Post by 20s on May 20, 2022 12:12:15 GMT -5
The inspiration for this article was a few weeks back in shout someone mentioned that it seemed like turnovers were increasing across the league with more guys having high turnover numbers. I decided that it would be interesting to take a look at the numbers and see if that was the case. I also brought together the data for numerous other metrics so we could get a good understanding of how the league has changed in the 26 seasons we have completed thus far.
Disclaimer on the data: I used the Team Stats link as well as the numbers that eric posts in the Sim 12 posts as my data source. Both of these sources only include human GM teams which could potentially have some impact on the numbers as well. We have seen the number of compuTeams increase over the course of 6.0 with us currently sitting at 8 compuTeams leaguewide. I think it is a good thing for these comparisons that the compuTeams are not included explicitly so we are only comparing numbers for human teams to human teams. However, the human teams are now facing compuTeams in some of their games so they do have a part in the data. The exact impact on the data isn't known, but it is good to keep in mind that it is there.
Now let's take a look at the numbers.
We start with a familiar chart for many as I included this in all of my Charts and Stuff articles I used to do every season. We are looking at the league rating or how many points are scored per 100 possessions league wide. This gives us a good basis to determine how impressive an individual team's O Rtg and D Rtg are, but also just how efficient teams are with their possessions across the league. We can see that this number increased significantly and consistently up until 3010 when it hit its apex at 126.8 and since then has held pretty steady either in the 125 or 126 range every season from 3011 through 3024. Until last year when the number dropped to 124.5 which is the lowest it had been since 3007. Defense is making a comeback in TMBSL. So far in 3026, we are sitting at 123.6 which is almost another full point drop. It will be interesting to keep an eye on this number in the coming seasons.
Next, let's take a look at the number of possessions themselves. Very Fast pace has become more and more popular as the league has matured and we have seen the possessions increase as a result. The increases were much sharper and noticeable initially and while we are still seeing slight increases, it seems like the possessions per team numbers have kind of leveled off at what might be close to the ceiling in the software. I thought it was important to see how the number of possessions have increased because that would lead to slight increases in other counting stats as well.
We've arrived at turnovers, the inspiration for the article. Turnovers per team per game started sky high at 15.6 back in the creation season. We immediately saw this number start to improve as the league's talent pool increased with the number decreasing for 10 consecutive seasons and pretty sharply. The number has pretty much leveled off although we have continued to see slight decreases over the last 10-12 seasons with 3023 representing the low mark at 11.8 per game. Since then we have seen an increase two straight seasons with 3025's 12.1 per game being the highest mark since 3016. So it looks like the observational comment from shout does have some merit: turnovers for human teams are increasing across TMBSL, albeit somewhat slightly. This could be attributed to lower handling or higher steal capabilities. It will be interesting to see how high this number goes if we continue to see increases or if it will just be a couple year blip. I did take a look at turnover % as compared to possessions because as we saw earlier, possessions have increased compared to creation, but that chart looked nearly identical and wasn't worth posting.
Anecdotally, I felt like blocks were also going up as the league matured so I thought I would take a look at what the data said for blocks. I am using block percentage to account for the increased number of shots. Block percentage is just what percentage of field goal attempts are blocked. We can see that this number has steadily increased throughout 6.0 and we haven't yet seen it level off like we do with some of the other numbers. The creation season saw only 3.0% of field goal attempts result in blocked shots while last season the number was 5.8%, nearly twice as often as in the creation season. It will be interesting to see if this number hits a ceiling within the software and our upgrade constraints or how high it can continue to grow. We still aren't seeing the wild block numbers that we saw in 4.0 thanks to the changes eric has implemented and bigs are still able to score efficiently all across the league.
Three point rate measures what percentage of total shot attempts are threes. As outside offenses have become more and more popular throughout 6.0 and three point upgrades have become more common, we can see that the frequency of three point shot attempts has really increased. The creation season saw 5.4% of all attempts were threes and last year that was up to a high water mark of 12.2%, well over twice as often as creation. This number has not yet leveled off or reached any plateau so I would expect this to continue to increase for a bit. As mentioned, the main influences here are the number of teams running outside and the number of upgrades being thrown into three point shot.
