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Tim Moungey Wolverine Studios Community Manager What Do Those Advanced Basketball Stats Mean, Anyway? Sports metrics and measures of analysis have made dramatic improvements over the last decade or so. We’re now able to better pinpoint from a statistical perspective just how good a given player or team actually is. Here at Wolverine Studios, we keep current on the latest models and advanced statistics and find ways to integrate them into our games. But that can often lead to confusion from people who aren’t as familiar with the latest trends. What’s Offensive Rating?, they ask, and what does that stat tell me about my team and players? Consequently, we thought it’d be a good idea to talk about some of the advanced stats for one of our flagship games, Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball – specifically, explaining what they measure and how you can use them as a gauge. Offensive Rating, Defensive Rating, and Net Rating The brainchild of statistician Dean Oliver, Offensive Rating, Defensive Rating, and Net Rating mark one of the biggest leaps forward in terms of understanding how both players and teams perform on those respective sides of the ball. Offensive Rating Team We won’t delve into the mathematical formulas here, as they can be rather eye-glazing and don’t address what you want to know. But simply put, a team’s Offensive Rating measures how many points a team scores per 100 possessions. Player As you might expect from the above, a player’s Offensive Rating measures how many points that individual scores per 100 possessions. The higher the offensive rating, the better the number, obviously. So what’s a good offensive rating? That depends. For the last two seasons, the average NBA offensive rating has been 110.4, according to Basketball Reference. In the early 2000s – before today’s perimeter-oriented offense, it ranged from 103-106. However, take note of any time a player, team, or lineup has an Offensive Rating below 100. That means they’re scoring less than a point per possession. That’s not very efficient usage at all. Defensive Rating Team As you can probably guess, Defensive Rating looks at how many points a team gives up per 100 possessions – or the opposite of what Offensive Rating measures. Player Similar to what we’ve already seen, a player’s Defensive Rating tells us how many points a player surrenders per 100 possessions. Completely opposite to Offensive Rating, you want the Defensive Rating for both your team and players to be as low as possible. Don’t be surprised if a player has an average Defensive Rating over 100, though – only 30 people in NBA history have ever achieved a Defensive Rating under 100. Net Rating Simply, net rating is the difference between Offensive Rating and Defensive Rating. A positive number is good; a negative number bad. Let’s take a look at some of the lineup data from a save to see how this is displayed in DDS:PB. Our in-game lineup tracking lets you easily see what the good (and bad) rotations areAs you can see, the team’s most used lineup and third-most used lineup are playing very well, and there’s a potential Death Lineup (h/t to the Golden State Warriors for introducing this to our basketball vocabulary) at the bottom of the screen. Excellent net ratings all around. Where there’s an issue? The second-most used lineup. That’s a horrible Net Rating. And although we haven’t shown you the full screen, it’s clear from looking at the aggregate lineup data that Mike Berry and Jason Minor on the court together is the issue – every single lineup involving that pair has a negative Net Rating, regardless of who else is with them. Effective Field Goal %, True Shooting %, and Usage Rate The days when Field Goal Percentage and 3 Point Percentage were the best measurements of a player’s offensive efficiency have been dead since the 1990’s. We now have Effective Field Goal %, True Shooting %, and Usage Rate, which paint a far more clear picture of just how good a player is on the offensive end. Effective Field Goal % The math here is simple enough – (Field Goals + 0.5* Three Pointers)/Field Goal Attempts. What EFG % has over plain FG% is that it takes into account the fact that three-pointers are worth more on the stat sheet than two-pointers. So you could, for example, have a player who attempts 10 field goals inside the arc and makes 4 of them. You could have another player who attempts 10 field goals behind the arc and makes 4 of those. On the stat sheet, the FG % will be 40% for both. But the EFG will be 40% for Player A, and 60% for Player B. That’s a massive 20% difference. What qualifies as a good Effective Field Goal percentage will, like everything else, depend on your league. In the early 2000s, the league average was around 47-48%. In today’s NBA, the average is 52.4%. Averaging them, you can use 50% as a ballpark measure. True Shooting % So what’s missing from Effective Field Goal %? That’s right – free throws. True Shooting % (TS %) rectifies that. The formula is Total Points Scored/(2*(Field Goal Attempts + 0.44 * Free Throw Attempts). As a rule of thumb, True Shooting of 50% is average, 55% is excellent, and above 60% is world-class efficiency. To gain a complete measure of how good a shooter a player is, it’s best to take into account both their Effective Field Goal % and their True Shooting %. Usage Rate The calculation is incredibly lengthy, so we’ll simplify it for you.Usage Rate establishes what percentage of a team’s plays a given player was involved in that resulted in one of the following: a field goal attempt, a free throw attempt, or a turnover. An average usage rate is around 20%, which is logical – 100% Usage available, divided by five players on the court = 20% usage per player – everything be equal. Where this matters in DDS:PB terms: You want your most effective players, as measured by Effective Field Goal and True Shooting percentages, to have the highest Usage Rates to maximize your team’s offensive efficiency. Let’s look at the same team from earlier to see an example. DDS: Pro Basketball 2020 is full of advanced stats to help you make decisionsGreat news here from the team’s perspective – Kendall Dallas has the highest True Shooting and Effective Field Goal percentage *and* the highest Usage Rate. No wonder this squad went 48-34 this season. Dennis Sanchez, on the other hand, looks terrible from those metrics. But that’s why he’s only played in 3 games this season. The staff knows he’s a poor performer in their setup. As you can see from that screen, there’s more advanced stats we could talk about, but we’ll reserve those for another post. We hope you’ve found this information helpful. To check out a free demo of Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball or any of other sports simulations, go here. The post Understanding Advanced Stats appeared first on Wolverine Studios. View the full article

