Instructions / Template for creating draft classes

[Rizzo]

Gary, couple questions on specific ratings as I'm trying to create a draft class for our online league that may be converting from PB3 to PB19 soon. Can you give me a general explanation of the following ratings on the rookie file as well as what would be an acceptable rating for different player types or positions for the ratings as well?

- DunkRate
- RARate

Also, what are acceptable ratings for the following depending on positions and player types:

- FG_RA
- FG_ITP
- FG_MID
- FG_COR
- FG_ATB

Last question: when it comes to ball actions, what would you say is a suitable Pass% to set for a player that is like NBA James Harden? On the other hand, what's the Pass% look like for a player that is a 20 point scorer but doesn't dominate the ball?

All of the help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

[Rizzo]

Bump - Gary any help here?

[Magic Bird]

I'm not certain what exactly the RARate rating means, however I think it suggests what percentage of a player's shot attempts in the paint (LocPaint) come from the restricted area, or basically how often a player attempts a shot from the restricted area when he is in the paint. I'm pretty sure DunkRate means what percentage of a player's shot attempts in the restricted area are dunk attempts. I assume that two players with the same RARate rating but different LocPaint ratings would play differently. The RARate would depend on the LocPaint rating, and DunkRate would depend on the RARate rating.

I do know what the following ratings mean:
FG_RA: Shooting percentage from the restricted area (Player X with a 65 FG_RA would make about 65% of his shots from the restricted area under ideal circumstances.)
FG_ITP: Shooting percentage in the paint but outside the restricted area
FG_MID: Shooting percentage from mid range, which would be defined as the region outside the paint but within the three point line (So this would be 2 point shot make percentage outside the paint)
FG_COR: 3 point shooting percentage from the corners
FG_ATB: 3 point shooting percentage from everywhere but the corners

Excuse the following tangent, but I believe the FG_COR and FG_ATB ratings are not sufficient to model three point shooters accurately because every shooter has a noticeable weak spot and often a weak side where they make fewer shots from beyond the arc. Some players have multiple weak spots. One player may have a weak spot right at the top of the key yet be strong from both the left and right wings and corners, while another player may have weak spots from the right corner and the left wing.

I don't know what suitable Pass% would be for various players. I suppose it would depend on other factors like how often they pull up and how much passing occurs in their team's offense, and perhaps some basketball IQ. All players in the game have high Pass ratings, with the lowest rated players having ratings less than 65, the highest rated players have ratings greater than 80, and the vast majority of players have ratings in the upper 60's and lower and mid 70's (roughly ranging from 68 to 76).

For determining acceptable ratings for different players, you probably can use in depth data from sites like Basketball Reference (assuming you are creating draft classes consisting of real players).

Anyone who can find and correct any mistakes in what I've stated, please do so!

Rizzo, I hope this helps.

[Rizzo]

I think that makes a ton of sense, thank you Magic Bird! I wish Gary would comment and confirm or deny these thoughts for us. Would go a long way towards my efforts of creating realistic draft classes for my online league.

[Gary Gorski]

I apologize for not replying sooner - this really is not the best place to get me if you're looking for an answer. In fact I rarely ever visit the mod section. Just for future reference the very best way to get an answer is to fill out the support ticket because we get notifications pushed right to us and can respond from anywhere.

Anyhow the RA_RATE is mean to be the percentage of shots a player takes from inside the restricted area against the total amount of shots he takes in the paint - in other words its a more precise look at if a player gets into the paint for a shot x% of the time then y% of those times he actually gets to the basket for a layup/dunk and 100-y% of those times he settles for some kind of shot in the paint. Dunk Rate is just how often he would probably dunk the ball as opposed to a layup (so that the game doesn't do pbp like Steve Nash throws down a tomahawk dunk or something)

MB outlines the other stuff really well - as for suitable ranges that's not really something that is easy to answer. The best thing you could do I think would be to take the NBA mod file that is up here and export the players from it and then you can copy all that data into a spreadsheet and play around with the values to see what kind of ranges that is using and also how to model a certain type of player.

[TheRandomNbaFan]

How exactly do I open/edit the .rkf file ? I don't see an option to do it in Open Office...

[Rizzo]

How exactly do I open/edit the .rkf file ? I don't see an option to do it in Open Office...

I use Microsoft Access to open the database file. I believe there is a free version of Access available online if you don't have the Microsoft Office suite.