What are your thoughts on allocating defensive resources towards guarding the players taking the most shots, vs. guarding the players scoring most efficiently?  Obviously you're not going to try hard to cover a guy who has 100% FG% if he is only 1/1 on the season, but let's say you have two players:  

Player 1: 15 ppg, 45% shooting
Player 2: 10 ppg, 50% shooting

Let's say these are all 2-point shots for simplicity.  Ignoring ratings, IQs, matchups, positions, etc., who do you put your best defender on?  

If you're playing man to man, I would think about what he plans to do. E.g. if he is an experienced coach and looks at your lineup, will he adjust his lineup to take advantage of certain matchups? If so, think about where he's going to line guys up and put your best defender on the one he is going to use to take advantage of you.

If he's not very good and never changes his lineup to take advantage, then I would put your best defender on the player with the most distro. That's because even if his shooting% is less I imagine the reason why he gets more distro is because of athleticism - if you have a more athletic, better defender most likely this guy gets to the line much less...

I would absolutely put the better defender on the guy who takes more shots.  Assuming their shooting percentages are in the same vicinity - the 5% difference in your example more than qualifies - the difference in their expectation values for shots taken against 2 different defenders should be essentially the same.  In other words, maybe player #1 is a 46% shooter against the lesser defender, 41% against the better defender.  Player #2 is 52% and 47%.  In either case, you're basically gaining about the same advantage PER SHOT (in this example 5%) by putting your better defender on the guy.  5% of more shots is going to be a bigger difference, so you put the better defender on whoever you expect to take the most shots.

I'm with dahs, for the simply fact that the guy who takes more shots has the ability to do more damage. 

Posted by dahsdebater on 7/20/2012 2:35:00 PM (view original):
I would absolutely put the better defender on the guy who takes more shots.  Assuming their shooting percentages are in the same vicinity - the 5% difference in your example more than qualifies - the difference in their expectation values for shots taken against 2 different defenders should be essentially the same.  In other words, maybe player #1 is a 46% shooter against the lesser defender, 41% against the better defender.  Player #2 is 52% and 47%.  In either case, you're basically gaining about the same advantage PER SHOT (in this example 5%) by putting your better defender on the guy.  5% of more shots is going to be a bigger difference, so you put the better defender on whoever you expect to take the most shots.

exactly what I was saying, but it is more in depth than this because if the coach is a good coach and varies his roster than the OP needs to adjust his lineup so that the matchups are correct

You will find as you continue to play this game that most of the best coaches have enough confidence in their rosters that they do little or no shuffling of the roster based on matchups and opponents.  Maybe occasionally against an elite defender, but for the most part saying that a "good coach ... varies his roster" is a gross mischaracterization of how people play this game, particularly during the regular season.

dahs, what I'm saying is that the OP's question is who to stick his best defender on. If he is playing man to man, then he must try to find out the tendencies of the other coach. I understand what you're saying to my point, which is that not every good coach (and according to you a very small % of good coaches) vary their lineups. What I am saying is that the OP's question is more in-depth than "you need to stick your best defender on the guy with the highest distribution." The reason is because if you don't know the coach's tendencies for lineup variation, then how do you know where to stick your best defender? It does you no good to line up your best defender at the "2" spot to guard the higher distro guy if he is actually going to be playing at the 3.

Posted by bdpoor on 7/20/2012 6:04:00 PM (view original):
dahs, what I'm saying is that the OP's question is who to stick his best defender on. If he is playing man to man, then he must try to find out the tendencies of the other coach. I understand what you're saying to my point, which is that not every good coach (and according to you a very small % of good coaches) vary their lineups. What I am saying is that the OP's question is more in-depth than "you need to stick your best defender on the guy with the highest distribution." The reason is because if you don't know the coach's tendencies for lineup variation, then how do you know where to stick your best defender? It does you no good to line up your best defender at the "2" spot to guard the higher distro guy if he is actually going to be playing at the 3.

he knows what you are saying, just saying it normally doesn't matter. i do vary my lineups, but generally not until the post season, and most coaches don't do it at all. i do agree with what you are saying, its just an edge case.

