Soel's Game Shape Guide
Game shape is a very important part of the game. Perhaps one of the most important; if it's ignored you could be putting your players, and team, at a real disadvantage.
Game Shape is the fitness level of a player, and like in real life sports if you play too much your fitness level will go down, play too little and it goes down too. Managing game shape is therefore all about managing your players minutes. The golden number is 72 minutes per week. However with the game engine and the nature of basketball it is difficult to get just one of your players exactly 72 minutes in a week, let alone all of them. It's therefore recommended you try and get all your players between 60 and 79 minutes. This is a more realistic goal, and achievable in most circumstances.
If you manage your minutes well your player's game shape should improve on Friday morning during the training update. However, game shape is not an exact science. I've had a player get exactly 72 minutes before but actually go down in game shape. However, in general, your player's game shape should improve over the season if you manage their minutes well. Game shape starts at respectable (7) at the start of the season and can go up as high as proficient (9).
So what is the effect of game shape? Well, if it's high (7+) your player will play better. There are various ways to judge a player, let's take player rating as an example. A player who averages 8.0 with respectable game shape would expect to average 9.0 with proficient shape. With mediocre game shape it would be expected he would average 7.0. This is just an example of course, but I think it gives an accurate impression. If you use salary as a way to judge a player then a player on $40,000 a week will play like a player on $20,000 a week with mediocre game shape. If you apply the per-player basis to your entire team it becomes clear that your team will play better if you manage your minutes well.
So how do you manage your minutes? Well, you need an extended roster. You play 3 matches a week at 48 minutes with 5 players playing which gives 720 total minutes available. If you're good at maths you'll see that means you need 10 players; averaging 72 minutes per player. It is advised, however, to use 11 players and aim for 65 minutes per player as it is better to go under 72 minutes than over. This means that your best players will not be able to play every game, meaning somewhere during the week you will have to make concessions and play a slightly weaker team than you may like. After the cup season ends your scrimmage game will be the game each week you will field a weaker team, as the outcome of scrimmage games doesn't matter. During the cup season you may need to play slightly weaker teams during your league games, but don't forget you don't have to have just one game per week where you take out all your best players, you could take some out for the Saturday league game and some out for the Tuesday night game. I'm getting bogged down in the details here, but I hope you can work out what works best for your team.
The most common worry of managers is that they need their best players playing all the time. I hope by reading this guide managers realise that if they play their best players all the time they'll quickly become not their best players any more. You have to make sacrifices in certain circumstances in order to improve your team over the course of the season. One way I achieved this when I started out is by sitting my good players during games I had no chance of winning, especially during the start of the season. If it's an unwinnable game you may as well work towards the future, give yourself a better chance to win the games that are 50-50.
One last comment – never train game shape. Only do this if you love love your national team coach or maybe before key playoff weeks. If you manage your minutes during the season you should never need to train game shape. Ever!
Last edited by Soel at 01/13/2010 21:30:26