Seriously, if you (and other GMs) are saying that I should not even bother looking at game ratings, why not just junk them? Or maybe just call them "Deliberately meaningless ratings (DMR)".
I've never said this.
Team ratings exist so that you can gauge the approximate average strength of players fielded in a certain game, in several aspects (outside shooting/defense, inside shooting/defense, passing). It does this very well.
What it does _not_ necessarily do is explain why game A or game B was lost -- at least not universally. It can certainly give you ideas in some cases, but game simulation is primarily (if not exclusively) based on individual match-ups.
This makes reading the box score significantly more complicated than reading the team rating. For example, even if you seegreat OD team ratings, this doesn't mean that they come from all outside players -- maybe they come from an exceptional PG and SG, and the team got killed at the SG position. Or if you see great inside attack ratings, this doesn't mean the team was capable to get enough shots inside to win the game.
The one thing that pushes my buttons is when people's reaction to these issues is "The game is messed up", rather than "What am I doing wrong?". The game is what it is, and it has given us all an predictable environment, in which there is a reasonable number of alternatives of how to win the game.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."