Posted by dahsdebater on 7/20/2012 4:57:00 PM (view original):
You will find as you continue to play this game that most of the best coaches have enough confidence in their rosters that they do little or no shuffling of the roster based on matchups and opponents.  Maybe occasionally against an elite defender, but for the most part saying that a "good coach ... varies his roster" is a gross mischaracterization of how people play this game, particularly during the regular season.

confidence or arrogance? or laziness? any coach who never varies their lineup is giving up something. some teams, you really shouldn't change a thing, but more often you should. i don't really think most coaches look at their opponent, and go well i see something i could exploit but im so confident in my team, im not going to do it. i would wager its more of a not worth the effort thing to most people, not a confidence thing. like i said, some teams you shouldn't change, so confidence applies there... but no coach ONLY has those kind of teams, and most coaches have very few, if any, of those kinds of teams.

Posted by gillispie1 on 7/20/2012 7:01:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 7/20/2012 4:57:00 PM (view original):
You will find as you continue to play this game that most of the best coaches have enough confidence in their rosters that they do little or no shuffling of the roster based on matchups and opponents.  Maybe occasionally against an elite defender, but for the most part saying that a "good coach ... varies his roster" is a gross mischaracterization of how people play this game, particularly during the regular season.

confidence or arrogance? or laziness? any coach who never varies their lineup is giving up something. some teams, you really shouldn't change a thing, but more often you should. i don't really think most coaches look at their opponent, and go well i see something i could exploit but im so confident in my team, im not going to do it. i would wager its more of a not worth the effort thing to most people, not a confidence thing. like i said, some teams you shouldn't change, so confidence applies there... but no coach ONLY has those kind of teams, and most coaches have very few, if any, of those kinds of teams.

Gotta agree with Gill here.  I absolutely LOVE to play those "best coaches who do little or no shuffling of the roster".  They become so predictable that they are easy to gameplan against.  Now not all of those games end up as wins, obviously, but those coaches are much, much easier to play than someone who tinkers with their roster and stays somewhat unpredictable.  I tend to think that it's mostly laziness, with a shot of confidence, and a dash of arrogance.

I'll admit, there are instances where I'll leave everything "as is" for several games at a time, but that's almost always because real life has reared it's ugly head and I didn't have the time to worry about my teams. 

yeah, thats a huge point that is often overlooked. even if 95% of coaches dont change lineups, 99% of coaches don't take the time to find the method to the madness of those who DO tinker. OR once said, when he encounters those coaches, he just assumes they are shooting themselves in the foot for him by changing too much, and so he just plays his base setup. well, whether for that reason or another, my experience is the vast majority of coaches do the same thing - just play what they know. its great when you can set your team up ideally to another guy's setup, and he makes no effort to counter yours, and that is almost always the case for those of us who do take the time to tinker with depth charts and the like :)

its definitely not an automatic win like emy said, but if you can pick up a couple points a game, then in the long run, over elimination series (like the NT), you probably wind up with double the championships. 

Thanks for the input, guys.  I had a successful defense last year (Heidelberg had lowest opponent FG% in Naismith) based mostly on having good defenders, but also I think because I rotated my players consistently to find the right matchups.  Unfortunately I have two walk-ons this year so I have fewer options.  Obviously I have to think about impact on BH, REB, etc. of the players playing in a new position, but if you have a low DEF scorer, why wouldn't you move him every game to hide his weakness and exploit his scoring ability?  

From what I've read above, it seems like it probably comes down to how much distro is affected by matchups.  If it isn't affected that much then defending the volume scorers probably makes the most sense, since as Willie Sutton said, "That's where the money is".  But if a mediocre FG% with high distro is taking many fewer shots as a result of having a good defender on him, then some of those shots are being taken by potentially better FG% players.  So I could see it either way depending on the impact of defender (M2M) on actual vs. planned distro.  I'll look for something in the forums about this.  Maybe I'll run my own calculations.