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Further: if you have Damian Lillard for example, why would you have a backup for him about as good. ? You are now creating a player controversy at that position. Would you expect the ,Cavs to get Durant to back up James and only play them each for 20-30 minutes a game? Or would you change one of their positions and play both? What point is there to having two guys that do the same thing on the court at same time too? Don't you want guys that do different things to change up the rhythm?


You are using real world logic which does not apply to the situation at hand. And from a real world standpoint it would probably not succeed there either. Football it would make sense to have backups almost as good.
Baseball/basketball it makes less sense. It makes more sense to either teach different positions or play different positions to get the lineup as well, or to trade/move them to clear salary space.

But that's what a manager does not a coach. So maybe you just do better at coaching than managing and that is a communication breakdown within your front office?

Rather than being able to set exact minutes, which I think isn't right, subsitution patterns should be different. Certainly I agree that backups that are close to the standard of the starter should play more minutes. Perhaps if there was a way to set a backup to receive twice as many minutes as is now normal that wouldn't require as much of a change to the way lineups are handled.

I suspect though that the BBs are reluctant to change anything regarding substitutions because they've no idea how it works even now.

That is probably the dumbest example you could have used. Who wouldn't want a good bench? Who wouldn't want a deep, balanced team? You're implying that your starters should be great and your bench should be trash. My backup SG just happens to be my best bench player so I'd prefer him get more than 8-10 minutes per game. Overall my two SGs are pretty close in skill, however I start the one with better defense and have the better scorer off the bench. Of course with your philosophy I should just sell the backup and put a 2k scrub in there.

I mean that'd be fine honestly. I just want him to get more minutes, but I don't want him to start.

That is probably the dumbest example you could have used. Who wouldn't want a good bench? Who wouldn't want a deep, balanced team? You're implying that your starters should be great and your bench should be trash.

Deep and balanced team worked for the Pistons when they had Larry brown as coach. How has it worked in recent years or since then?
I am IMPLYING that your bench should be ROLE PLAYERS. Starting PF is an inside scoring monster cool, have his back-up be a rebounder/defender. Or a pass it around and more outside shooting PF to stretch the floor. Does this make him a 2k scrub? Apparently to you it does. to me it just makes him different. I don;t need a 105tsp SG backing up a 125tsp SG to still be effective.

My backup SG just happens to be my best bench player so I'd prefer him get more than 8-10 minutes per game.

Set him as backup at more than 1 position then. play him a different spot and do defensive switches. these are COACHING things you are able to do and control. use them.

Overall my two SGs are pretty close in skill, however I start the one with better defense and have the better scorer off the bench.

This is your personal choice, knowing how the game engine works. Since the scorer doesn't play D anyways (based off what you are IMPLYING) it doesn't matter where you play him defensively. and since the other guy doesn't score (based off your rant and what you are implying) play him in a spot on O where he won't hurt you anyways and defensive switch him.

You are being way too black and white about this.
"He's my backup SG he HAS TO PLAY SG, I need this SG to get these minutes and this SG to get these minutes!"
You are ignoring the fact that its possible to play both at the same time. you are ignoring the fact you can play them out of position
you are ignoring the fact you can play a different offense

and then, you are attacking me, for (the nerve) suggesting to you that there are other alternatives with my example. And you very clearly misinterpreted my meaning based off what you thought I was implying.

So i will spell it out clearly for you.
The problem does not lie within the minute distribution, the problem lies with your choices.
your choices either being how you set the roster, how you set the lineup, the tactics your choosing, etc. But its a user error.

Spelled out clearly
My starting 5 is going to be my starting 5. maybe i'll have 1 guy that can sub at both big (maybe sf) spots, to be a sub, and 1 sub that can sub the guard spots (maybe SF). depending on if I want to play big or small or even mix it up. thats 7 guys.

after that. with the way buzzerbeater is designed and set up. Everyone else is either a trainee and completely non-relevant, or just there to make it easier to manage gameshape.
Even looking at NBA teams, how many NBA teams use all 11 players from their team? I recall the Pacers, after multiple suspensions following their brawl in Detroit with the pistons, and the fans, and O'Neal and Artest and... Someone else too i think? were suspended. They had a 7 or 8 player roster that included the likes of C John Edwards. and they played several games just fine with that 7-8 person roster.

You make it sound like its impossible for teams to win, here, college, or the NBA, unless they have a deep and balanced team. That is quite quite far from the truth.

It'd be nice to have a set number of minutes for each player in your rotation. For example you could set your starting SG for 28 minutes, then have your backup SG for 20 minutes. I don't like when my best bench players don't get to play more than 6-8 minutes per game. The NBA 2k series has a setup similar to this.

Minutes distribution in BB is strongly influenced by how the game develops in terms of score. Assuming Strictly Follow, if you are blowing out your opponent by 50 points by halftime, your starters won't play much more than 25-28 minutes, even if they are 150k players and your backups are 3k players. However, if you set your 3k players as starters and you are losing, your 150k backups won't see much court time since the engine will try its best to win, i.e. play the starters (since starters are supposed to better than backups and reserves).

So, yeah, the best way to grant your nice backups a solid 20-25 minutes/game is to have a great starting roster

To sum up, the problem with BB is not that we are GM, the problem is that we know nothing about the engine.

I'd say the beauty of BB is that after playing this since 2007 you can always find something new to learn.