Am I right in assuming that all halftime adjustments made will put your team in the optimal position to win the game? I have been working under that assumption for a while now and I just want to make sure it is correct.

Definitely not "optimal" but could be better. If you're playing minus def and your opponent is jacking 3s then it will adjust. But only by 2. So you could be playing -5 and it will go to -3 but you should be playing +2 , it will get you closer but not there. I personally don't usually adjust.

But will it always get you closer to optimal? So I should always use it?

"Am I right in assuming that all halftime adjustments made will put your team in the optimal position to win the game?"

Maybe, maybe not.  If you accidentally let halftime adjustments be made even when you are ahead at the half it may be the worst thing you can do.  Say for example your opponent has better outside scoring than inside scoring and your defense at +2 was successful in the first half.  Since your opponent's bigs scored more than their guards and you let the engine change things, it will lighten up on the guards and cover the bigs -- allowing the very guys you covered so well in the first half to beat you.  I learned that the hard way, and never let the engine change my defense at halftime when I am winning.

Someone else that knows more than me can weigh and prob disagree but in my opinion there is more to it than 3pt shooting when choosing def positioning. Yes it will move the needle closer to what 3pt defense it should be but what about the other impacts such as reb and fouling? I may play minus cause i want some help on the boards. The adjustment doesnt take that in to account i dont believe.

Besides, if youre going to have the computer make that adjustment, why not play it from the start? Especially if youre playing a sim, you can get a damn good idea of how many 3s they will shoot and at what %

I had it on winning or losing because I thought it would only help, I just switched it. So it only takes into account 3 point? Not rebounding or fouling? That's a let down, because I've been using half time adjustments of teams that have beaten teams I'm playing to help do my game planning.

Absolutely not. It makes changes based on first half results. It can put you in a more optimal situation or a more detrimental situation, depending on the way the game is going and the way the first half went, or didn't go, according to plan.

I let it change if I'm trailing at the half.  If I'm leading, i don't want to mess with a winning gameplan

I'm not clear on what triggers the adjustment.  Clear that 3 point shooting does.  I dont know whether anything else is a factor, but it seems to follow 3 point shooting.

I dont use it when winning - why have the engine move you away from success

I usually use it when losing.

I dont think the programmers or the SIM know what is "optimal" in the middle of a specific game.  Thats way too complicated a problem to solve systematically.

My experience is sometimes it makes you win, sometimes it makes you lose. I don't use adjustments on a man to man defense normally. But if I have no idea what to do against a team, I will put it on.

On press, I don't mind adjustments. In Zone, it will depend on my gameplan.

agree w/ the folks who said its definitely not always optimal. don't mistake the sim making a change or prediction (like a vegas odds) as the game actually being run through the sim engine and predicted that way. the sim doesn't use information about how the sim engine would simulate the rest of your game, to make that half time prediction. its a simple heuristic that is either mostly or entirely based on the ratio of 3 pointers taken. 

i usually leave my half time setting on if losing. seems to make sense, if something is working stick with it, if not, change it up.

I don't let it change tempo at all, and I have positioning set to adjust if losing by 5 or more...its hard to trust the sim to be better at gameplanning than I am...

Posted by dacj501 on 1/25/2016 10:36:00 AM (view original):
I don't let it change tempo at all, and I have positioning set to adjust if losing by 5 or more...its hard to trust the sim to be better at gameplanning than I am...

Exactly this.. I set it to never for both. I have used if losing by 10 or more on adjust positioning on some teams but usually use never.

But I don't only do positioning based entirely on 3 pt shooting. If a team shoots 0 3 pt shots.. But guards score more than 50% of the points, I might play 0 or -1 instead of -3 or -4. If I am using press, I don't like to ever go lower than -3 because of increased fouls.

Others disagree and base positioning on mostly only 3 pt shots taken.