I agree. But with that flex how would you assign the distribution? Would you just be guard heavy in distro? I think I would know how to recruit better for the flex than I would actually running it based on what Hoops101 says. But IDK. Everyone has their own philosophies despite any information given and a lot of them are still successful. 

Hoops 101 is more misleading then it is helpful.

I believe if more coaches studied my teams and then did the opposite they would be successful.

Posted by girt25 on 1/26/2012 12:02:00 AM (view original):
Hoops 101 is more misleading then it is helpful.

Girt - I think this entire line of thinking is misleading, it is far more important to get your team right, than it is to worry about distro vs offense type.

Billy, if you are right, are you saying that you would either move a  hi talent player who should play PG to SG of SF because the set demands it?  Or are you saying that you would lower the distro of the high talent PG to lesser talent SG or SF's or even big men because the set demands it?

My opinion is I optimize my lineup, rotations / fatigue in the depth chart &  my distro / shot selection based on the player ratings taken by themselves and versus each other, but not vs my own set.

I am pretty sure, based on the shear volume of teams I have and games I have played (over 14,000 games under my belt) that nobody has tried more experimenting in this game.  I have gone entire seasons where I will play all 8 of my teams -4 or +4, just to see the results, I have tried half my games in triangle with sg/sf/pf getting 90% plus of the touches, then have switched my PG and SG around, along with the touches.  I have played motion, with my SG and his backup getting 90% of the touches (went 35-0 using that strategy once, when the engine was giving us too high a 3pt success rate), I have used big lineups, small lineups, guards at PF with 75% distro, doubled my touches to my best players, halved it to my worst, all kinds of things. 

I have concluded from that there is a best way to set a team up, or to strive to set a team up.  Each one is unique, and hard to know exactly, but for me a pattern has emerged.  I will say this, I have often, maybe even usually, moved a junior player into a key senior player's position on my team the next season, because although for the things I want the junior was inferior to the senior, he still was superior to the rest of his teammates the following season.  Or to put it another way, there are more important and less important things to me in terms of my team setup.  I simply do not use the set I run as a part of that equation.

In my opinion (I am somewhat trained in statistics), the variation in the game (including the matchups you play, ratings, def type, def settings but most importantly the RNG factor) makes it impossible with a sample size of one unique matchup and a max of 35 potential data points per season, to really determine the set answer.  Now if seble ran 1000 games under probably two or three dozen experimental conditions (tarek used to do this sometimes), maybe, just maybe we could know, but why would he do that?

Posted by oldresorter on 1/26/2012 9:04:00 AM (view original):

Posted by girt25 on 1/26/2012 12:02:00 AM (view original):
Hoops 101 is more misleading then it is helpful.

Girt - I think this entire line of thinking is misleading, it is far more important to get your team right, than it is to worry about distro vs offense type.

Billy, if you are right, are you saying that you would either move a  hi talent player who should play PG to SG of SF because the set demands it?  Or are you saying that you would lower the distro of the high talent PG to lesser talent SG or SF's or even big men because the set demands it?

My opinion is I optimize my lineup, rotations / fatigue in the depth chart &  my distro / shot selection based on the player ratings taken by themselves and versus each other, but not vs my own set.

I am pretty sure, based on the shear volume of teams I have and games I have played (over 14,000 games under my belt) that nobody has tried more experimenting in this game.  I have gone entire seasons where I will play all 8 of my teams -4 or +4, just to see the results, I have tried half my games in triangle with sg/sf/pf getting 90% plus of the touches, then have switched my PG and SG around, along with the touches.  I have played motion, with my SG and his backup getting 90% of the touches (went 35-0 using that strategy once, when the engine was giving us too high a 3pt success rate), I have used big lineups, small lineups, guards at PF with 75% distro, doubled my touches to my best players, halved it to my worst, all kinds of things. 

I have concluded from that there is a best way to set a team up, or to strive to set a team up.  Each one is unique, and hard to know exactly, but for me a pattern has emerged.  I will say this, I have often, maybe even usually, moved a junior player into a key senior player's position on my team the next season, because although for the things I want the junior was inferior to the senior, he still was superior to the rest of his teammates the following season.  Or to put it another way, there are more important and less important things to me in terms of my team setup.  I simply do not use the set I run as a part of that equation.

In my opinion (I am somewhat trained in statistics), the variation in the game (including the matchups you play, ratings, def type, def settings but most importantly the RNG factor) makes it impossible with a sample size of one unique matchup and a max of 35 potential data points per season, to really determine the set answer.  Now if seble ran 1000 games under probably two or three dozen experimental conditions (tarek used to do this sometimes), maybe, just maybe we could know, but why would he do that?

