What advantage does speed offer front court players? Does it help them do anything better?

I was also thinking that. Would a PF with 60 Shot blocking, 71 speed, and 15 defense be an OK defender?  Would he be able to draw fouls better on offense?

Speed generally helps with both offense and defense, offense more so than defense.  Some people think it helps with rebounding, but I've seen very little evidence of that personally.  With respect to m's question, short answer, no, long answer, if he has exceptional athleticism he might be able to approach the below average level, but certainly not average.

Ok take that same player and give him 50 def?

He'd be a good defender at D3, depending on his ATH.

The way I see it, speed is a luxury for big men. Sure, I'd love to have it, but I wouldn't sacrifice ATH, REB, DEF, or LP for a little extra speed.

I just played a PF with that speed and he drew quite a bit of fouls on my 44 speed PF

I would guess Lowpost rating has just as much to do with drawing fouls as a superior ATH/SPD rating does for a big man.

spd is not very important for big men. neither on offense nor defense. a big with poor ath, solid spd, and good lp is still usually a crappy offensive player (like 30 ath, 55 spd, 90 lp in d2).

In the player guide it says speed causes turnovers and helps with SB.

I disagree with billyg to an extent. A big with 80ath/50sp will be noticeably better than a big with 80ath/15sp all other things being equal. In billy's example it's true, the speed isn't enough to make up for the ath, because realistically a big won't have enough space to work to take advantage of the speed edge if the other bigs are much more athletic than him.

I always felt like when I have a pressing team at D3, I want my PF to be at least at 30 Speed. I also remember early on in my coaching career, I had a C in D3 that was really slow, and also not that Athletic, but had 99 Reb. He would still only get 7-8 rebounds a game I believe.My thinking is it would help him get to the ball faster for a rebound.

I think ATH has more to do with rebounding than any other secondary category. I've had players with 90 ATH and 70 RB that do really well on the boards definitely out rebounding or at least equaling the efforts of some 90 RB 50 ATH guys. I've also seen some crazy bugs with single digit speed be monsters because of ATH alone. I always thought a big with 1 speed was more of a liability but I guess if the ATH is high enough it compensates for that much of a lack of speed.

ive had plenty of bigs with literally 1 speed, or else less than 20, who were great. i actually disagree with kmason, 80ath/50spd is marginally better than 80ath/15spd. i would suspect that if you showed at least 95% of coaches a big's performance, and told them their stats - but their speed was 50 or 15 - the coach could not tell which.

speed is not a factor in rebounding. its primary importance for big men is with respect to defense, especially in the press. for pressing bigs, i would think ath is probably at least 3:1 more valuable than speed, outside of the press, at least 4:1. of course, ath is super valuable, so its not like speed is meaningless. and 50 vs 15 speed does matter - its just that the impact is so spread out, and so not striking in all cases, i doubt it will be "noticeably" better by just about anyone. i would take an 80 ath, 1 spd big over a 60 ath, 60 speed big, in pretty much any scenario (the only exception i can really think of is for a non-offensive big in the press)

I differ from billyg not in terms of ability, but in terms of flexibility/strategy. I'll take the 60/60 ath/spd big over the 80/1 almost every time, because I can shift the 60/60 guy into SF, along with his 70-90 rebounding, and dominate the boards. 

Given the choice between a 60/60 big and an 80/1 I'd probably take whichever I thought I could get for cheaper.