The amount of threes being taken isn't the only thing that has been on the rise though. TMBSL shooters are making way more threes as well. This has steadily increased throughout 6.0 rising from 32.6% in the creation season to 40.2% last season. It makes sense that frequency and success rates would rise in tandem as the mechanics article tells us that the three point attribute increases both. Also, if your team and players are better at shooting threes, you will want them to take more, so improved three point shooting would also lead to more GMs running outside offenses. It will be interesting to see how high this number can get.
Here are the numbers side by side so we can see that they increase at almost the same rates. Orange is 3P% and blue is three point rate so we do see that the 3P% increased a little bit more quickly right off the bat compared to the frequency.
Next, I decided to take a look at free throw percentage as Jump Shot is another extremely popular upgrade, likely second most popular after Inside Scoring. We can see that this number increased quickly from the creation season as well when players made only 69.8% of their free throws. This number peaked at 80% in 3023 and has seen small dips the past two seasons. It is hard to imagine the league wide FT% number getting much higher than this without wholesale changes made to where Jump Shot starts for draft prospects.
Three point % is in orange, free throw % is in blue. They have increased pretty closely together throughout the years with 3P% taking a few dips along the way whereas FT% has been more of a steady increase.
Here is free throw rate which is how often teams are getting to the line and taking free throws. This number, like all others, shot up a lot from the creation season, but reached it's apex of 35.7% in 3013 and has been hanging out around 34-35% since then. It is interesting that it is still so high despite the proliferation of outside offenses.
This chart is somewhat surprising. P/Tsa has been increasing and the league average has been up in the 1.12-1.13 range the last 5 or so seasons. Considering the average in 3000 was 1.0306, this is a major shift. It really changes what it takes from a player to be above average efficiency wise. A guy who sits in the 1.1 range would have been well above average for the first 5 years of the league, but is now well below average and likely hurting your overall efficiency on your team.
I wanted to take a look at rebounding and league wide reb% is always going to be 50% and the raw totals are going to be going up with the possession increase, so I thought I would take a look at what the best team's reb% was each season and see if there was anything interesting in that data. No major takeaways from here other than that the 3003 Cougars are still the GOAT at 55.5%. The 3022 Raptors were the closest challengers finishing at 55.0%.
Disclaimer on the data: I used the Team Stats link as well as the numbers that eric posts in the Sim 12 posts as my data source. Both of these sources only include human GM teams which could potentially have some impact on the numbers as well. We have seen the number of compuTeams increase over the course of 6.0 with us currently sitting at 8 compuTeams leaguewide. I think it is a good thing for these comparisons that the compuTeams are not included explicitly so we are only comparing numbers for human teams to human teams. However, the human teams are now facing compuTeams in some of their games so they do have a part in the data. The exact impact on the data isn't known, but it is good to keep in mind that it is there.
Now let's take a look at the numbers.
We start with a familiar chart for many as I included this in all of my Charts and Stuff articles I used to do every season. We are looking at the league rating or how many points are scored per 100 possessions league wide. This gives us a good basis to determine how impressive an individual team's O Rtg and D Rtg are, but also just how efficient teams are with their possessions across the league. We can see that this number increased significantly and consistently up until 3010 when it hit its apex at 126.8 and since then has held pretty steady either in the 125 or 126 range every season from 3011 through 3024. Until last year when the number dropped to 124.5 which is the lowest it had been since 3007. Defense is making a comeback in TMBSL. So far in 3026, we are sitting at 123.6 which is almost another full point drop. It will be interesting to keep an eye on this number in the coming seasons.
Next, let's take a look at the number of possessions themselves. Very Fast pace has become more and more popular as the league has matured and we have seen the possessions increase as a result. The increases were much sharper and noticeable initially and while we are still seeing slight increases, it seems like the possessions per team numbers have kind of leveled off at what might be close to the ceiling in the software. I thought it was important to see how the number of possessions have increased because that would lead to slight increases in other counting stats as well.
