who before Kawhi, still couldn't beat a team with just a single star
With Leonard they needed a lucky shot to even make it to the conference finals, where they already got before. Toronto is non starter as a conversation point as they would have never sniffed a title if it wasn't for they 8 injuries to starters and rotation players the Warriors suffered, including season ending injuries to 2 of their 3 best players. The real impact of Leonard is highly debatable as Toronto has shown a better winning percentage both the year BEFORE and the year AFTER he played for them.
BB does reward depth in a way that the NBA doesn't though. Players weekly minutes have to be limited
Are you naive or just oblivious to the current situation? What you say may have been valid 20 seasons ago, but for sake of argument I will explain what the situation was then, what happened and what the situation is now.
20 seasons ago top teams (B3 teams) had a 7-8 man rotation, most of them trained GS EVERY week to ensure performance and that the players got picked for the NT. GS was not tied to ST so if you had a player with 9 or 10 ST and he played 80 or 85 minutes he would drop in GS even if you trained GS. This was mitigated by the fact that these teams regularly get garbage time, BUT they would have weeks where they had competitive games, plus cup games which made having a 5-6 man rotation + scrubs impossible to manage. In addition to that, LCD/Blanks very clearly produced superior ratings, better team performance, more balanced rotations and even minute splits, so playing 5 players instead of 7 or 8 actually produced worse ratings even if the backups were ok but not close in level to the starters because the substitution pattern always selected the best possible lineup at each break in play.
What happened since then:
- GS training has been changed to have diminishing returns when you train it several weeks in a row
- GS has been linked to ST so that high ST player actually benefit from playing more minutes than the original sweet spot (around 60 minutes per week)
- LCD/blanks has been removed: if you put blanks now the GE will select starters and backups and work the subs based on the resulting depth chart (while LCD/blanks was equivalent to having all players listed at every position and all considered equally for a spot on the floor)
- the psychologist has been introduced, which removed the need to train GS and gave another tool (on top of the massage specialty doctor) to help with high weekly minutes
So the current situation is that instead of having 8 players, just get 5 plus 1 backup just in case, use a top level psychologist, a massage doctor and high ST players. You will have top GS even if your players play 75-85 minutes per week (assuming at least 1 garbage time), something that was impossible before the changes. From a GE perspective there is no longer any benefit in having a longer rotation as the LCD/Blank is no longer available, so no matter what sub pattern option you select you will have relatively similar results in minute splits and limited to no benefit on team ratings.
Also one final thing, I think your suggestion would hurt teams who train as they're the ones who often to need to play their trainees for the entire game to maximize training.
Not really. Most dedicated trainers with low ST trainees already play 5 or 6 men lineups. The fact that a trainee is subbed out for 1 or 2 minutes (with no garbage time) when backups are much stronger than he is, happens also to trainees with decent and good ST and it's clearly a bug (like other depth chart subversions I reported in the past in CPfDC). Nothing will change by just increasing the ST depletion rate, the bugs will still be there, but the second part of my suggestion actually is likely to have a larger impact on this than ST depletion as it affects the substitution pattern rather than performance.
Last edited by Lemonshine at 5/31/2020 8:52:55 AM