Hi...looking forward to trying the game out...

I agree with others, this game really covers all the thing about European basketball. Very detailed about the players and staff database There are some bugs still need to fix but, when you have enough time to being master of it the joy is getting from the PCF goes higher and higher. While playing PCF19 I promoted the the Montecatini Terme team and being a Euroleage champion after 8 seasons... Wow such a nice experience it was. I recommend this game. Nowadays I am helping for some translation work for this game. Wait for PCF 21 !

You don't even have the game listed or mentioned?

Hello again and thanks for the new updates in 0.7.1. I have a suggestion to ensure that the different arch types for philosophies on offense and defense be added. For example; offense = smashmouth: 60% run 40% pass or spread: 60% pass 40% run. Defense = Runstop: 60% run coverage 40% pass coverage, etc. I have noticed that if I do set the current offense setting in the current system under strategies, they do not save for the entire season once set. They rever tback to 50/50 and I have to manually set them before each game, which is fine but I would like to have a set philosophy throughout the season. At least on defense anyway. Thanks for a great game and I will continue to donate and support you all.

I love your passion for this league.

Hello to any and all who are reading this! I am DeCr3ature, an avid sports fan, in particular of Basketball, Footballs, and most recently a growing interest in Baseball! I follow the NBA pretty closely (until this Corona Virus induced shutdown, that is), and am an avid stat geek! I thoroughly enjoy the GM modes of most of the sports games I play, including NBA 2K, Madden Football, and MLB the Show. So this place seems like a pretty good fit, at least from what I've seen. I hope to enjoy talking stats and sports with fellow like-minded nerds around here, and look forward to meeting people!

Standby for new guy question I have recently downloaded Draft Day Sports Pro Football and just downloaded CTF having seen it. I enjoy American football and am a massive fan of the football manager games. I was wondering which would be best for starting out on and getting to grips with things like scouting / training etc. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

Thank you! It's much appreciated. I'm glad to be able to share what I am doing, and I hope that there are others who find it interesting.

