well, i don't have any actual data on anything related to this. i think the differences in the offenses, for the most part, are reasonable subtle. for example, bh might be 10% more important in one offense than another, but its not like there is an offense where great bh is your ticket to the championship and another where bh can be anything close to ignored.
because of the subtlety, looking at the season from a results level its damn near impossible to tell the difference. for that reason, i really can't say much about the flex or fastbreak. for comparison sake, i played the flex offense maybe 25 or 30 seasons, won a couple times, and made maybe 8 final fours. but i only played those teams from a high level, just being successful with something wasn't enough, i still feel i have no idea how to play the flex in a way to make that team flex-optimized.
for about a year, i would spend 20-30 minutes per game on about half my games with two of my teams, one d1 motion/press and one d2 triangle/press. in that period i had about 90% of the success i've had as a coach. i came to play the two offenses, recruiting and game planning, quite differently, even for the level of detail i care to consider today. both teams showed dividends from the specialization, so i am pretty confident in most of the conclusions i came up with there. so, ill try to outline the things i built around.
- most notably, by far, the motion offense was more successful with a balanced offense running a balanced distribution (maybe some of you would call that slanted, the top starter would still be roughly 50% higher than the 3rd and double the 5th, for example). the triangle allows you to have players who have nothing offensively without a significant penalty. thus, in the motion, i felt at least 4 strong offense options were a must, and in the triangle, i would rarely have so many strong options because i was better off going for ath/spd/reb/def/pass. so, when people would ask, what is the best offense? i would say, i really believe the best team of all time would run a motion offense, but for most teams, its just not worth the offensive requirements. where do you draw the line? back then, maybe top 5-10 d1 teams should run motion, i would guess. lower divisions i didn't think motion made a lot of sense. in the new engine, it might be true that every team should run triangle, with the changes to recruit generation in d1 (edit: just between motion and triangle).
- the motion offense benefited more from strong bh guards. in particular, playing 3 guards with a focus on bh/spd above all else was significantly more productive in the motion offense than the triangle.
- while spd was a must have in triangle for your guards, spd was a really must have in the motion. this is of course assuming the press, for which guard spd was so important it was ridiculous. so without press you can definitely relax the requirements, to something like, spd in your guards is very important in triangle and really very important in motion.
- outside shooters in the triangle had a greater need for high per. this kind of goes hand in hand with the above. at the highest level of d1 play, i was still happy with an 85 per guy being a primary scorer with 99 spd/bh. at the highest level of d2 play, i was still happy with a 85 per guy being a primary scorer with 80 spd/bh. a 70 per guy was actually probably more tolerable to me on my d1 motion team, provided perfect spd/bh, than on my d2 team (unless he was a god among men for d2 players in other categories).
- triangle also did seem to have a higher requirement on passing. but, i suppose its all relative, i can't say in the absolute context if that is really true. i just know i focused on bh more in the motion and pass more in the triangle, relative to the other team. for example, in the motion, my pg valued bh more than passing. but partially that is because it was motion and i needed 5 scorers. in triangle, my pg strongly values passing over bh. but, i prefer a non-scoring pg there. with a scoring pg in triangle, i still value passing higher than bh, just not as strongly as i would with a non scorer. for a 3rd guard, which i used on both teams like 90% of the time, basically the same thing was true as mentioned for the pg. in triangle, i still would take bh over pass for my primary scoring guard.
- big men scoring at the high end appears to be noticeably more productive in the triangle. but at the lower end, i didn't see much difference (so maybe a big outside the top 3 scoring was equally effective in both sets. or maybe, i just couldn't tell that small of a difference).
- there used to be a forum fact, at least i thought so, that triangle was easier on stamina and thus that helped make it a good pairing with the press. if anything, this is only slightly the case, maybe 1m/game/player, and definitely less than 2m/game/player. although, i have not reevaluated in the new engine.
- my triangle teams generally took more 3s than my motion teams. i think the optimal way to play them suggests this, but you can pretty easily tie it to my choice of bh/spd in motion and per in triangle. which came first - did i value per in triangle because 3 point shooting was more effective or did i shoot more 3s because i had more per than bh/spd? i don't know, nor am i sure it matters.
