Posted by mduncanhogs on 2/11/2014 5:29:00 PM (view original):
Posted by gillispie1 on 2/11/2014 5:23:00 PM (view original):
im not sure how i feel about this comment about not being able to have scoring PGs in the triangle offense. in the old engine, i definitely would disagree, but there might be something funny going on there with the PG now. it might be that there is some consideration where the scorer is affected by their own ratings and the ratings of the rest of the team - by excluding the PG from the "rest of the team", there might be some negative benefit. i very much doubt this effect, if it exists at all, is limited to triangle. you can see the assist numbers vary wildly for the PG based on how much he scores, but generally assist numbers are useless. i don't know why, but i feel if i have a strong bh/pass SG, i have never had trouble with my PG scoring. however, if your PG is the only guy who can run the offense, there might be something there. *might*. i've wondered about it before, but never reached a conclusion, it seemed kind of unlikely on one hand, that such a thing would exist, but on the other hand i could also see the shooter, in the new engine, getting open to some degree based on the skills of his team mates. im not sure why this would hurt the team as a whole, though, i don't know that i've ever seen anything there... the concerns i had were always with the PG himself. but, im really not sure, its an interesting topic, anyway.
You might be onto something here. I think in general the triangle works much, much better if you have one primary scoring option outside and one primary scoring option in the post. When I move my stud scorer to PG to face a weak M2M PG defender, I usually also slide a decent scoring option into the SG spot. Maybe what I need to be doing in these situations is putting a pass-first guard into the SG slot to see if that impacts the outcome any. I think there is definitely something going on in the engine with how player abilities impact everyone on the floor. There seems to very much be a symbiotic relationship among the 5 players on the floor in this engine. seble has told us that TEAM rebounding ability impacts who gets a rebound in addition to individual matchups, so perhaps the same holds true when looking at passing and the ability of an offense to be efficient?
i would say without question the same holds of passing, well, really in the sense of how a team gets team mates better or worse looks, which plays out in fg%. i think this is something we "know" not think because seble confirmed it *and* the high end coaching community recognizes it. i think it takes both to know anything, but here, i think we have both. now from seble we have good reason to believe the same sort of thing plays into turnovers.
i think there is something similar in play with offense and defense comparisons. i don't think the underlying mechanism is the same, where some team scoring ability is paired against some team defense ability (just talking man to man - clearly in press and zone, there is team defense). but even against man defense, i definitely lean towards believing its not as simple as one on one - even outside of the openness of the looks from team mates. i often believe there is some sort of defensive prioritization, where a team guards certain players at higher priority than others. i think this explains various effects. players who aren't that good are generally efficient at lower distribution. one could say, its just the lower distribution, but if your guys at the top are not very good, you don't see this same effect, at least in my experience. also, the "senior slump", which isn't talked about much today, but was a hugely discussed topic back in the day - i think this is because as a junior, the guy (typically a guard) is ranked as a lower threat, and the defense is more focused on other guys. as a senior, without much increase in talent, the guy has moved up the priority scale, and now hes going to perform worse. i definitely think randomness plays into it but i don't think its enough to explain it. these reasons are both tough ones to swallow, IMO, because there are clearly other effects that could explain them - lower distro in and of itself could explain low distro guys being more efficient than expected - randomness could explain a decent % of juniors performing lower as seniors. but its just a feeling i have, over time.
also, one other thing that makes me believe this is, sometimes really good players - especially with gaudy lp and per numbers - have just struggled to the point i struggled to blame it on an outlier. recently, coaching with jjwarden @ ohio state, we had this juco senior, so like b+/a- iq, but he was like 90s ath, 70s speed, with like 90 lp and per, and solid bh, and he basically sucked. in my entire career, i've only coached a few really gaudy lp/per players (i don't covet them like some people), i mean both, not just one - and they have always disappointed me. not because they were great and i wanted exceptional - because they straight up played worse than i'd expect if you took away a substantial portion of the lp or per (depending on which i valued less). its too many times now for me not to be seeking another explanation - and one of these times the guy wasn't even my leading scorer, he was one of 5 on one of my all time great d2 championship teams, and i just wanted to pull my hair out, in a time when very little on my best teams surprised me, i could not figure this guy out. he (and the team as a whole) threw me off so bad i eventually set all my distro to 0 and ran uptempo in the final 4 and championship game. i've never done anything like that, ever, its way out of character. it took a long time before i thought i had something that could explain that team - its a combo of diminishing returns of offensive abilities (i had 5 really strong offensive starers, a total waste), and also, i believe that sf in particular was guarded at priority and it just couldn't be made up for. also i think there are various equations for offense, and in those, lp and per both may factor in, but i don't think in any situation, both factor in heavily - which really limits the ability for gaudy lp and per to come through. still, it makes no sense those guys would actually be worse than you'd expect with 50 less lp or 50 less per, unless the defense is prioritizing them. or, really bad luck?
along similar lines, i have seen lots of not-too-impressive guys perform way too efficiently, even factoring in SOS, and i attribute this largely to the other team not considering them a threat. without this defensive prioritization, the only thing that would explain the "reality", i call it that, that changing distro by performance actually yields good results, would be not understanding how to set distro or not understanding what makes players good. frankly, i buy that for lots of coaches, but i think many of us know enough about what makes players good, to be able to set distro better off ratings, than off performance. but consistently i find that fighting the performance to go with what intuitively makes sense off ratings, yields bad results. i think this can only be explained by something situational, that is not intuitive, that we cannot really predict. at least, that's always been my theory. but lately, i've felt more and more the most likely culprit is defensive prioritization.
2/11/2014 6:55 PM (edited)