Coach Strategy Rating

[fgtr3]

Hello. I was curious to see how much my coach’s strategy affected my team’s success if any as it’s the skill that sounds useful, but it isn’t as clear as the others in the impact. In order to get a decent idea on how it works, I decided to sim injury-free instances of a season multiple times to see how the team performs when the coach is at max and minimum strategy. I decided on 5 times for each as I didn’t want to dedicate too much time to this. I also wanted to use a talented fairly balanced historical team and decided on the 01-02 Kings. And as such, I lowered the pace by 9% and 3PA by 50% in order to reflect the season. I also set the CPU to manage the depth chart and sub matrix, as I wanted to take myself out of the game planning. I will keep track of the team’s insight stats over the seasons and average them out, as well as the individual stats for the two best players (Stojakovic* and Webber). The save starts right at the start of the season each time so the assigned ratings and coach stay the same (other than when I change the strategy rating).

*Yeah Stojakovic sucks in the game but he is still the 2nd highest in overall so he stays

Averages when the Head Coach’s strategy was at 100:
Record: 61-21 (best 63-19, worst 56-26)
PPG: 116.7
RPG: 44.5
APG: 25.0
SPG: 9.3
BPG: 5.9
FG: 51.0%
3P: 31.8%
FT: 74.8%
oPPG: 108.3
Net rating (ORTG – DRTG): 7.2

Overall an excellent team headed by a strategic mastermind. As for the players:

Stojakovic: 27.3 MPG, 9.7 PPG, 4.4 RPG, 3.3 APG, 1.0 SPG, 0.3 BPG and a 42.6 FG%
Webber: 32.8 MPG, 24.7 PPG, 9.7 RPG, 3.8 APG, 2.0 SPG, 2.3 BPG and a 56.4 FG%


And for the terrible coach:
Record: 62-20 (best 65-17, worst 58-24)
PPG: 117.5
RPG: 44.4
APG: 24.9
SPG: 9.7
BPG: 5.6
FG: 51.1%
3P: 32.1%
FT: 75.8%
oPPG: 108.6
Net Rating (ORTG – DRTG): 7.9

Players
Stojakovic: 27.4 MPG, 10.1 PPG, 4.4 RPG, 3.3 APG, 1.1 SPG, 0.3 BPG and a 43.0 FG%
Webber: 32.2 MPG, 23.8 PPG, 9.8 RPG, 3.7 APG, 2.1 SPG, 2.1 BPG and a 55.9 FG%

Unfortunately, the terrible coach did very similarly. In fact, the team overall performed slightly better over the 5 seasons. If the strategy rating for the coach did anything, then you would expect a very noticeable difference between the two sims because the sims were at the extreme ends of the scale (1 and 100). It’s essentially a meaningless rating that only makes the coach demand more money.
I had also hoped that it would directly affect the system the coach ran. Maybe a bad coach would try to run a 7 seconds or less offense with the two best players being dominant post scorers with no range. Also unfortunately, those didn’t change at all during the 10 seasons. It was always a balanced offense, passive defense, and the only specific defensive assignment was Webber in the post.

It’s honestly a really disappointing thing to see.

[Gary Gorski]

You've extrapolated a conclusion from a very small sample of data without understanding what the strategy rating even really controls.

The game strategy rating comes into play primarily in key situations such as drawing up a play in a timeout or helping to stop a play from happening when the other team has the ball in a key situation. The better the strategy the more successful the chance of the play happening as drawn. Again, the more success the play happens as planned, not that it was successful - that is on the players to execute. You may only have a handful of these things all season long where the game comes down to one or two key moments that the coach has input on. Yes, coaches demand more money for a higher rating and you paying for that rating means you're more likely to have a coach who can get the ball in the hands of the guy who needs it in crucial situations.

Why would the game purposely have a coach be an idiot and run an offense that nowhere fits his team? Even the worst NBA coaches aren't going to run Shaq out there and tell him they want him in an offense where he is launching threes.

[Qrashman]

does strategy come into play in simmed games or only games that you play out?

[Gary Gorski]

both, it will always take into account the strategy rating of the coach when those situations like a play out of a timeout come up

[Qrashman]

sweet, thanks