First Event: Who wins the jump ball? Game engine looks at both players skills, works out a probability, (so maybe 75% to player A and 25% to player B).
I've always wondered how this was determined. It would make sense if it just took a player's height into effect as that's the most relevant factor in a jump ball situation where jumping is not evaluated one way or another.
Game engine looks at players jump shot, jump range, opponents defense, experience, opponents shot blocking, players driving, etc etc. Works out the probability of making the shot is 10% and 90% chance of missing the shot. Applies the probability and in this case the shot is missed. Now we move on to the next event.
I think this is pretty close. I have a couple additions though. I think these calculations are made by the player, not the engine and whether or not the shot is then taken depends on experience. For example a player with good experience would not take a 10% shot unless the shot clock was very low whereas a player with high experience would pass or attempt to drive. I infer this based on a BB's comment that players with high experience "make the smart choice." Moving on. For argument's sake, let's say the player does shoot. At this point, the driving would already have been factored in (if he did drive, odds are the % would increase, unless he drove into the zone of a better defender) as would a good pass that led to this shot which would increase the odds of a successful shot. I believe the next factor put in is the opposing player's shotblocking as a shot block will make any additional calculations pointless. If the shot is not blocked THEN game engine moves on to calculating the % of shot going in simply by comparing players jump shot (or inside shot) and jump range against the applicable type of defense of the opposing player. Enthusiasm, stamina, etc add or detract from the overall calculations.
As you can see, each event is based on the previous event/events. So after each event the probabilities for the next event need to be recalculated.
This. I disagree with OP's inference that everything is predetermined and subscribe to the theory that each event within a game is (nearly) independent of any other event in that game and only takes into account changes in stamina or possibly momentum. Each play takes the skills of the players, the score, the offenses and defenses and said changes stamina and churns out a resulting play based on these numbers. Basically, I think Naker is correct and is saying the same thing as this but I just wanted to clarify a couple points.