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Earlier this season, BB-Justin confirmed on US BB Discord that the game engine works by simulating the game five times and then arranging them in order of the results between the teams to pick the final result.

What most of us inferred from that is that if Team A plays at +2 effort compared to Team B, the final result will be the one of five that was most favorable to Team A... if they play at equal effort, the final result will be the median result, and so on. So if that inference is correct, the effect of CT effort is to increase how close the "picked" simulation is to your ideal simulation (subject to the fact that even just five simulations isn't going to completely wipe out the randomness of simulating between two teams).

Based on some previously crowdsourced estimations of the standard deviations of results between two teams in a single simulation (the estimate is that a single simulation between roughly evenly matched teams has a normal distribution with a standard deviation of 16 points), we theory crafted that +1 relative effort is 20-30% increase in chance to win in a game against an evenly matched team.

Of course, the big question mark then is what % win chance do you give up in future games by spending that enthusiasm, but no one in the discussion on US BB-cord had any data to support theorycrafting on that. We talked a little bit about possibly doing some week 1 pickup game testing, but that was so long ago that I don't know if people even remember that lol.

Last edited by Azariah at 6/22/2025 11:02:49 AM

That’s wild and definitely news to me. I don’t think it changes how I do anything but is interesting. I do wonder if you all think this is better or worse for 3 point shooting teams? Because I could argue it negates improbable good shooting days.

If a three point shooting team winds up being higher variance than an inside offense team (all else equal), then they're less likely to win when favored (regardless of relative effort),

The estimated standard deviation of a single sim that's been previously crowdsourced is 16 points, and assumed to be a normal distribution (via the handwavy statistical fact that the overall simulation is the sum of a bunch of random events of the individual possessions).

If Team A is on average 2 points better than Team B, then they'd win 55.0% of simulations at a SD of 16 points, or 53.3% of simulations at a SD of 24 points. Given the theory that net effort effects which simulation gets picked, if Team A was at -2 effort to Team B, they'd have to win all 5 sims to win the game (so that the worst game was a win for them), at -1 effort they'd have to win 4 of 5 sims, and so on.

Which means that the probability of winning the game for the "average variance strategy" would be:
Team A -2 effort: 5.0% chance to win
Team A -1 effort: 25.6% chance to win
Team A equal effort: 59.3% chance to win
Team A +1 effort: 86.9% chance to win
Team A +2 effort: 98.1% chance to win.

While with the "high variance strategy" (3 point shooting team), the probabilities would be:
Team A -2 effort: 4.3% to win
Team A -1 effort: 23.1% to win
Team A equal effort: 56.1% to win
Team A +1 effort: 85.1% to win
Team A +2 effort: 97.8% to win

So at the higher variance strategy, the power of using more effort is slightly higher, but the loss of using less effort is slightly lower (below are net change of win% compared to equal effort):
-2 effort: -54.3% at avg variance, -51.8% at high variance
-1 effort: -33.7% at avg variance, -33.0% at high variance
+1 effort: +27.6% at avg variance, +29.0% at high variance
+2 effort: +38.8% at avg variance, +41.7% at high variance

Which kind of fits with the way real basketball works... if you think about tournaments like March Madness or such, the conventionally accepted wisdom is that the underdog should play David strategies - higher variance offense & defense strategies, slow the game down to keep the number of possessions low so the variance has more power, etc. While the favored team wants to push the pace and grind the game down with superior consistency.

Related, is this why buzzer manager always says I have a better lineup (higher rating) on balance offense vs outside?

That I have no idea on