Posted by jdno on 11/12/2014 5:14:00 PM (view original):
Posted by gillispie1 on 11/12/2014 9:43:00 AM (view original):
i understand where you guys are coming from, with your 3 guard comments on defense, when it pertains to real life. however, in HD, it seems to me that press is definitely the 3 guard defense, and man is just as effective as 3-2 zone. i personally don't even commit to 3-2 zone when i have 3 guards and run zone, i think it still is a contest between 3-2 and 2-3 (as someone who leans 3-2 most of the time), assuming that 3 guard has guard quality ath/spd/def (aka better than a normal sf, outside sb, defensively).
any offense is good for 3 point shooting, to be honest. flex is very slightly more tailored to 3 point shooting and relies a little heavier on spd/per, which makes it particularly attractive in lower divisions where its harder to get high quality spd/per/bh. motion relies the least on per for quality 3 point shooting but its still a great 3 point shooting offense - they all are. my personal favorite 3 point shooting offense though, has to be fastbreak. in general, with its turnover negative that all other defenses lack, fastbreak is going to be your best offense in just about every other category. bottom line, all offenses are great 3 point shooting offenses, with strong 3 point offenses in any system generally being highly efficient, so i wouldn't worry too much about that. if you *really* want to take a crap ton of 3s, like more than 50% more than the average team, personally, i'd avoid motion just because i find it harder to strike a balance which seems to matter a little bit more there.
Are there any specific attributes you find more advantageous to FB than the other sets for shooting 3's? I customarily go in the other direction and try to get to the line 35-50 times a game and let the foul and stamina death spiral take a toll on the other team. I like having a bomber to keep teams a bit more honest on defense, but I don't always have this luxury. But I really do wonder if I have to think differently in this regard after many earlier-than-anticipated NT losses.
the thing i love about FB is the versatility - you can play it like you are, or as a 3 point shooting offense, and its basically best in breed either way. specifically, are there stats more advantageous for just 3 point shooting? no, except sort of you could say stamina, but in terms of spd/bh/per, its pretty much the same. the generality that you can do more with less lp/per than in other sets, that applies to FB in general, doesn't really apply to 3 point shooting, it seems to me. if it does, its very slightly. you really do still need traditional 3 point shooters to be an effective 3 point shooting team, which isn't the case with 2 point shooting.
i like the ability of FB to get to the line a lot, and there is an additional synergy there. FB is like "half a press", in terms of the fatigue and possession increase. getting the other team in foul trouble is easier the more possessions there are, and obviously fouls are increasing in value the more you draw (more shots on non-shooting fouls, but also, more chance of foul trouble). fatigue and foul trouble compound nicely, so a heavy foul drawing team in fatigue-heavy FB does work well, IMO, better than any other offense, assuming both are or are not press defenses.
i've been surprised by the effectiveness of foul drawing strategies in the past, but generally found those teams to also have extremely good defenses, often presses, which has the same fatigue/foul synergy. so i do think you can make it work. the general challenge is that the upper crust of teams often are robust enough to take a decent amount of foul trouble without much issue. so, i think that sometimes top teams will perform less well against their peers, than a 3 point shooting offense, even though they might be just as good or better against most teams in the country. it also depends how many other teams are pressing, in lower divisions that number is often way higher than d1, so i think foul drawing strategies generally work better in d2/d3 than d1.
last note on that, conceptually, when you have a really good team, its about minimizing volatility, so that the teams you play, who are generally all significantly inferior to your team, have as little shot as possible. foul drawing strategies are highly volatile - some % of games, you get the team in very significant foul trouble - a good %, its moderate foul trouble, and sometimes, its not significant really at all. against a peer, thats kind of ok, if 20% of the time you get a huge advantage, that is meaningful. but against a team you should generally beat 9 times out of 10, the high end of your range, getting them in real foul trouble, that doesn't help that much, you didn't need that to win. the times when they get lucky and don't have much foul trouble, now you are not sporting an efficient offense - not many foul shots (presumably), which are the most efficient of all shots, and no 3s, which are next, and almost all 2s, which are significantly worse than the other two options. your low end range, just on foul trouble, really opens you up. that said, 3 point shots are highly volatile themselves - so really high and low 3 point shooting teams have volatility issues. but in my experience, for really high level play (average #1 team in the country and up, at least), the volatility of 3 point shooting seems to be less of a concern. so basically, i think foul drawing offenses are great, if you pair with fatigue (without fb or press, i don't like it as a strategy), and particularly interesting against pressing teams, but i do think its a bit of an uphill climb to keep up with 3 point shooting teams, as you get to the very high end.
my favorite FB teams i've had, they took a lot of 3, but also had a good rating when you look at fta/fga. i think you can have it both ways - get a lot of fts on your 2s (which is how you make 2s efficient and competitive), and still be great in 3 point shooting. you obviously aren't going to get the volume of fouls to push for real foul trouble as a strategy, but you can actually still have better fta/fga (not just fta/2pta) than a lot of other teams around your level, who take fewer 3s. basically, you can get great 3s and great 2s (through fta volume) at the same time, and i think those teams work best.
11/13/2014 11:52 AM (edited)