http://whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=8374

Like this team, I think we've all played that super athletic and fast and defensively talented team that runs the FB/ Press.  However, their weakness is they don't really have shooters, and don't shoot any threes.

What I've generally done (when I play man-to-man) is play -5 setting and a slowdown, and that has worked a little for me, but I'm curious what others do?

Since I play press/zone, my strategy is usually to set the zone to 2-3, play at -2 or -3, and sometimes to slowdown; though sometimes I feel like I can exploit a stamina advantage, especially if the opponent is playing fast break, so I'll let it go normal or even uptempo (if I have the ball handlers on offense, of course). Sometimes those teams are so accustomed to playing against a slowdown, you can really catch them off guard. But obviously you need to have a certain type of team to make that work in your favor.

-5 isn't always the best as they can still shoot outside jumpers and not 3's and be very effective against -5, just watch for that, I prefer more a -3 and maybe -4 if they literally shoot less than 2 or 3, 3's a game

I do not base my defense + or - exclusively on whether or not a team shoots 3 pointers.

I also look at where I team gets it points when game planning.

As an example:

Opponent's Scoring
Pos	Points		%		d40
Guard	32.5		44.8		-4.8
SF	11.0		15.3
Big	28.9		39.9		0.1
Total	72.4				0.2

In the above example, he gets 44.8 % scoring from his guards and 39.9% from bigs .. d40 is difference from 40% (completely Balanced scoring is 40% G, 20% SF, 40% Bigs) .. and that number is used to calculate a recommend + or - just based on points scored.  The equation I use is ((Big-Guard)/20) so in this case that would be: 4.7/20 or 0.2 when rounded.  So if 100% of the points cam from Bigs, it would recommend -5, if 100% came from Guards, it would recommend +5, if 100% came from SF it would recommend 0.  The theory is:  most if the time, your guards are shooting jumpers, not LP shots.

That is just ONE input that I use for distro, the second is this chart:

Defensive Positioning
Recommended	Basis	Max	Min
Positioning
+3	NA	100.00%	48.00%
+2	40.92%	48.00%	38.81%
+1	36.71%	38.81%	35.13%
0	33.56%	35.13%	31.67%
-1	29.78%	31.67%	25.48%
-2	21.19%	25.48%	18.86%
-3	16.54%	18.86%	8.27%
-4	NA	8.27%	0.00%

That Basis percentage is FG3A/FGA .. so if a team had 344 3 point attempts and 1147 total FG Attempts, then the ratio is 344/1147 x 100 = 30.0% (really 29.9913).  Based on my chart, that would fall into the -1 range, between 25.48 and 31,67

I developed that chart a long time ago by taking 12 coaches that I thought had a handle on the game and looking that their distro's for every game for 5 seasons as compared to their opponents FG3A/FGA to come up with the chart.  It is for Man2Man and Press .. for zone .. I subtract one if I am playing 3-2 and add one if I am playing 2-3 to the recommended distro from the chart.  So if I am playing 3-2 zone, and if I get a +2 from the chart, I do +1.

I take those 2 inputs and decide my distro .. in the above case, I had 0.2 (which is basically 0) for the scoring and -1 for the 3 point shooting .. so I would play 0 or -1, probably 0.

If I would have had +1 from scoring and -3 from the 3 point shooting, I would likely do -1 or -2, etc.

He is shooting about 43% from the floor without shooting threes. I wouldn't worry too much about shutting him down you just need to figure out a way to score against that defense

Based on this lineup for that team:

HS-P	Pos	Yr.	Starters
PG	PG1	Jr.	George Dempsey
PG	SG1	Sr.	Olen Christensen
PG	SF1	So.	Brian Dagostino
C	PF1	So.	Carl Long
C	C1	Sr.	Samuel Bowerman
		Yr.	Backups
PG	PG2	Jr.	Fred Legette
PG	SG2	Jr.	James Nelson
PG	SF2	Jr.	Eric Zacek
C	PF2	Jr.	William Ball
C	C2	So.	George Thomas
		Yr.	Bench
PG	BN1	So.	Timothy Carlson
PF	BN2	Jr.	Brian Williams

This is the calcs:

Opponent's Scoring
Pos	Points		%		d40
Guard	51.2		65.2		-25.2
SF	19.3		24.5
Big	8.1		10.3		29.7
Total	78.6				2.7

And a lookup for 1.1% of attempts as 3 pointers is -4 .. so -4 and +2.7 .. I would likely play a -2 or maybe a -3.  I would look at a couple of games and see if most of his 2 Guards (Dempsey, Christensen, Legette, Nelson) are jumpers or layups/LP shots to help decide between -2 and -3.

So that is what I personally would do ...

BTW .. I am not saying this is the best way to figure out plus or minus for Defense, or that it is even a decent way to do it .. it is just what I do (good, bad or ugly)

How do you know if they are jumpers or lay ups? I thought the pbp was just window dressing

Good luck me. His only loss is the team i play tonight in the Elite 8 kalamazoo 26-6.

Posted by milwood on 3/10/2015 5:16:00 PM (view original):
How do you know if they are jumpers or lay ups? I thought the pbp was just window dressing

Maybe it is (the pbp) .. I assume that guards normally shoot jumpers, so I count them as not LP scoring.  That is sometimes not the case if a guard had good LP.

Posted by milwood on 3/10/2015 5:16:00 PM (view original):
How do you know if they are jumpers or lay ups? I thought the pbp was just window dressing

i could be wrong.  but i dont think the pbp is window dressing.

Didn't post my actual opponent because I thought that might be collusion, so I just posted Dickinson's team of that style. We lost a tight game. Thanks for all the thoughtful responses and ideas. I switched to a -3 pregame, then caved and went back to the -5. Guess that probably cost me the game:

http://whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=11718961

Hughes, your analysis was awesome, and by your success I trust it, just wished I listened haha.  I'm going to start doing your way of gameplanning for the big games (and an eye test of points distribution by position, not just how many threes they shoot for the non-big games). His SF and PF were the most effective, so that would be around a -5 correct?

So, Hughes ... I must be doing something wrong.

Can I get a calculation from you to see if it matches mine?

53.6% bigs
27.5% guards
18.9% SF

19.5% threes.

Posted by me4284850 on 3/11/2015 2:52:00 AM (view original):
Didn't post my actual opponent because I thought that might be collusion, so I just posted Dickinson's team of that style. We lost a tight game. Thanks for all the thoughtful responses and ideas. I switched to a -3 pregame, then caved and went back to the -5. Guess that probably cost me the game:

http://whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=11718961

Hughes, your analysis was awesome, and by your success I trust it, just wished I listened haha.  I'm going to start doing your way of gameplanning for the big games (and an eye test of points distribution by position, not just how many threes they shoot for the non-big games). His SF and PF were the most effective, so that would be around a -5 correct?

That guy had a pretty darn good team, just looking at the record. So it might not have mattered if you went -3.  that's the annoying thing about this game - you can never know for sure.

Posted by a_in_the_b on 3/11/2015 9:16:00 AM (view original):
So, Hughes ... I must be doing something wrong.

Can I get a calculation from you to see if it matches mine?

53.6% bigs
27.5% guards
18.9% SF

19.5% threes.

I only take the top 10 players .. pg, pg2, sg, sg2, sf, sf2, pf, of2, c, c2