LukaSZN
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Fear. The word is fear. You have the top pick in the draft, there are 3-5 truly great looking prospects in the class but you know one of them boys is a grenade with 10 or fewer handles. Are handles that low a death sentence? How much can they really improve year-to-year? What's an outlier bump or fall? I've been wondering myself for the entirety of my time here so let's investigate.
1) Firstly, I tested year one progression.
I made seven prospects to mirror a few believable prospects of years past. With the exception of prospect C who is going into year two and has 85 potential. All of the other six prospects have 99 potential and are fresh out of the draft headed to their first TC. I added prospect C and G late out of further curiosity and they have a way smaller sample of tests in the one year trials.
A - PG - 10 Handles - 99 Potential
B - PG - 50 Handles - 99 Potential
C - PG - 30 Handles - 85 Potential - Year 2 Player
D - SG - 50 Handles - 99 Potential
E - SF - 50 Handles - 99 Potential
F - PF - 30 Handles - 99 Potential
G - C - 10 Handles - 99 Potential
First conclusions: The absolute best boost to handles you can hope for is +15 and it is extremely unlikely. It happened one time in 115 tests. The worst outcome is a -5 which is again not likely but feasible (3-in-115). Handles fell in their rating 23.7% of the time, I'd guess had I ran a thousand tests that the number overall is closer to 25%. No non-PG EVER exceeded a +9 in handles, suggesting that yes -- FBB is more likely to pump handles up for point guards than any other position.
Query - Are players that boost or die more or less likely to see their handles massively increase or decrease? Short answer, no. There are some teens above, and there were times where a player died and still got a +6 handles or boosted and got a -1. The pot death or boost appears to be it's own factor entirely and doesn't weigh up or down the current TC. So theoretically, a guy could have their pot die in TC but have a great bump in ratings or have their pot boost and have a net negative TC in their ratings.
2) Secondly, I looked at multi-year growth.
I used the same seven prospects and simmed five seasons into the future on 7 total trials (I was going to do 10 but I got bored, it's slow). We all know growth is not linear in life and in FBB but this really highlighted the randomness of it.
It also leads me to a theory more than a fact but here we are. While FBB doesn't have hard set limits for handles year-to-year positionally, it has a desired range that it likes to see players in. So a player is far less likely to progressively improve their handles year-to-year at any position other than PG. Point guards had way more fluctuation in outcomes but they had a chance to greatly increase their rating at handles in a way not other position does. Making 10 handles at center, power forward, or small forward a far tougher fix for a high usage player than it is at point guard. That center will essentially be stuck turning it over forever if they are heavily featured as they have little chance to greatly improve the rating. (It also would appear though that SF has a better shot at a handles bump over time than SG, which is odd. Maybe some kind of point-forward thing.)
Conclusions: Starting with higher or lower handles doesn't really dictate growth. However, the capacity for exponential growth doesn't exist. So, if you draft a PG with 10 or lower handles and they have essentially perfect pot, your best case scenario five years later sees them around 50-60 as they reach their prime and fall out of high pot scenarios. Which makes them respectable but still a high turnover player at point in a featured role. Outside of PG, the handles your player gets at draft day are unlikely to substantially grow or decline over their next five seasons, no one hit +20 over five years and only one time did a player drop by 10+ which is cold.
Takeaways:
1) Do not move a PG with low handles to SG. It kills their chance of digging out of the handles hole.
2) A guy with low handles at PG isn't doomed and could still be a star.
3) A player drafted SF-C with very low handles will never reach high handles. It won't happen.
I'm tired, enjoy. Use it or disregard entirely, up to you.
1) Firstly, I tested year one progression.
I made seven prospects to mirror a few believable prospects of years past. With the exception of prospect C who is going into year two and has 85 potential. All of the other six prospects have 99 potential and are fresh out of the draft headed to their first TC. I added prospect C and G late out of further curiosity and they have a way smaller sample of tests in the one year trials.
A - PG - 10 Handles - 99 Potential
B - PG - 50 Handles - 99 Potential
C - PG - 30 Handles - 85 Potential - Year 2 Player
D - SG - 50 Handles - 99 Potential
E - SF - 50 Handles - 99 Potential
F - PF - 30 Handles - 99 Potential
G - C - 10 Handles - 99 Potential
First conclusions: The absolute best boost to handles you can hope for is +15 and it is extremely unlikely. It happened one time in 115 tests. The worst outcome is a -5 which is again not likely but feasible (3-in-115). Handles fell in their rating 23.7% of the time, I'd guess had I ran a thousand tests that the number overall is closer to 25%. No non-PG EVER exceeded a +9 in handles, suggesting that yes -- FBB is more likely to pump handles up for point guards than any other position.
Query - Are players that boost or die more or less likely to see their handles massively increase or decrease? Short answer, no. There are some teens above, and there were times where a player died and still got a +6 handles or boosted and got a -1. The pot death or boost appears to be it's own factor entirely and doesn't weigh up or down the current TC. So theoretically, a guy could have their pot die in TC but have a great bump in ratings or have their pot boost and have a net negative TC in their ratings.
2) Secondly, I looked at multi-year growth.
I used the same seven prospects and simmed five seasons into the future on 7 total trials (I was going to do 10 but I got bored, it's slow). We all know growth is not linear in life and in FBB but this really highlighted the randomness of it.
It also leads me to a theory more than a fact but here we are. While FBB doesn't have hard set limits for handles year-to-year positionally, it has a desired range that it likes to see players in. So a player is far less likely to progressively improve their handles year-to-year at any position other than PG. Point guards had way more fluctuation in outcomes but they had a chance to greatly increase their rating at handles in a way not other position does. Making 10 handles at center, power forward, or small forward a far tougher fix for a high usage player than it is at point guard. That center will essentially be stuck turning it over forever if they are heavily featured as they have little chance to greatly improve the rating. (It also would appear though that SF has a better shot at a handles bump over time than SG, which is odd. Maybe some kind of point-forward thing.)
Conclusions: Starting with higher or lower handles doesn't really dictate growth. However, the capacity for exponential growth doesn't exist. So, if you draft a PG with 10 or lower handles and they have essentially perfect pot, your best case scenario five years later sees them around 50-60 as they reach their prime and fall out of high pot scenarios. Which makes them respectable but still a high turnover player at point in a featured role. Outside of PG, the handles your player gets at draft day are unlikely to substantially grow or decline over their next five seasons, no one hit +20 over five years and only one time did a player drop by 10+ which is cold.
Takeaways:
1) Do not move a PG with low handles to SG. It kills their chance of digging out of the handles hole.
2) A guy with low handles at PG isn't doomed and could still be a star.
3) A player drafted SF-C with very low handles will never reach high handles. It won't happen.
I'm tired, enjoy. Use it or disregard entirely, up to you.
