounds like the good old days!). Ideally you get where the baseball sim is, where players across all eras can be incorporated with success (not that I ever had much). Right now, the only real issue is that the SIM hasn't quite evolved to the point where salary matches value - to be fair it's better than it used to be, but that evolution process that should have kept continuing slammed to a halt a year or two ago. So with plenty of time to tinker with a static engine, the owners have simply gotten smarter than the SIM and found ways to exploit the areas where salary and value clearly don't line up. That by itself is not really a huge issue - some people will always be better at the game - but the lack of change (matched with the absolutely, positively, 100% retarded fact that anyone can simply copy a great team off of the leaderboard) mean that too much of the same thing is winning now. I dunno how many other people play GD like me, but the exact same thing has happened with that game - development of the game stopped, people have figured out what works, and the game is dominated by a relatively small group of people. Nothing really wrong with it - except it discourages new owners from really getting into the game (unless they're copycats) and so the base of playing owners isn't really growing. And that is definitely a bad thing, for everyone.

You all forget that you can discuss changes all day but if they don't update the site it doesn't matter.

Quote: Originally posted by benjihall on 4/19/2010You all forget that you can discuss changes all day but if they don't update the site it doesn't matter.

I don't think anybody in this thread has forgotten that.