I'm having a hard time understanding what exactly you mean in the 2nd to last paragraph. By playing a Jr in that situation are you just making sure that he will have higher ratings for his Sr season?

"Girt - I think this entire line of thinking is misleading, it is far more important to get your team right, than it is to worry about distro vs offense type."
it is far more important to get your team right than to worry about distro vs offense type. just like it is more important to recruit than to game plan correctly. but that doesn't mean these things don't matter.

and no - i am not saying the things you ask.
"Billy, if you are right, are you saying that you would either move a  hi talent player who should play PG to SG of SF because the set demands it?"
no... thats not what i said at all. i thought i made it pretty clear that you have to play your team first, and your offense second.

"Or are you saying that you would lower the distro of the high talent PG to lesser talent SG or SF's or even big men because the set demands it?"
of course not... i pretty much said that exactly would kill you, in my post.

"My opinion is I optimize my lineup, rotations / fatigue in the depth chart &  my distro / shot selection based on the player ratings taken by themselves and versus each other, but not vs my own set."
thats fine if you want to include a bunch of factors and not others. you can say to people that game planning and offenses don't matter, but all this other stuff does matter. but really... does that sound like a reasonable opinion, knowing that a programmer had to put a great deal of effort into creating those in the first place? the simple reality of this game is there are 20 things you can do to make your team successful. if you do 15, you can be very successful. but that doesn't mean you aren't missing some.

the kind of experiments you mention here, demonstrate why you would miss these things.
"I have gone entire seasons where I will play all 8 of my teams -4 or +4, just to see the results"
"I have tried half my games in triangle with sg/sf/pf getting 90% plus of the touches, then have switched my PG and SG around, along with the touches"
I mean come on OR. What does any of that have to do with identifying finer parts of the game like game planning and offenses, where over compensating kills you?

the kind of experiments you should be trying, to find the subtlety of the offense, is like this. go an entire season with your worst 2 starters at 5 and 2 distro for half the season, and then 3 and 0 for the second half. you have to watch your team closer than a season level to notice the difference there. try it for a couple seasons if one is not enough for you.

"In my opinion (I am somewhat trained in statistics), the variation in the game (including the matchups you play, ratings, def type, def settings but most importantly the RNG factor) makes it impossible with a sample size of one unique matchup and a max of 35 potential data points per season, to really determine the set answer"
i totally agree about the sample size being a limiting factor here, 35 data points is not a lot - but its more than you think, if you make the most of them. remember that each game is a collection of very many data points. besides, i didn't just play my triangle/press team differently than my motion/press team for 1 season. it was a strategy build over a period of about a year or more, thats about 12 seasons at 35 games, or 420 games - per team. thats quite a bit. at the time, i spent a good 30 minutes per game analyzing half of those games (including before and after the game). it used to be very amusing to me, to put in that level of effort watching games at that level of detail. really, my d2 team was a little longer run, d1 a little less. you can say all you want about 14K games but i don't think playing 14K more games would do me one bit of good playing the way i play now - at a season level, not watching the fine details at all. what did help me is watching my d2 team that closely, for a year and a half, which is what it took for me to feel i mastered the triangle/press at d2. i only got about a year in d1 at motion/press, because i started later, but by the end, i had motion down, too. i can't deny you've played 4 times more games and won 70% more championships or whatever. but i don't think you can deny that at that time, i had those 2 sets figured out. 5 championships in 9 years at d1 - 5 in 7 at d2 - both at competitive times in competitive worlds. would that be possible if i played my two teams as differently as you seem to make out as ridiculous, and i was wrong? i don't even think its THAT much different, honestly. we had the debate then, about game planning, and i make the same claim i make now, if you are going to check in on your team 1-3 times a season, these things really don't matter, not compared to what you are missing playing at that level of detail in the first place. but i am assuming there are still coaches out there who put in more effort, a lot more than you or me does today, who have the ability to take advantage of these things.

billyg, I think that OR's point is that he's got a pretty huge sample size (compared to everyone else, at least) and has tried all different types of things ... and his conclusion from that is that offensive set doesn't really influence the outcome, but that a lot of the other things he mentioned does. I don't have his sample size, but this is the same conclusion that I've reached. (And I'd say that making tweaks based on perceptions for a given set has a good chance to harm you in other areas -- i.e. a tweak that you imagine might be good for motion or triangle would result in less than optimum strategy from a higher level perspective).

Nacho - That is poorly written.   I would emphasize that each team has a best way to be set up.  The jr / sr statement was meant to emphasize that each season, I look at the entire roster, and recalculate positions, distro, depth charts, fatigues, etc.  My returning starting SF might turn out to be a PF or a SG when I look at him relative to the rest of my team, based on what I am trying to accomplish .... be that getting my best PER guy playing SG or my fastest great rebounder playing PF or something all together different.

