uptempo and slowdown are very different. just because uptempo makes something worse than normal, doesn't mean slowdown makes it better (in fact, that is rarely the case). ANY artificial change to the normal style of offense for the benefit of an impact on the clock is going to reduce the amount of time you are playing your best offense - and thus should reduce your half court efficiency. in practice, slowdown doesn't seem to have much impact there, at least not as much as normal.

i might not be the guy to ask, because my answer is basically always the same - you are better off running normal than uptempo. in your case, id go normal, not uptempo or slowdown.

now, the one thing i probably should have said in my last post is, my teams were always weaker on reb (i mean, my bigs were great - but i had 3 guards, almost always), at least relatively speaking. i think uptempo works better if you have a lot of rebounding than if you don't, for some reason. and playing uptempo doesn't really impact your opponent's depth - both based on my experience and seble's own claims. but it does affect your own. your ability to take that hit is much better than the OPs. so uptempo for you is way better than his. i would probably not say beyond shadow of a doubt, you should never ever run uptempo, like i would for his team. but still, i would probably run normal. then again, ive never had a team with seniors all of whom were big men :)

i also theorize that having a per oriented team might be less well suited for uptempo than a lp oriented team, but haven't been able to truly verify that (due to never having a lp oriented team in the time period in which i studied these kinds of things). seems like with a per shot, you want to make sure your whole team is there before you shoot, and you want to work for the open shot. With shots close to the basket, there is much less of a need for your whole team to be there, and also, you generally get a bigger boost to your shooting % by being poorly defended. Much easier to make a weakly contested layup than a weakly contested jumper. Also, in a way, its a lesser penalty to rush a close shot than a long shot. Im not sure how much of that is part of HD's sim engine, but I do have some anecdotal evidence for part.

So, in your case, I'd take the safe route - try it both ways (uptempo and normal), and see how it goes. Make sure to compare games against high quality competition, those are really the only that matter. In the end, my money would still be on normal being better, but you really do have an unusual situation.

Posted by coach_billyg on 2/6/2012 4:09:00 PM (view original):
uptempo and slowdown are very different. just because uptempo makes something worse than normal, doesn't mean slowdown makes it better (in fact, that is rarely the case). ANY artificial change to the normal style of offense for the benefit of an impact on the clock is going to reduce the amount of time you are playing your best offense - and thus should reduce your half court efficiency. in practice, slowdown doesn't seem to have much impact there, at least not as much as normal.

i might not be the guy to ask, because my answer is basically always the same - you are better off running normal than uptempo. in your case, id go normal, not uptempo or slowdown.

now, the one thing i probably should have said in my last post is, my teams were always weaker on reb (i mean, my bigs were great - but i had 3 guards, almost always), at least relatively speaking. i think uptempo works better if you have a lot of rebounding than if you don't, for some reason. and playing uptempo doesn't really impact your opponent's depth - both based on my experience and seble's own claims. but it does affect your own. your ability to take that hit is much better than the OPs. so uptempo for you is way better than his. i would probably not say beyond shadow of a doubt, you should never ever run uptempo, like i would for his team. but still, i would probably run normal. then again, ive never had a team with seniors all of whom were big men :)

i also theorize that having a per oriented team might be less well suited for uptempo than a lp oriented team, but haven't been able to truly verify that (due to never having a lp oriented team in the time period in which i studied these kinds of things). seems like with a per shot, you want to make sure your whole team is there before you shoot, and you want to work for the open shot. With shots close to the basket, there is much less of a need for your whole team to be there, and also, you generally get a bigger boost to your shooting % by being poorly defended. Much easier to make a weakly contested layup than a weakly contested jumper. Also, in a way, its a lesser penalty to rush a close shot than a long shot. Im not sure how much of that is part of HD's sim engine, but I do have some anecdotal evidence for part.

So, in your case, I'd take the safe route - try it both ways (uptempo and normal), and see how it goes. Make sure to compare games against high quality competition, those are really the only that matter. In the end, my money would still be on normal being better, but you really do have an unusual situation.

Definitely unusual.  First time I have had this kind of frontcourt depth.   Kind of feeling my way through it because this team is so different in kind from my normal teams.