Posted by poncho0091 on 5/2/2014 9:55:00 PM (view original):
Zbrent - I've played my zone the same way since I started using it. Who are the primary scorers determines if I play 3-2 or 2-3.
Billyg - So what you're saying is the pg/sg/sf are all the same % of defensive contribution in 3-2 and c/pf/sf in 2-3. This raises further questions though.
1. As someone else asked is the defense weakened by a weaker defender even though there are 3 of them? (ex def = pg-70, sg-70, sf-55. Is this 3-2 combination stronger because there are 3 of them, or weaker because the 3rd guy is not as good?). Ignoring the effect of ath and spd.
I think the best way to think of it is this: Is the defense totals averaged, or is the defensive total the sum of its parts? (Avg: 65 vs sum total of 195)
2. Is their a weight added to the per def in 3-2 and post def in 2-3. Ex. again we can look at this by sum so 2 defenders are sum total less than 3 making the 3 stronger.
Or do we go by the average and then add some sort of multiplier. For example in a 3-2, per def avg is multiplied by say 1.05 while the post defense s multiplied by .95, so the avg of the 3 defenders above would be the 65X1.05 = 68.25 of permiter defense.
In all honesty, my mind if blown by the SF/PF only pairing in the 2-3 and I'm a little confused how this works. Are they rated as one player and the C is his own player.
3. A side question from what you asked. is a 3-2 specifically geared for 3 point defense only, or is it geared for perimeter player defense? So like zbrent said, If my opponent has guards as his top 4 scorers, but they don't shoot many 3's or are primarily slashers, should I being playing a 3-2 (effectively putting more bodies on the guards) or should I play a 2-3 (taking away the paint, but players aren't really on the guy unless he comes inside). What if they are not 3 pt shooters, but they are not slashers either? It's difficult because we can't actually see what is happening on the court to make the proper adjustments.
tough questions... now that i play zone on teams i care about, ill be researching this stuff myself (i actually am researching stuff to a smaller extent again).
for #1/#2, they are averaged together, so generally speaking, that sf is almost always going to bring down your average in the 3-2. however, im sure you get a bonus on per defense for having all 3 guys. i doubt its as small as 1.05, but its not clear exactly what the situation is. its got to be enough that good sf, yet a guy who couldn't play guard, still helps, right? one thing im wondering about is, are these averages for defense only, or also for defensive rebounds?
anyway, #3 is a tough one. one of the very few questions i asked myself back in my prime, that i never answered, is if a + or - defense helped against guard scoring that wasn't lp based (which was all guard scoring back then). its still not clear if there are different kinds of 2pt shots, and i wish i could see my previous posts on the subject, because i used to have a better guess than i have now - and it wasn't even that long ago. but really, i have no idea about the jumper thing. its one of the central questions i was never able to answer, even in my prime. consistently, if i tried to defense non 3 pt guards with a + or -, it didn't seem to work. maybe the answer is the mid range jumpers are unaffected? that would seem a little crazy though. so as far as what the zone does for mid range jumpers, either in the 3-2 in your question, or in the 2-3 for the sf/pf in TJ's question, i have no fricken idea. i never figured it out for press in my prime, and i have not studied zone one tenth as much as press, so really, i have no clue. if anyone has a clue, i'd love to hear about it.
my thoughts are, this info from seble is ground breaking - the c averaged alone thing is huge, the using the exact same metric for the sf in the 3-2 as the pg/sg is big, too. im sure some assumed it worked that way but using the exact same formula for players computed in groups, i definitely didn't take that for granted. to me, this is a lot of new information (or really a small amount of information with a great deal of ramifications), and its going to take us all a while to digest and try to adapt. i think if we mull this over for a week or so, and come up with some focused additional questions, seble might answer some more. we collectively have a pretty good idea how man and press work, although there are obviously uncertainties, but i think zone is the least understood, and if we can boil down all the uncertainty to 1 or 2 key questions, maybe we can get a bit more insight before we all set out to figure out what the heck this all means for us, and how we build and play our zone teams. man i really wish i wasn't the CT finals on this one team ;)