Deciding on an old picture: the replay shows who the ball handler has not seen

A ball handler in the simulated league decides on what they have seen, not on where everyone is. Most of the time that is the same thing: at about nine decisions in ten, the handler has every defender in view. The rest of the time, one or more defenders were last seen a few seconds ago, and the handler is still deciding on that old picture. The replay now shows when that happens, and how far wrong the picture is.

Who they have not seen, and for how long

Press O, or the Options button, and pause on a decision. A lime line now runs from the ball handler to each defender they have not seen lately, stronger the longer it has been. The panel gains a section, Not seen lately, listing those defenders and how long ago each was last seen, in seconds. When the handler has every defender in view, nothing is added, so the lines appear only on the decisions where they matter. In one game, about one decision in twelve had a defender out of sight, the longest for almost eight seconds.

Where they think that defender is

A defender out of sight has not stood still. In the options view, each one whose believed spot is more than a body's depth from where they really are is now also drawn as a faint figure at that spot, with a thin line along the floor to where they really are. The length of that line is how wrong the picture is. It is often not a small error: in the measured game the middle believed spot of an unseen defender was about six metres from the real one, and the farthest twentieth were eighteen metres or more away. The choice on the screen can be read against the defender who is really standing where the handler believes nobody is.

The same picture the game used

None of this is guessed by the replay. The game records, at each decision, how long ago the handler last saw each defender and where they believed each one stood, and the decision is weighed on exactly that. The replay reads those records and draws them, the same way it already draws the faint figures behind a misread pass.