I posted something here about a month ago in response to a PG ?, about a team I have that I was contemplating playing my starting SF at PG the following season.  I only got 2 or 3 responses, both said they'd play him at SF.  The issue they missed was relative to the rest of my roster, this guy had the best PG skills by maybe 50%, while I had 3 or 4 players with decent sf skills.  This is getting off the distro to set question, but to go full circle, if I have a player whose best position is PG, and he also happens to be my best player, I will give him the most distro, irregardless of the set.

Billy - I think you are wrong, but you are entitled to your opinion of course.  I think the message you are sending younger coaches with your insistence in this debate is very harmful to them, kind of like insisting the type of water you use affects the quality of ice.  They really need to focus on stuff like passing and speed in PG's, BH and PER in SG's, Reb and SB in centers, etc .... AND making sure their best players get the most touches, as many as those players can tolerate.

Billy - I was not belittling your record nor worrying about mine, I was simply stating, I have had lots of chances to try stuff in this game.  By the way, +4 and -4 had very little affect on winning and losing, none actually, just shifted a whole bunch of team stats around.

Posted by oldresorter on 1/26/2012 1:17:00 PM (view original):
Billy - I was not belittling your record nor worrying about mine, I was simply stating, I have had lots of chances to try stuff in this game.  By the way, +4 and -4 had very little affect on winning and losing, none actually, just shifted a whole bunch of team stats around.

of course, playing it the whole season is not going to have much of an impact on wins - or else they would be unfairly balanced (or else your team is more suited to one than the other). its really playing +4 in some cases, -4 in others, and comparing THAT to straight +4 or straight -4 that means something. it means something about the effectiveness of your strategy.

Posted by oldresorter on 1/26/2012 1:06:00 PM (view original):
Billy - I think you are wrong, but you are entitled to your opinion of course.  I think the message you are sending younger coaches with your insistence in this debate is very harmful to them, kind of like insisting the type of water you use affects the quality of ice.  They really need to focus on stuff like passing and speed in PG's, BH and PER in SG's, Reb and SB in centers, etc .... AND making sure their best players get the most touches, as many as those players can tolerate.

the type of water does affect the quality of ice... not sure about your point there.

also, i believe, and minimally intended, to make it clear that you have to play your team first, and offense second. in fact, i think i said exactly that, repeatedly. i think your insistence that you should worry about the big things and not the little things is what is bad for all coaches, new or old regardless. of course, pay attention to the big things first! but that doesn't mean you should ignore the little things. i guarantee a coach who does everything you do equally well, and adds in little things like effective game planning, would out perform you. or if they add it tweaking for offenses. that doesn't mean you can't perform well without game planning or tweaking a team around an offensive set, as you have aptly demonstrated. but you seem to proclaim it is meaningless regardless, and that is just plain wrong.

Posted by rednation58 on 1/25/2012 12:35:00 AM (view original):
One last question. Do you take stamina into consideration when assigning distro? I have a few guys who have vastly superior conditioning to other players and was wondering if their distro is valued more highly seeing that they can play longer. For instance if I have a guy with 90 stamina and 12 distro, would he be equivalent to another player with 78 stamina and 15 distro? I was thinking if the first player ends up running with bench players he may dominate the ball based on who's on the court and their given distro.

whoops, missed this one.

do i take stamina into account when assigning distro? well, i mean, sort of indirectly. but it really comes down to fatigue. if i have a player i expect to really lean on for playing time, for def/reb purposes or whatever, i might cut his distro back 1 or 2 due to the fatigue problems, especially if his stamina is low.

however, in terms of everybody being fresh, and some playing more minutes than other - well, thats a tricky question, but mostly no. let me say a couple things.

first, generally speaking, if a player should take twice as many shots as another player while on the court, then he might actually take 1.5 times more or 2.5 times more or whatever based on their playing time. thats fine. so from that standpoint, no, not really, its not taken into account.

that does stop being true at some point, however. let me just walk you through a high level of how i set distro, and show you where that might factor in. so first i would run through my guards or bigs (whichever is the better offensive set, i do first). i set their distro based on totally team-inspecific judgements. i will go, this guy has 90 spd/per, this other guy has 80 spd/per with a little less iq, so ill give that first guy 12 distro and the second guy 8 or something. then i go on down the line, setting the rest of my guards, until i am satisfied with the relations between them all. you want to think like, my leader is at 12 distro, this other dude is 4 - if they are on the court, and taking 4 shots, do you really want the leader taking 3, and theh other guy taking 1? if thats reasonable, good. you have a lot of these comparisons to make - between every 2 players - keep comparing until you are happy with the lay out. then, set up your bigs.

