Post by eric on Feb 19, 2016 14:19:14 GMT -6
I wanted to see how players shared glory when it came to end of season awards, and gbgalla24 brought up the concept of a great shotblocker taking blocks from his teammates so I looked at that too, and we'll do that first.
I set up a league of all 50s guys, then on one team gave the starting center 100 Shot Blocking, then the starting power forward, then both. Note that because increased Shot Blocking reduces fouling, these players will play more minutes than they would otherwise, so I will give results both in terms of raw blocks and blocks per 36 minutes played:
So there's no evidence for shot blocking being exclusive. Adding a second great shot blocker to a team has as much impact as adding the first one. However, this assumes that opposing big men are identical. Let us consider a theoretical counter-case:
1. A team has a decent shot blocker and a poor one.
2. The decent shot blocker is assigned to defend the highest usage opponents.
3. The team replaces the poor shot blocker with a great one.
4. Now the great shot blocker gets the highest usage opponents.
5. Thus the decent shot blocker's blocks will go down.
6. But the team's will still go way up.
I had just thought of this as I was typing the article out so I don't have data on it yet. I'll get that soon.
.
Awards!
I set up an identical league then made one SF 100 in everything. He won every award: MVP, DPOY, All-NBA 1st, All-Defense 1st. This made sense.
I then made a SF in the other conference the same 100 in everything. They split awards as follows, listing the Beastern Conference first:
42/38 MVP
45/35 DPOY
43/37 All-NBA 1st
37/43 All-NBA 2nd
45/35 All-Defense 1st
35/45 All-Defense 2nd
Every All-Defense 1st teamer was DPOY, but on three occasions the All-NBA 1st was not MVP, and on two of those occasions the All-NBA 1st player was also DPOY. None of these splits are statistically significant, and it makes sense that they would have a 50/50 shot.
I finally made another SF on the Beastern SF's team with 100 in everything and played him at SG. I expected him to get most of the awards because SG get more stats than SF, and the West SF to get most of the remaining/second awards, and that's mostly how it went with some weird wrinkles.
-The cheese guard was always All-Defense 1st Team as a small forward (and DPOY), which makes sense. His SF teammate got 29 of the All-Defense 2nds compared to the West SF with 51, which is a statistically significant difference. This kind of makes sense: even though the SFs are identical, the West SF is the best defender on his team, the Beast SF is not.
-The cheese guard got 73 MVPs, the West SF got the last 7, and only when he was All-NBA 1st Team. This kind of makes sense too, and also tells us that having a much better supporting cast doesn't hurt a player in the eyes of the voters.
-But what doesn't make any sense is that the only possible arrangements of All-NBA were:
{Cheese 1, West 2, Beast 0} 64 times
{Cheese 1, West 0, Beast 2} 7 times
{Cheese 2, West 1, Beast 3} 9 times
Clearly Cheese should always be ahead of Beast, but why would West not get 3rd if Cheese and Beast were 1st and 2nd? And why would Beast never get 3rd if Cheese and West were 1st and 2nd, but only when Cheese was 2nd? And why would all of these outcomes be indistinguishable from the All-Defense possibilities? It is possible for the software to give 1st and 2nd to the same team, the 3027 Nets had 1st and 2nd team All-NBA centers, but that 2nd team All-NBA was 1st team All-Defense (and DPOY).
The bottom line is that awards voting in the software mostly makes sense but gets really weird sometimes, which matches what we've seen in sim life.
I set up a league of all 50s guys, then on one team gave the starting center 100 Shot Blocking, then the starting power forward, then both. Note that because increased Shot Blocking reduces fouling, these players will play more minutes than they would otherwise, so I will give results both in terms of raw blocks and blocks per 36 minutes played:
C PF team
raw per 36 raw per 36 raw per 36
base 3928 0.67 3694 0.65 25006 0.57
C 100 17842 2.77 3578 0.62 37980 0.86
PF 100 3990 0.68 16309 2.56 37244 0.85
both 18400 2.80 16380 2.49 50930 1.13
C PF team
raw per 36 raw per 36 raw per 36
C 100 13914 2.10 -116 -0.03 12974 0.30
PF 100 62 0.01 12615 1.91 12238 0.28
both 14472 2.12 12686 1.84 25924 0.56
C + PF 13976 2.11 12499 1.89 25212 0.57
error 0.03 0.01 0.01 -0.02 0.03 -0.02So there's no evidence for shot blocking being exclusive. Adding a second great shot blocker to a team has as much impact as adding the first one. However, this assumes that opposing big men are identical. Let us consider a theoretical counter-case:
1. A team has a decent shot blocker and a poor one.
2. The decent shot blocker is assigned to defend the highest usage opponents.
3. The team replaces the poor shot blocker with a great one.
4. Now the great shot blocker gets the highest usage opponents.
5. Thus the decent shot blocker's blocks will go down.
6. But the team's will still go way up.
I had just thought of this as I was typing the article out so I don't have data on it yet. I'll get that soon.
.
Awards!
I set up an identical league then made one SF 100 in everything. He won every award: MVP, DPOY, All-NBA 1st, All-Defense 1st. This made sense.
I then made a SF in the other conference the same 100 in everything. They split awards as follows, listing the Beastern Conference first:
42/38 MVP
45/35 DPOY
43/37 All-NBA 1st
37/43 All-NBA 2nd
45/35 All-Defense 1st
35/45 All-Defense 2nd
Every All-Defense 1st teamer was DPOY, but on three occasions the All-NBA 1st was not MVP, and on two of those occasions the All-NBA 1st player was also DPOY. None of these splits are statistically significant, and it makes sense that they would have a 50/50 shot.
I finally made another SF on the Beastern SF's team with 100 in everything and played him at SG. I expected him to get most of the awards because SG get more stats than SF, and the West SF to get most of the remaining/second awards, and that's mostly how it went with some weird wrinkles.
-The cheese guard was always All-Defense 1st Team as a small forward (and DPOY), which makes sense. His SF teammate got 29 of the All-Defense 2nds compared to the West SF with 51, which is a statistically significant difference. This kind of makes sense: even though the SFs are identical, the West SF is the best defender on his team, the Beast SF is not.
-The cheese guard got 73 MVPs, the West SF got the last 7, and only when he was All-NBA 1st Team. This kind of makes sense too, and also tells us that having a much better supporting cast doesn't hurt a player in the eyes of the voters.
-But what doesn't make any sense is that the only possible arrangements of All-NBA were:
{Cheese 1, West 2, Beast 0} 64 times
{Cheese 1, West 0, Beast 2} 7 times
{Cheese 2, West 1, Beast 3} 9 times
Clearly Cheese should always be ahead of Beast, but why would West not get 3rd if Cheese and Beast were 1st and 2nd? And why would Beast never get 3rd if Cheese and West were 1st and 2nd, but only when Cheese was 2nd? And why would all of these outcomes be indistinguishable from the All-Defense possibilities? It is possible for the software to give 1st and 2nd to the same team, the 3027 Nets had 1st and 2nd team All-NBA centers, but that 2nd team All-NBA was 1st team All-Defense (and DPOY).
The bottom line is that awards voting in the software mostly makes sense but gets really weird sometimes, which matches what we've seen in sim life.