Hi all, My name is Jeff, but I go by SecretAgentMan on a couple of sports forums sites. In my very limited free time, I am developing a game called Going for Gold. It is, basically, an Olympics sim. You take control of a country's athletics program, and work to build up your athletes and teams so that they can win medals at the Summer Games and Winter Games. I post a regular progress thread at SimNation, and I wanted to do likewise here, so that I can share development with others. So, with that in mind...here's my first development log here at GMGames. Development Log 1: A basic overview of Going for Gold Where did the idea come from? After participating in online leagues in college, I found myself with a little bit too much time (and too little employment) on hands after graduation. I started pursuing the idea of making a sport sim of my own, and after a couple of false starts, I got introduced to GameMaker, a programming system I still employ. That was early in 2010, and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver were fast approaching. I decided I was going to make sims for several sports in time for the Winter Games, to celebrate my favorite sporting event. I started small, with ski jumping, figuring that it would be one of the easier sports to program. Good call. I barely got something done, but I did get something done. I had a good experience with it and decided to expand it into a full-fledged ski jumping game, Going for Gold: Ski Jumping. I developed that until 2013, and got it into some sort of "finished" state, though it was never released or published. From there, with the 2014 Winter Games approaching, I started to make a rudimentary Olympics sim, titled "Going for Gold: Winter Games". I took the same ideas and, in 2016, made "Going for Gold: Summer Games". After that, I combined the two into one game, Going for Gold, prior to the 2018 Winter Games. I have continued to work on it intermittently ever since, with a particular focus being an addition of a career mode. (None of the previous versions had had that) Currently, the career mode, summer games, and winter games are all operational, though far from polished. I was, of course, intending to have another trial run this year with the Tokyo Olympics, but with those being postponed, I am continuing to refine features with the hope being that I have a stronger career mode in time for the double whammy of two Olympics in a 6-month span in 2021 and 2022. How does it work? As I mentioned above, I have 3 modes: Summer Games, Winter Games, and Career. The individual "Summer Games" and "Winter Games" modes are designed to be a short-term sim. You drop in to the Games, pick a country, and take a look at the athletes that you will have competing in the games. You then take "Training Points" (which basically simulate coaching and other such factors) and allocate them to certain athletes to boost their chances of success. You go through the games, win medals (or not), and see how you do. Career mode, though, has a little bit more detail to it. You start by selecting one of 65 countries from a list, allowing you to represent many of the most successful athletic nations from throughout the world. From there, you get a chance to simulate through a full year that includes both the summer and winter sports. As you play, you'll be able to see the schedule for the year and how your athletes are doing, and you can check the standings for each event throughout the season. At the end of each year, you get to go through the Finances, where you can decide, sport by sport and athlete by athlete, just how much you are going to support them and their ability to train and improve. As the years go by, you can build your country's athletic association into a powerhouse, growing in World Ranking and dominating more and more sports. (Or, you know, fall into disrepair. That part's up to the player, after all!) Athletes grow and decline, then retire, and new athletes come into the fold as you play year after year. Your ability to manage finding and find strengths and future stars will constantly be tested, but you have the opportunity to lead your country to glory at the Winter and Summer Games quadrennial after quadrennial. I'll try to dig into more specifics in the weeks and months to come as I continue to grow and update this game, but I wanted to at least start out by introducing myself and by introducing what I have to offer. I hope that you enjoy, and I would welcome your thoughts and feedback! Thanks sincerely, Jeff (SAM)

As a euro guy, I like this game very much, bc. euro leagues are covered greatly, even 2nd Division teams and players. For a NBA sim I still prefer DDSPB20.

Keep it up, team! I've been playing a different simulator recently, and it just doesn't feel like I have much influence on the game. I'm looking forward to more and more improvements on what looks like a much more in-depth game in this.

Just watched Episode 4. Very good show!!!

CT Football Manager is pretty great in my opinion

Jalen Reagor. Eagles new #1 receiver (hopefully)!