3pt Shooting - Motion Offense Topic

In your experience, how do these four factors play into 3pt shooting ability, specifically within the motion offense:

PER/SPD/BH/ATH

I understand that they all play a factor (maybe not ATH?), but what do you think has the most weight. I have a guard who I was hoping would be high in spd, but will only reach mid 70s. His BH will reach 98-100 and his Per will reach 92-93  The same goes for a SF I have, who is low in Spd, but is still blue in BH and will reach 99-100 in per (In third year, was inel first year).

What I want to be able to do is set practice plans appropriately, knowing where these players may end up as shooters and getting an idea if I should divert to specific skills (or defense). 

Thanks in advance

 
10/15/2013 2:57 PM (edited)
I think Perimeter BY FAR has the most weight.   I have never had a player be an efficient 3 point shooter without a good PER score.   I think speed is 2nd, BH is 3rd and ATH is 4th, although I don't think it has a significant influence.
10/15/2013 3:19 PM
keep in mind, you shoot as part of a team - a three point shooter benefits from playing with a couple of guys who can pass the ball, at least one guy who can score down low and preferably a solid second option for the outside shot.
10/15/2013 4:27 PM
Does the 3pt shoot directly benefit from the high LP guy(s) or is it just a matter of the opposing coach not being able to play + D?
10/15/2013 4:32 PM
No direct effect, but it affects game plan settings and also automatic adjustments.
10/15/2013 4:47 PM
Per is the biggest factor; then Ath; then TEAM passing; BH has little to no impact; Speed has a marginal impact (being somewhat fast helps, but don't need to be a speedster).  I've had a number of outstanding 3pt shooters across worlds.  One of the best was a D3 "Sg" I played mostly at SF with some SG mixed in.   Had athleticism in the 80s, speed in the 50, per around 90, BH about 25-30, and passing at over 60.  The team was a good passing team which helped.  He shot a lot (set then school records in points, 3pa, 3pm) and shot around 45% for a career at 3pt.  

From what I understand, the engine looks to Per, then athleticism determines ability to get spacing for a shot, and team passing determine ability to create open looks for teammates.  BH is not much of a factor as that is used more for LP on guards and turnovers, not spacing for 3pt. 
10/15/2013 5:08 PM
So since it's team passing, does it help if the good shooter is also the team's best passer? Intuitively that doesn't make sense, but may be the way it acts in the engine...
10/15/2013 5:12 PM
Offensive IQ is a factor as well I believe.
10/15/2013 10:31 PM
Posted by aperi on 10/15/2013 5:12:00 PM (view original):
So since it's team passing, does it help if the good shooter is also the team's best passer? Intuitively that doesn't make sense, but may be the way it acts in the engine...
I don't know for certain, but don't believe that the the given shooter on any play is factored into team passing.  I think the engine just looks at the other 4 players on the court at that time.  Also, I believe that different players are weighted differently and its not simply an average of the players on the floor.  I know there is different weight for RB by position (somewhat reduced in an update a while back) so I presume they weight other characteristics by position as well.
10/16/2013 11:09 AM
the 3 point shooting rating trilogy has ALWAYS been spd/per/bh. nothing in the new engine has changed that. of course iq and stamina matter (for fatigue level), and presumably ath plays a small part, although i wouldnt be that surprised if it didnt. its almost certainly a distant fourth, at best. ft% matters too, but it matters least of all for non-scorers and for heavy 3 point scorers, so i usually am not very worried about ft% in my pure 3 point scorers.

the offenses vary in the ways you can build successful 3 point shooters. of course, they are all 95% the same, but there are subtle differences. for example, in flex you can focus on spd/per and omit bh with greater success than you can in motion. in motion you can seemingly build as effective 3 point shooters, even in high d1, with slightly lower per ratings, if your spd/bh are great. ive had guys in the 80s every bit as good as guys in the 90s, as long as their spd/per are up to par.

the way shooting works, it seems to me, in a simplified view, is that you basically have a 2 step process. the first establishes how open you are - which is really where spd/bh come into play (as well, i would assume, as team passing). the second is where you take the shot, and that is primarily per based.