once that is done - you have the right distro not taking into account your team. at this point, i make my team-specific adjustments. say i have 4 guards who can really score, 2 guards who can kind of score (5-7ppg or so), 2 bigs who can kind of score. good chance ill bump those bigs a couple distro each. this is inefficient, strictly speaking, from an abstract standpoint. but in reality, if my opponents see how little my bigs score, they could defend the perimeter, so my bigs are going to have an easier time scoring, relatively speaking, and i also don't want to push my guards to take all the shots which makes my opponent really heavily defend my guards, and is a problem. id rather look more neutral to draw more neutral response from my opponent.

this is not the only kind of adjustment i make. i may look at my lineup, depth chart, stamina etc... and extrapolate out who will play with whom. if i anticipate a lineup where i have like 3 guys at 0, i might bump one or two to a 1 or something. or if i anticipate a lineup where 3 0-1 guys are out there with a 4 and a 12, i might bump that 4 to a 5 to avoid a penalty on that 12 dude. i mean, this is a complex thing, and probably not really recommended for most people until you really get a hang of distro. but in reality when i was most successful, these are things i took into account every season (and now i dont, and i am drastically less successful - so you can decide if there is value in there or not). but stamina is a factor in how your lineups play out, so technically yes, it can factor in. more accurately, a lot of times you look at your 2nd lineup and say hey, i have a 1, 1, 1, 2, 4 setup there - i really want that 2 guy taking a lot more shots than the 1s, even though compared to the 8 on my starting lineup, i wanted him at a 4:1 ratio. if he is playing with the 1s more, that 1:3 ratio you want there may be more important than the 1:4 ratio compared to a starter... hopefully that makes some sense. i know im kind of rambling and its a bit hard to follow...

so anyway, heres the thing. your lineups don't play perfectly, like hockey. you dont just have your starting 5 together, then your backup 5 - this is what makes it so hard to measure and figure out some of this stuff. but a lot of times, you are right, you may have a first team player playing with 4 backups against 4-5 backups, and he dominates. but i don't really think you need to factor that in. you want to set it up as close to consistently as possible - so that for any 2 players on your team, if they were playing together, their distro correctly sets the ratio of shots you take. so a starter at 12, if playing with a backup at 4, he will take 3 times the shots - even if thats your starting and backup sg, and they will rarely play together. i just find that approach to be very effective.

in terms of what you are saying, 90 sta, 12 distro, is he equivalent to 78 sta, 15 disto - not really sure what you mean by equivalent. but assuming you mean by shots, i mean yeah, that may result in them being equal in # of shots. but you should not calibrate by # of shots or PPG. and the game does not penalize a player for the amount of shots or points he gets in a game. its about how many shots he takes while on the floor, relative to the rest of the team. if a guy plays 20m at 15 ppg, he is likely as efficient as if he could play 40m at 30ppg, with the same fatigue level. however, there is a built in penalty, if you shoot over 50% of shots while on the floor, you start to suffer. that is an explicit penalty. but there are further benefits of having a more balanced distro than that. but those benefits, like the penalty, all have to do with the ratio of shots you are taking while on the floor with other players.

so, you might say, i have a guy who is my star, he might have 14 distro, and he might play with my other starters at 12, 10, 8, 6 distro. thats 50 total, he would be taking 28% of shots. but, he might also play with backups, at 4, 2, 1, 0 distro - thats 21 total, and hed take 67% of shots. the 50% penalty comes in over the whole game, based on actual results, not based on what should theoretically be the ratio at any point in time. however, the way defenses and offenses interact, you will have a loss of efficiency when a player should be taking 67% of shots. BUT --- that might be fine in this case. like i said before, you might be costing your best guy some efficiency. but if hes still way better than any other option you have, that might be the way to go.

so, i think the answer you are looking for is really no. for the most part, the best you can do IMO is to compare your players and your lineups and make sure you like the ratio of theoretical shots being taken. don't worry so much about ppg and stamina and that kind of stuff. you can even have a guy, a designated offensive player on the backup line (which can be immensely effective) - but even in that case, you usually don't want to bump his distro out of whack - if hes as good as your 2nd scorer on the starting lineup, who has 10 distro, he should probably have 10 distro, too. that way if they are on the court together, they are working in balance to each other. i used to make the mistake of going, this dude is my star backup scorer, hes not scoring enough, and id jack him up to the highest on my team - but that really didn't work nearly as well as leaving him in balance with the rest of the team.

Billy - you seem a little agitated - this seems to be an emotional issue for you - I did not mean to hurt your feelings

Thanks Billy, I will try this out this season and see what happens. I appreciate all the time an input and explicit detail. We need more coaches here like you who don't mind sharing their knowledge to this degree!! thanks again!