- triangle slowdown in general appeared to be slightly more effective than motion slowdown. however, it depends on team composition to some extent - a poor passing triangle team is probably going to be worse off playing slowdown than a high passing motion team who is just shorter on depth.
- i also preferred triangle uptempo over motion uptempo. but this may just be a function of the way i built my teams. with the motion team having so much spd/bh, it was like, they are going to get open eventually - just give them the time. but take it as a grain of salt. i played a grand total of 0 uptempo games in the NT with my motion team, and a grand total of 4-5 with my triangle team (i still hadn't decided one season which to do until the final 4 rolled around, so i was experimenting and don't remember exactly what i did early on. we did win that year, our final 2 games which were uptempo were 40 and 26 point margins but im still not totally convinced it maximized our chance of winning - only our average margin of victory).
- against a man defense, i would generally prefer triangle, because its easier to isolate a defender and make them pay. however, most people don't change their depth chart based on their opponent (a mistake i would say, but i don't do it anymore either, not till the post season anyway).
- against a press defense, i would generally prefer my motion team, because their bh and spd really helped them beat the press. but who knows what to make of the new press?
- against a zone defense, it was basically a toss up. my triangle teams generally were more 3 point oriented and that was good against the zone. but the bh/spd was also quite effective at picking it apart.
- against a + defense, no doubt, i preferred motion. with 3 guards, i still shot more 3s than most. but against a +, your team naturally takes less 3s. and guarding these bh/spd guards closely was basically a death sentence. i loved playing + offenses. against a -, my guys would take a lot of 3s, but the variation in 3 point shooting is higher than anything else so it was more likely to get a bad roll and lose that day.
- against a - defense, no doubt, i preferred my triangle team. our 3 point shooting was often above 42% against the top schedule in the country so really it was hard to go wrong against a - defense.
well, that about sums it up. the biggest thing is to recruit a few scorers for triangle and give them a lot of distro. but you have to do both - if you only recruit for triangle, or only game plan for triangle, its really not worth a damn. you have to do both. similarly with motion - but don't go having your 5 starers like 12 12 11 10 10 like so many other teams i've seen. typical for me would maybe be like 12 12 10 9 6 or 13 12 12 8 6 depending on the team and all that.
a couple things i have noticed for fb/flex, but not very confident -
- fast break is awesome for setting distro, similar to triangle. you can pretty much do whatever you want (provided what you want is to give your best players more shots) without penalties kicking in for giving the guy the ball too much (within the constraints of seble's change, no guy on the floor takes more than half, which really you must translate to no guy takes more than 40-45% allowing for variation).
- fast break to me seems to clearly be more successful with high ath/spd and low per/lp than any offense would. is this the best way to build a fb team? i have no idea. i just know that if i had great ath/spd and mediocre lp/per there is no doubt i would wish i was playing fb. i had a 48 per guard be one of my best scorers of all time in a d1 fb mid major that made the elite 8, because he was an a+ ft shooter. only had like 60 ath with great spd/bh and solid pass when he maxed as a junior, so he didn't look very good to most of the big boys in d1. but he scored over 20/game for me and was one of the most offensively efficient players i've had do that - especially considering the quality.
- fb clearly requires more stamina.
- i am not convinced fb requires passing less than the other offenses, on average. i often wonder if it requires it more than any of the others. i only played it at my first school even and then for like 7 seasons recently so i didn't have time to figure this out.
- flex, at the low levels, seems to be the #1 offense for ridiculous amounts of 3 point shooting. i am not sure if it translates to d1, i have tried and not seen the success. i think a big part of this is because the lower levels have an imbalance where top offensive players are a lot better than the defenses out there, which is not the case in d1.
- i hate the flex offense. but, only because i know it can be very good and i haven't figured it out. so never rule out anything just because other good coaches don't like it. we all become set in our ways and love what we know. its very dangerous to follow anything you read on the forums without first thinking about how it applies to your own experience - if you have no experience on the subject, go get some! even when the large majority agrees. if 100 coaches say something is not possible and 1 says it is, that does not at all mean it is not possible. this would have burned me many times and i never would have gotten where i was if i didn't follow my axiom #1 - question everything, test everything.