you can see evidence for this based on the way various players perform against different levels of opponents. when you look at teams with weak SOS, you often see these high per, lower spd/bh guards doing quite well. don't be fooled - those players will suffer mightily against strong defenses. when you look at those same players on great teams, they really dont get to shoot much at all, because frankly, they suck. on the other hand, guys with high spd/bh and solid per can score efficiently against quality opponents, albeit in a supporting scorer role, maybe a 10ppg level, not your #1 guy. however, these guys dont get that much better against crappy competition, like your lofty per players will. 

the level of play you are at, and the quality of defenses you face, absolutely effects the extent to which different ratings help your guys score. i believe this is why there has always been a substantial amount of disagreement among the community as to the importance of lp and per for "normal" bigs and guards. the reality is you can lean on lp and per heavily, sacrificing other ratings, and get away with it, when you play shittier teams - but try to compete in high d1 like that, and you will get crushed. you simply are going to be decently open anyway, when you play against poor defense - but against the good teams, you have to really create some separation to get any kind of a decent shot off - your per is largely irrelevant if you can't get good looks.

to try to concisely state this so coaches can take something away from this - if you are in a rebuilding mode, not competing at a very high level (even up to a solid 2nd round NT team in d2/d3 may qualify here), then its per by a substantial margin that is most important, followed by spd/bh. but if you are trying to compete at a high level, you are going to need quality spd/bh to get good enough looks to take advantage of your players' per. per is still the single most important rating for 3 point shooting, that is always the case. however, in high end play, if a guy doesnt have strong spd/bh, his high per is largely wasted, and you cannot consider this guy an offensive leader for your team. you can sometimes redeem these kinds of players by bringing them off the bench. the point i guess im making at high level play is, if you want a guy to be a high end scorer on your team, hes got to be strong in all 3 (of course exceptional in 2 allows subpar ratings in one of the others, but you know what i mean).

also keep in mind great spd/bh players with poor/mediocre per can still be valuable scorers - your mid tier type scorer, 6-10ppg, where efficiency, not quantity, is key. meanwhile, great per players with poor/mediocre spd/bh are more or less useless, at high level play. those guys can still be pretty useful in lower end play, especially off the bench.
10/16/2013 12:20 PM
Posted by dukenilnil on 10/16/2013 11:09:00 AM (view original):
Posted by aperi on 10/15/2013 5:12:00 PM (view original):
So since it's team passing, does it help if the good shooter is also the team's best passer? Intuitively that doesn't make sense, but may be the way it acts in the engine...
I don't know for certain, but don't believe that the the given shooter on any play is factored into team passing.  I think the engine just looks at the other 4 players on the court at that time.  Also, I believe that different players are weighted differently and its not simply an average of the players on the floor.  I know there is different weight for RB by position (somewhat reduced in an update a while back) so I presume they weight other characteristics by position as well.
i agree with the weighting part, but im skeptical about the computing passing based on everyone but the scorer part. it seems to me high passing pgs with less than stellar passing sgs would suffer to a noticeable degree, from themselves not being counted. i think this would result in a substantial difference in the effectiveness of PG based scoring and SG based scoring, and i just dont see it. 

further, consider that this passing affecting team mates wasn't even part of the game until a few years back. when seble added it, he most likely went for something simple with some solid conceptual support. seems to me the easy way is to compute the team's "passing ability" and to simply include it in one or both steps of the scoring process. so on the difficulty front, im guessing its the easy option - its the whole team. and besides, a great passing team often gets good looks not just off the first pass, but off the second or third. a great passing PG might pass to another guy who passes to another guy, and then back to the PG - or, directly back to the PG. conceptually i don't think its correct to totally exclude a player from the passing ability of the team, when you look at how open he gets. i REALLY doubt seble would go giving a guy partial weight or something, i would think it has to at least be one way or the other, and to me, that makes it even more likely seble just went the easy route. if the complicated route isn't even clearly the better way to go, whats the point?