We've arrived at turnovers, the inspiration for the article. Turnovers per team per game started sky high at 15.6 back in the creation season. We immediately saw this number start to improve as the league's talent pool increased with the number decreasing for 10 consecutive seasons and pretty sharply. The number has pretty much leveled off although we have continued to see slight decreases over the last 10-12 seasons with 3023 representing the low mark at 11.8 per game. Since then we have seen an increase two straight seasons with 3025's 12.1 per game being the highest mark since 3016. So it looks like the observational comment from shout does have some merit: turnovers for human teams are increasing across TMBSL, albeit somewhat slightly. This could be attributed to lower handling or higher steal capabilities. It will be interesting to see how high this number goes if we continue to see increases or if it will just be a couple year blip. I did take a look at turnover % as compared to possessions because as we saw earlier, possessions have increased compared to creation, but that chart looked nearly identical and wasn't worth posting.
Anecdotally, I felt like blocks were also going up as the league matured so I thought I would take a look at what the data said for blocks. I am using block percentage to account for the increased number of shots. Block percentage is just what percentage of field goal attempts are blocked. We can see that this number has steadily increased throughout 6.0 and we haven't yet seen it level off like we do with some of the other numbers. The creation season saw only 3.0% of field goal attempts result in blocked shots while last season the number was 5.8%, nearly twice as often as in the creation season. It will be interesting to see if this number hits a ceiling within the software and our upgrade constraints or how high it can continue to grow. We still aren't seeing the wild block numbers that we saw in 4.0 thanks to the changes eric has implemented and bigs are still able to score efficiently all across the league.
Three point rate measures what percentage of total shot attempts are threes. As outside offenses have become more and more popular throughout 6.0 and three point upgrades have become more common, we can see that the frequency of three point shot attempts has really increased. The creation season saw 5.4% of all attempts were threes and last year that was up to a high water mark of 12.2%, well over twice as often as creation. This number has not yet leveled off or reached any plateau so I would expect this to continue to increase for a bit. As mentioned, the main influences here are the number of teams running outside and the number of upgrades being thrown into three point shot.
The amount of threes being taken isn't the only thing that has been on the rise though. TMBSL shooters are making way more threes as well. This has steadily increased throughout 6.0 rising from 32.6% in the creation season to 40.2% last season. It makes sense that frequency and success rates would rise in tandem as the mechanics article tells us that the three point attribute increases both. Also, if your team and players are better at shooting threes, you will want them to take more, so improved three point shooting would also lead to more GMs running outside offenses. It will be interesting to see how high this number can get.
Here are the numbers side by side so we can see that they increase at almost the same rates. Orange is 3P% and blue is three point rate so we do see that the 3P% increased a little bit more quickly right off the bat compared to the frequency.
Next, I decided to take a look at free throw percentage as Jump Shot is another extremely popular upgrade, likely second most popular after Inside Scoring. We can see that this number increased quickly from the creation season as well when players made only 69.8% of their free throws. This number peaked at 80% in 3023 and has seen small dips the past two seasons. It is hard to imagine the league wide FT% number getting much higher than this without wholesale changes made to where Jump Shot starts for draft prospects.
Three point % is in orange, free throw % is in blue. They have increased pretty closely together throughout the years with 3P% taking a few dips along the way whereas FT% has been more of a steady increase.
Here is free throw rate which is how often teams are getting to the line and taking free throws. This number, like all others, shot up a lot from the creation season, but reached it's apex of 35.7% in 3013 and has been hanging out around 34-35% since then. It is interesting that it is still so high despite the proliferation of outside offenses.
This chart is somewhat surprising. P/Tsa has been increasing and the league average has been up in the 1.12-1.13 range the last 5 or so seasons. Considering the average in 3000 was 1.0306, this is a major shift. It really changes what it takes from a player to be above average efficiency wise. A guy who sits in the 1.1 range would have been well above average for the first 5 years of the league, but is now well below average and likely hurting your overall efficiency on your team.
I wanted to take a look at rebounding and league wide reb% is always going to be 50% and the raw totals are going to be going up with the possession increase, so I thought I would take a look at what the best team's reb% was each season and see if there was anything interesting in that data. No major takeaways from here other than that the 3003 Cougars are still the GOAT at 55.5%. The 3022 Raptors were the closest challengers finishing at 55.0%.
