I disagree, those of you with weak defenders best beware. Now as for taking advantage of players with inferior speed and athleticism that does not work remotely close to how it should.

Posted by mullycj on 9/25/2010 7:54:00 AM (view original):
RANT begin

Seble has claimed this new engine allows coaches to take advantage of individiual matchups better.

I call bullshit on this one.  I see NO difference between this engine and the old one if being able to take advantage of talent matchups.  In fact, the ONLY claimed engine improvement that I actualy see is more posessions per game, expecially vs slow down.

Game planning still feels pretty fcking useless.

RANT over

Mully, usually I agree with you almost 100% of the time, but I've gotta differ on this one.  I've had some really good success isolating weak defenders with the new engine.  Obviously, it's easiest in M2M, but I'm beginning to figure out how to take some big advantages going against Zones and the FCP also.  Wish it were a little easier to isolate someone in a Zone or a FCP (as I think you could continuously go at them in a real game), but it is what it is.

IMHO, I completely disagree. 

Emy - how about in reagrds to the Speed/Ath matchups fatchance mentions above?

Spd/ath definitely is off. But if you want to target a weak defender it works. However defensive fundamentals are more important than ath/sp do you think Bruce Bowen has anywhere near the ath/sp that Kobe Bryant has but Bowen always gave Kobe a very hard time because fundamentally he was as good as it gets. Same goes for Ron Artest and LeBron James, if you were to rate them Artest ath/sp would probably be like 60/50 while LeBron would be 100/100 but LeBron struggles to score when Artest guards him. People overrate how important pure speed and athleticism is in the halfcourt set because you never get to full utilize it when you have 10 guys in a small space.

Ron Artest is also built like a tank so that is somewhere in the equation

Posted by tmacfan12 on 9/25/2010 11:10:00 PM (view original):
Ron Artest is also built like a tank so that is somewhere in the equation

Agreed, but that factors into primarily speed ( I think strength is part of athleticism in HD) where it shouldn't matter nearly as much in halfcourt defense because the faster player can't full utilize his speed advantage because of the other players on the court and the smaller space to operate.

i agree, defensive matchups are more important, and also, game planning matters (a lot) more.

I have found the matchup advantage to be quite a benefit. Curious about the Ath/Spd commnets. I have a 98 Spd SG in DII and he is scoring on not only lower D guys but higher D guys with lower Spd. The same thing with zones when you combo the guards' D ratings.

Yeah, my guy with 98 speed average almost 20 a game off the bench. I also had a guy with 90+ ath put up like 18 a game on 55% scoring, even with low LP. I've never been able to do stuff like this. It seemed like no matter what I did they had the same odds as going 2-10 as they did 7-10 no matter who they played. I just shrugged it off how a guy with 30 less def/ath/speed would shut him down. This doesn't seem to happen as much. Feels like I have a little more control and have a better idea on who is likely to explode for a big game.

I tend to agree with mully ... looking at a bigger sample size, I don't see a consistent correlation that indicates you can consistently isolate weaker defenders.

Posted by girt25 on 9/26/2010 6:50:00 PM (view original):
I tend to agree with mully ... looking at a bigger sample size, I don't see a consistent correlation that indicates you can consistently isolate weaker defenders.

Are expecting that every single time you play against a weak defender he should get dominated? What if everybody around him is a good defender so whenever he gets beat off the driblle there is somebody rotating and forcing a tough shot, or what if the offensive player just has an off shooting game. I think people think just because you have great scorer vs. bad defender every time the scorer should dominate.

"I tend to agree with mully ... looking at a bigger sample size, I don't see a consistent correlation that indicates you can consistently isolate weaker defenders."

I have won several titles with the new engine - 3 I think - I have not changed anything - just like everything else in this engine, matchups represent a small fraction of success, it is far more important to make sure your best player is playing his best position and is getting touches ... real life would you play john wall at center and give him 45% disto because the other team has a weak center defender, or would you play him at PG and let the other team see what they can do with him? this whole matchup issue slays me, thankfully seble seems to have gotten it right, when he announced it, I thought he was going to make a sham out of the engine, but thankfully he did not.