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.