Posted by a_in_the_b on 9/19/2014 8:12:00 PM (view original):
For me, wether I use 3-2 or two three all depends on what my best sf candidate looks like. If they are more guard-like I'm liable to be in a three two, if they are more power forward like I tend to end up in a 2-3.
i tried that, and didn't see the correlation i was expecting. but i also am what i would consider like 25% of the way through the zone journey. i found that switching 2-3 and 3-2 for the opponent seemed to be more deterministic than playing for who was sf (swapping in guard and big type sfs in the same set, and then swapping 2-3 and 3-2 with a different sf - just to try to see what happened - and i couldn't really see anything happening. but i have to say - the guard and big both had killer ath/def, while the bigs in both seasons i really messed with it were quality speed bigs, like 60 - so i figured that was obfuscating the truth).
the thing i still can't wrap my head around is, well, its the whole thing from a defensive standpoint. in HDs zone, all 5 players are weighed in for the defense of every shot - with a formula per player that depends on the distance. i still can't wrap my head around how i'd even do that as a programmer, not to mention what it actually means for the game. i think high d1 is probably about the worst place to experiment with the 2-3 3-2 (which is the only place i've ever tried to play zone, and it was all recent). sf-y bigs and guards have too similar ath/spd/def at high d1 to really see the difference i guess, or at least, that is my theory. i thought about picking up a team to delve deeper but i confused myself in the planning phases and never made it out. its pretty crazy, it seems to me, i mean the last title i won was with zone, so i wouldn't say i was completely lost, but its just not intuitive to me at all. when i used a spread sheet to analyze some games, everything i expected was wrong. i mean like, literally... everything.. it was not a surprise anymore why i never liked zone when i first tried it ;) i think its got some real potential, but im not sure im the guy to figure it out. its pretty clear though that nobody has mastered it AND been willing to explain the details to the rest of us. definitely the least well understood of any offense or defense, in my book...