User Guide for Team Grids, April 2010

The team grid system allows for quick and easy comparisons between teams. It is also the best foundational tool for managing a basketball team. For example, team grids allow managers, coaches, or anyone else to consider changes in players and in playing times that would improve the chances of winning playoff series and regular season games. At the same time, and just as importantly, team grids allow for quick flagging of coaching errors, some of which can be big enough to cost a team a playoff series or maybe a dozen regular season wins.

A depth chart shows you team policy regarding who starts and who are the backups and in what order for the five positions. The team grid is based on the depth chart style. However, players (other than players acquired during the season; see below) are placed into first squad, second squad, and third squad according to minutes played, not according to the latest ESPN or any other estimation of what the team policy is. Whoever has played the most minutes at a position is shown in the “1st Squad” whether or not that player starts at the position.

There is a notable exception to the rule for who goes in which squad. If a player has been acquired during the season and he is listed as the starter on the ESPN depth chart, he will be shown as first squad. Similarly, if a player acquired during the season is shown as the first backup to the starter in the depth chart he will be shown as second squad regardless of minutes. In other words, the depth chart prevails over minutes in the case of players acquired by trade during the season.

Just to the right of the “3rd Squad" you see two grey areas. From left to right the first one is for players who are probably or definitely out for much or for all of the series for some reason, usually due to injury.

The second grey shaded area is for players who could play but almost certainly will not play because they played fewer than 300 minutes during the regular season. The 300 minutes threshold is the minimum needed for a hidden defending adjustment and therefore is the minimum needed for a player to get a Real Player Rating. It also is being used here as the threshold for determining whether a player was essentially benched for the season. 300 minutes is less than four minutes a game, which is a very good dividing line for saying whether a player was benched for the season or not. You can get close to 300 minutes with just garbage time, so if you don't play at least 300 minutes, you are basically benched.

PLAYERS ACQUIRED BY TRADE
Players acquired by trade during the season who have played at least 300 minutes for their new team at the time when ratings for that team are done are treated on the grid as if they were on the team the entire season. The rating you see for them is for their new, current team minutes. The previous team rating is considered to be irrelevant for the grid.

Players acquired by trade during the season who have NOT played at least 300 minutes for their new team are either:

--Completely ignored and not shown on the grid if they did not play at least 300 minutes for the team they played for earlier in the season (regardless of whether they ever played at least 300 minutes in any year).

--They are shown as "more or less benched" if they did play at least 300 minutes for the previous team this season but not at least 300 minutes for the new, current team. The rating you see for them in the "more or less benched" column would have to be and is their rating on their previous team this season.

PLAYERS WHO HAVE NEVER PLAYED AT LEAST 300 MINUTES IN ANY SEASONThese players will not be listed even in the "benched for the season" column since no rating can be computed for them for any year and since, quite frankly, they are completely irrelevant for the playoff series at hand.

So players who are listed in the “more or less benched for the season” column are players who played at least 300 minutes during at least one NBA season. The Real Player Rating is shown for those players for the most recent year they played at least 300 minutes. What year that was is shown right next to their rating.

TEAM COMPARISONS USING THE GRID
First, you can compare specific players for any position. For example, you can see which team had the better starting point guard.

COMPARING TEAMS BY POSITION
By looking at the “Position Averages” column you can compare the two teams position by position. For each position, only the ratings of the first squad and of the second squad player are considered for the position average. And the rating of the first squad player at each position counts twice as much as the rating of the second squad player at each position. In other words, for each position the position average is two times the rating of the first squad player plus the rating of the second squad player divided by three.

If there is only one player who played 300 minutes or more at a position, there is a special rule that seeks to come up with a reasonable number for the position. 80% of that single player's rating is considered to be the position average. The 20% reduction is justified because of the fact that one or more players at other positions will have to fill out the position that has only one player (unless the single player plays almost the entire game which is pretty rare). Those other position players will obviously generally not be as valuable at the position as players dedicated to that position are.

Real Player Ratings vary by position because ultimately some positions are on average more important for winning the Quest than others. We don’t have exact numbers yet but here is a rough estimate of how League average ratings will vary by position:

Point Guard .780
Center .750
Power Forward .720
Small Forward .650
Shooting Guard .600

And again we don't have exact numbers yet, but we already know that, approximately, playoff team ratings, at least for the teams that win the first round, which would be eight teams, average out to about .800. The very best teams will have ratings averaging even higher than that. So ideally, and once again with the reminder that teams can and will vary radically from the position pattern shown here, here is a prototypical, "average" round two level NBA playoff team by position and by RPR:

Point Guard .900
Center .875
Power Forward .825
Small Forward .700
Shooting Guard .700

Again for emphasis: in reality many playoff teams will have at least one position where the average RPR of the two players who play it the most is greater than .900. And many playoff teams will have at least one position where the average of the top two players at the position is substantially less than .700.

But Championship teams will seldom have any position where the best two players average below .700 and they sometimes will feature two positions where the average of the top two players is greater than .900.

THE SUPERSTAR COMBO GUARD STRATEGY
Sometimes the shooting guard is so good that he is effectively also the point guard to some extent and he has a much higher rating than other shooting guards and perhaps a higher rating than other point guards. Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers are a very good example. The overall 2-guard League average Real Player Rating is about .575 in the regular and .700 for the final eight teams. Kobe Bryant, of course, is well over 1.000.

One reason why having a superstar 2-guard who can take responsibility for keeping the ball moving and for being a playmaker is a very good strategy for winning the Quest is that you eliminate the common problem of leaving the 2-guard position as a weak spot in your overall lineup. In other words it is a very good way of optimizing your overall lineup, provided that the "real" point guard understands and can work with the strategy correctly.

If the "real" point guard does not understand the strategy and / or he disagrees with it, the drawback will be that to the extent you play that real point guard at the same time as your combo guard at the shooting guard position, you may have a player even less useful than a straight up mediocre 2-guard, in which case the strategy has backfired. There are several wrong ways and only a very few right ways to deploy the superstar combo guard strategy. There have been and will in the future be more Quest Reports on this very important subject.

By looking at the squad averages row you can see what the average rating of the players in that squad is for each team. By comparing the first squad with the second squad, you can see how much of a drop off there is between them. Since most of the players in the first squad are starters, this is approximately equivalent to comparing the starters and the bench. The bigger the drop off, the more minutes the starters should be playing.

SQUAD AND OVERALL TEAM AVERAGES
You can also of course compare the squad averages of the two teams. If you do, you will be essentially comparing the starters as a whole and the non-starters as a whole of the two teams, although keep in mind a team may have graduated one or two second squad players to starter for the playoffs.

Finally, notice that there is a “Team Average” at the lower left for each team. This is two times the first squad average plus the second squad average divided by three. In other words, this is a weighted average of the top two squads, with the first squad counted twice and the second squad counted once, which roughly corresponds to typical playing time patterns. Players in the third squad, the injured players, and the benched players are not counted in the team average.

You can put substantial stock but not a very large amount of stock in the team average number because there are still often going to be in the second squad a player with a very low rating from time to time. How much such players play in the playoffs is dependent on how strapped the team is at the position and on how dumb the coaching is.

LOW RATING PLAYERS IN THE PLAYOFFS
Often, especially on the best coached teams and on the primary contenders, a second squad player with a relatively low rating will be strategically benched during the playoffs. In general, players with ratings below .600 should play sparingly in the playoffs or not at all. Players with ratings below .500 should generally not play in the playoffs at all for any reason.

So there is a fairly large statistical error going on with the overall team average. But if you see that there is a big difference of about .050 or more in the team averages, that would tell you that the higher team is clearly more talented than the lower.