thinking one step ahead... for anyone thinking, "isnt it just as easy to compute team passing on 4 players as it is 5"? the answer to me, seems to be absolutely not. its not just like you say, compute on these 4 guys instead of the 5. if they all weighted equally, the maybe you could do that fairly easily. but with different positions weighted differently, now any time you exclude someone, you have to do some non trivial balancing. whats the scale? how good you can be at passing as a team without factoring in a pg, is probably not calculated just like how good you can be not factoring in a C. so you'd have to have a system for dealing with the different cases, and as this is a new small addition, i really doubt it goes into that kind of depth and detail. to me, its very, very likely that seble simply computes the "passing ability" for each of the 5 players, combines those 5 values with coefficients (to weight different positions differently), and then normalizes that value down to an appropriate range of values, where it gets factored into shooting equations. thats already complicated enough for seble to do, id be genuinely shocked if he went much further than that.
10/16/2013 12:34 PM
Posted by dukenilnil on 10/15/2013 5:08:00 PM (view original):
Per is the biggest factor; then Ath; then TEAM passing; BH has little to no impact; Speed has a marginal impact (being somewhat fast helps, but don't need to be a speedster).  I've had a number of outstanding 3pt shooters across worlds.  One of the best was a D3 "Sg" I played mostly at SF with some SG mixed in.   Had athleticism in the 80s, speed in the 50, per around 90, BH about 25-30, and passing at over 60.  The team was a good passing team which helped.  He shot a lot (set then school records in points, 3pa, 3pm) and shot around 45% for a career at 3pt.  

From what I understand, the engine looks to Per, then athleticism determines ability to get spacing for a shot, and team passing determine ability to create open looks for teammates.  BH is not much of a factor as that is used more for LP on guards and turnovers, not spacing for 3pt. 
I agree with billyg here. When I read your post and you said that Athleticism determines ability to get spacing, I thought to myself, that sounds exactly like what I read about speed, so it seemed you may have it backwards, but maybe I'm wrong.

Either way, I had a player who was one of my best 3 shooters and he shot almost exclusively 3 pointers (over 70% of his shots). My guy was also a DIII guard, and he was in the 90's in spd, bh, and pass, but his ath was only about 12.

http://www.wisjournal.com/hd/PlayerHistory/Default.aspx?pid=2331803



10/16/2013 11:08 PM
really good discussion here, thanks

especially interested in gillispie's point about differences in behavior against different opponents.  I had not adequately recognized the sort of discontinuous effects of the opponent.  What do I mean?  IF a guy does great against weak teams, we know he will do less well against better teams - obvious.  BUT, it isnt just that he will be say 90% as good.  He may shift in a sort of discontinuous way from being good to not worth much at all.  

We see some of this when you compare performance in nonconf v conf play, for example.  I need to think more about that, thanks
10/17/2013 6:11 AM
mets, for what its worth, i think its well worth the time to think on it some more. one of the hardest things in this game, one of the things that holds top teams back more than anything, is that its so hard to decide what the best way to play is against a great team, when most of the season, you simply aren't playing great teams. that, coupled with the fear to change what is working, really holds back top teams. for top teams in the country, all that matters is how well they play against other top teams, hopefully deep in the NT :) but i feel like people get mislead by looking at what worked against significantly inferior teams. nobody knows the engine well enough to just look at some players and know what they will do, or the best way to play them - we all lean on how the players and the team is performing, coupled with our underlying understanding of how things work. but its hard, when what happened is a poor indication of what will happen in the big games!

there are a lot of aspects to that, some people know like uptempo may make sense against a low end NT team but not against a high one, etc... but a big aspect is the scoring effectiveness of your players. its definitely not the case that if player A is slightly more effective than player B in the regular season, the same would hold true in a 100 simulations against the really good team you are about to play (not even taking into account their style of defensive, strength of individual defensive players, etc). i think most coaches fail to take that into account, but ive found its extremely beneficial to do so!
10/18/2013 4:28 PM
3pt Shooting - Motion Offense Topic

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