Okay, so, the other day I was messing around with this basketball management game, right? And I stumbled upon this thing called the “GOAT Lab.” Now, I’m not much of a numbers guy, but I thought, “Why not give it a shot?”
First off, I had to figure out what this GOAT Lab was all about. Turns out, it’s basically a tool to determine who’s the best player, you know, the Greatest Of All Time. It uses some formula, but I wasn’t sure what formula I should be using. I did a little digging and saw that it’s a common discussion on forums for this game. Someone mentioned using “Estimated Wins Added” (EWA) along with a combination of offensive and defensive win shares (OWS and DWS), so I jotted that down.
- EWA, which was mentioned by someone else, seems like a big deal for these formulas.
- Another user mentioned combining offensive and defensive win shares, multiplied by different weights. I had to Google what that meant exactly, but it seemed to be a measurement of how much a player contributes to a team’s wins.
- Championships and Finals MVP awards also add a lot of points, which makes sense.
Now, how to actually put these numbers together? I remembered seeing a post where someone shared their formula. They were using something like EWA plus two times the sum of OWS and DWS, then adding a bunch of other stuff for playoff performance and awards. It looked complicated, but I figured I could use it as a starting point.
I started playing around with the numbers, plugging in stats for different players. I tried out a few different variations, you know, giving more weight to this stat or that stat. It was a lot of trial and error, to be honest.
After a while, I started to see some patterns. It looked like the formula was really rewarding players who were consistently good over a long period, which made sense to me. I mean, a flash in the pan is one thing, but sustained greatness is another, right?
I also noticed that the formula was pretty sensitive to playoff performance. Players who really stepped up their game in the postseason got a big boost, and that felt right too. When the pressure’s on, do you deliver or not?
Finally, I came up with a formula that I was pretty happy with. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but it seemed to do a good job of identifying the top players. And it was cool to see how different players stacked up against each other. It even sparked some interesting debates with my buddies who also play the game.
My Final Thoughts
So yeah, that’s my little adventure with the GOAT Lab and the formula. It was a fun little project, and it definitely made me think about basketball in a different way. I’m no expert, but it was cool to play around with the numbers and see what I could come up with. I am not sure if I will use this formula in the future but it was a good way to kill some time.
