Value Add Basketball Game Provided Accurate for Every Era - Minor Adjustments Listed

Team	Year	Previous	Adjust	Correct
Arizona	1997	51-60	add 2	51-62
Arkansas	1994	51-57	add 2	51-59
Auburn	2019	51-56	subtract 2	51-54
Baylor	2021	51-61	subtract 2	51-59
Cincinnati	1960	51-61	add 4	51-65
Colorado	2021	51-60	subtract 2	51-58
Connecticut	1999	51-57	add 2	51-59
Creighton	2020	51-56	subtract 2	51-54
Dayton	2020	51-56	subtract 2	51-54
Duke	1992	51-57	add 6	51-63
Florida	2006	51-56	add 6	51-62
Georgia Tech	1990	51-53	add 2	51-55
Iowa	2021	51-57	subtract 2	51-55
Kansas	1997	51-55	add 2	51-57
Kentucky	1948	51-56	add 4	51-62
Kentucky	1996	51-62	add 6	51-66
Loyola Marymount	1990	51-55	add 2	51-57
Loyola-Chicago	2018	51-52	subtract 2	51-50
LSU	1992	51-58	add 2	51-62
North Carolina	1998	51-57	add 2	51-59
Oklahoma St.	1946	51-58	add 4	51-62
Purdue	2018	51-58	subtract 2	51-56
San Francisco	1956	51-53	add 4	51-57
Texas Tech	2019	51-52	subtract 2	51-50
UCLA	1967	51-58	add 4	51-62
UCLA	1972	51-61	add 4	51-65
UNLV	1991	51-57	add 2	51-59
USC	2021	51-56	subtract 2	51-54
Utah	1998	51-50	add 2	51-52
Villanova	2018	51-65	add 2	51-66
Virginia	2019	51-56	subtract 2	51-54
Wake Forest	1996	51-50	add 2	51-52

Since inventing the Value Add Basketball Game a couple of years ago, we have played 175 games between the 136 all-time great teams. We track all the game scores on this google sheet. If you are not technical, you may just want to read that the following teams are having their dunk ranges adjusted based on the study detailed below. We are in progress of making this updates on this google sheet of the 136 great teams. 

Technical Explanation for Calculating These Adjustments

If you study basketball analytics and want to see how accurate the game is and why these adjustments capture the only outliers continue to read - but if not you can stop here.

With 175 games played we now have enough games to answer the question everyone who plays college board games wrestles with - do you need to make adjustments to account for eras that used or did not use a 3-point shot. Over time we have written about how we estimate how many 3-pointers players from earlier eras would have made and adjusting the overall team cards to make players from different eras equal.

To do this we tracked the Simple Ratings System calculation for each team in the game, which measures how many points better or worse than the average team each team was. The SRS on the sheet is actually 21 lower than the actual SRS, because we want to compare them to the average team in the game or great teams, which is actually a +21 since the average team in the game is 21 points better than the average team in basketball.

One other adjustment we use is our "Chicago Bulls" adjustment for teams that repeat champions. In the 1992-93 season the Bulls cruised through the season with a 57-25 mark, right in the middle of six teams with between 54 and 62 wins. In 1998 they cruised along to a slightly better 62-20 season, one of four teams right between 61 and 62 wins. Of course they were much better in both playoffs, winning a third straight title both years. Though there is not enough evidence to build a real model, we believe teams repeating championships within a year or two know how to pace themselves and therefore play about 4 points better when then need to then during a regular season game. The following teams therefore received a 4-point boost to their dunk range for having multiple champions within 3 seasons:

See list of all titles. Using the year in which the title was won, that includes; Oklahoma State (1945-46 meaning the 1944-45 season AND the 1945-46 season), Kentucky 3 of 4 from 1948-51, San Francisco 1955-56, Cincinnati 1961-62, UCLA 10 of 12 from 1964-75, Duke 1991-92, Kentucky 1996-98, Florida 2006-07, Villanova 2016-18. We foi

Second, we track a "Game Score" for each team in each game played, which measures how many points better or worst than the average great team the team was in that game. The following table tracks the results:

Ranges of Seasons	SRS-21	Ave. Game Score	Too Good?
1942 to 1959 (no adjustment)	-4.8	-5.2	-0.4
1960 to 1969 (no adjustment)	-0.4	0.9	1.4
1970 to 1979 (no adjustment)	0.3	0.7	0.3
1980 to 1989 (no adjustment)	-2.4	-1.5	0.9
1990 to 1999 (add 2 to dunk ranges)	2.5	-0.6	-3.1
2000 to 2005 (no adjustment)	0.6	-1.3	-1.8
2000 to 2009 (no adjustment)	0.0	0.7	0.7
2010 to 2015 (no adjustment)	0.2	-1.5	-1.7
2016 to 2018 (no adjustment)	1.9	2.6	0.7
2019 to 2021 (subtract 2 from dunk ranges)	1.2	4.0	2.8

The good news is ...

The Numbers Indicate the Game is Accurate for Teams of all Eras!

No era has averaged being off by more than 3 points when playing other eras.

Teams from the past few years, 2019-2021, when 3-pointers have continued to increase dramatically, have done 2.8 points better against other eras than they should have averaged based on the SRS ratings of both teams in the game.

Therefore, each team from 2019 to 2021 in the game now has a dunk range 2 lower than it was. On the other extreme, the teams of the 1990s when teams were starting to use 3-pointers a little bit, but making the adjustment, is the era for which we do the opposite and will add 2 to each dunk range.

The cards for all other eras have proven so accurate that no adjustment are made.