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The thrilling 80–79 win by the 1952 St. Louis team over the 2025 Oklahoma team in the Value Add Basketball Game provided the perfect opportunity to explain the most important part of the game when matching teams from different eras.
Anyone who claims shooters were better “back in the old days” is simply wrong. Looking strictly at 2-point field goal percentage (setting the 3-pointer aside as its own separate issue), modern teams have hovered around 50% since the 1980s. But earlier eras were nowhere near that level. As the chart shows, teams in the 1940s made under 30% of their shots, teams through the 1950s were still under 40%, the 1960s barely reached 45%, and even in the 1970s teams still couldn’t average 50%.
In short, in 1952 teams averaged roughly one-third of their shots going in - so if a modern team and a 1952 team each took six shots - 3 would go in for the new team and 2 for the old team and by the end the 1952 team would have no chance. Even giving freshman phenom Dick Boushka playing time in this matchup (despite freshmen normally playing separately in that era), St. Louis still only projects to be around 37% shooting — while their opponent, 2025 Oklahoma, hits 54% of their 2-pointers.
When we calculate the 20-sided die ranges for each player — whether they make a 3, make a 2, draw free throws, miss a 3, or miss a 2 — every Oklahoma starter is better offensively than every St. Louis player, even though Boushka is a Hall of Famer and Olympic gold medalist.
What we discovered — during three straight all-nighters in a New York hotel after Covid canceled the Big East Tournament I was covering — is that while the dunk ranges I originally developed were critical for adjusting strength of competition between 21st-century teams, they are even more important when putting historical teams from wildly different eras on equal footing.
To make historic matchups realistic, you must use the dunk chart in the Value Add Basketball Game rules. Cross-reference a team’s offensive dunk range with the opposing team’s defensive “adjust dunk” range, then write at the top of the scoresheet what happens when the 51–66 two-die result appears.
If the chart indicates “51-50,” you simply ignore those rolls and go straight to the 20-sided die result for the player with the ball.
However, if the chart shows a green range, then on those rolls the offense scores. We list it as a dunk, but practically it represents getting to the rim easily for two points. Any time that number appears, the team automatically scores two — unless the 20-sided die produces a made 3 or a chance to draw a key foul, in which case the offense may choose the better result.
In this game, St. Louis had a 51-56 dunk range, and Oklahoma’s +1 defensive adjustment expanded that to a green 51-61 window (remember 6-sided dice, so we skip 57, 58, 59 and 60), meaning St. Louis automatically scored on those rolls. This calibrates their offense to a modern environment where defenses allow around 50% shooting, instead of the 33% accuracy environment of 1952.
Oklahoma was the opposite. Their 51-45 dunk range combined with St. Louis’ –2 defensive adjustment produced a red 51-61 STOP range. When Oklahoma rolled a STOP, you still use the 8-sided die to identify the player with the ball, but then one of two things happens:
• If the defender has a defensive rebound range of 1–3 or lower → it is scored as a turnover.
• If the defender rebounds at 1–4 or better → score it as a missed shot, and the defender gets the rebound.
So despite Oklahoma having much better raw shooting percentages, these dunk-chart adjustments correctly account for the fact that St. Louis was one of the top teams in the nation in 1952 and should not simply get crushed by a modern team. Without the adjustment, Oklahoma would hit 54% of their shots while St. Louis hit only 37%, and the game would be hopelessly lopsided.
Instead, the math shows St. Louis as about eight points better than Oklahoma (their –5 rating beats Oklahoma’s –13), which played out on the tabletop. St. Louis actually led 79–73 inside the final minute before Oklahoma hit two late threes but still fell short, 80–79.
Final: St. Louis (1952) 80, Oklahoma (2025) 79.
This is not to say that if the 1952 St. Louis team came through a time machine to play a team like 2025 Oklahoma they would have a chance. But that would be like saying there are 50 runners better than Jesse Owens today simply because, if he came forward in time with no benefit of modern training, his 10.2 in the 100-meter dash wouldn’t place in the top 50 in 2025. Obviously, in both basketball and track, athletes are faster and stronger now. Courts and tracks are better. Training is more advanced. Athletes learn from decades of accumulated film, coaching, and trial-and-error. Nutrition and sports science are on a completely different level.
And while the 1952 St. Louis team is not in a league with icons like Owens, Ruth, or Marciano, they were hardly a relic or a novelty. They were ranked No. 5 in the country, made the Elite Eight, and did all of that without being able to play their best player, Dick Boushka—who the following year led the conference in scoring and later won an Olympic gold medal. Freshmen couldn’t play varsity in that era, so adding Boushka to that roster makes St. Louis a legitimate national contender and a team capable of playing competitive games against all-time greats in a fair simulation.
That’s what the Value Add Basketball Game calibrates: if teams like St. Louis and Oklahoma grew up in the same era, with the same training, coaching, environment, and advantages, how would they really stack up? Just like Jesse Owens, Babe Ruth, and Rocky Marciano would still be considered among the greatest of all time even if they couldn’t simply step out of a time machine and dominate under modern conditions, great historical teams still deserve to be measured by greatness—not by whether they instantly adapt to today’s athletic world.
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