Ok, in another thread i saw a reference to the "Doubleteam The Two Highest Scorers Trick".
This deserves its own thread, i think.

This seems pretty significant, along the trick lines of "tank the ratings of your potential EE candidates to get them additional years".

Can someone explain?
Thanks

In my experience, the trick works best if the 2 highest scorers are the only 3 point shooters on the team. Double them both if leading scorer and go -4 or -5.

It can also work if one of the leading scorers is a post guy who turns the ball over.

I find the trick less effective if the opponents have a balanced offense. Trick doesn’t work as well on a team with 4-5 players who average 10+ Pts/game.

And I’m not sure trick is the right word to describe this.

It's not really a trick and it doesn't work against every team.

It works how you'd expect it to. Since there's no opportunity to shift distro during the course of a game, if you focus your defense on the two players with the highest distro they'll still be taking the majority of the shots (though the distro % is a big factor here) and you'll bring down their eFG. It genuinely has a limited impact though against well-balanced teams - particularly motion / flex / triangle & press teams who run 12 deep and often have 4+ legit scoring threats.

It's more of an exploit of how a lot of coaches tend to gameplan vs any sort of trick or exploit of the game itself.

Another coach can prob explain better but that's my 2 cents.

Posted by sol_phenom3 on 12/22/2020 8:27:00 AM (view original):
It's not really a trick and it doesn't work against every team.

It works how you'd expect it to. Since there's no opportunity to shift distro during the course of a game, if you focus your defense on the two players with the highest distro they'll still be taking the majority of the shots (though the distro % is a big factor here) and you'll bring down their eFG. It genuinely has a limited impact though against well-balanced teams - particularly motion / flex / triangle & press teams who run 12 deep and often have 4+ legit scoring threats.

It's more of an exploit of how a lot of coaches tend to gameplan vs any sort of trick or exploit of the game itself.

Another coach can prob explain better but that's my 2 cents.

That’s pretty good, based on my understanding. Works best on teams that get most their scoring from one or two places at a time. You have to read the PBP to see when coaches are doing this to you obviously; it’s possible for the doubleteam to go completely under the radar, too. At least once, I’ve doubled a single player, which didn’t appear in the PBP at all (he only got off 2 shots, and the double wasn’t a factor on either).

I'm a huge proponent of doubling multiple guys, and it usually works pretty well. Craig is completely right, if a team only has 2 shooters then doubling them and going -4 can be a super strong strategy (especially as a big underdog).

Posted by cubcub113 on 12/22/2020 11:43:00 AM (view original):
I'm a huge proponent of doubling multiple guys, and it usually works pretty well. Craig is completely right, if a team only has 2 shooters then doubling them and going -4 can be a super strong strategy (especially as a big underdog).

Out of curiosity, what is the delta in distribution you would generally look to between the 2nd and 3rd scorer? I realize every situation is different but is there a rule of thumb? I hardly ever apply the 2nd double because I worry the 3rd scorer will be consistently wide open.

I haven't used the DT very often, but from what I remember reading (gillispie?), a DT won't have a substantial effect on FG%, but the DT'd player will take less shots. It's basically just a way to get the ball out of the best scorer's hands. If this is true, the DT will most valuable when 1 or 2 of the opposing players are very efficient scorers and then there's a drop-off for the 2nd tier scorers.

This would also mean that the target of a DT isn't necessarily the highest usage player(s). If the opponent has a guy at 25% distro but he has a TS% below 50, then you wouldn't want him to take less shots.

For example, consider the below team and how you would game plan against them:

Player / Distro % / TS %
PG / 25% / 47%
SG / 18% / 56%
SF / 10% / 55%
PF / 20% / 52%
C / 8% / 63%

In this scenario, you'd probably get the most bang for your buck by DT the SG and allowing the PG and C to take more inefficient shots, even though the SG is the 3rd highest Distro.

Of course, this is all based on the above assumption that DT affects # of shots more than FG%.

Posted by craigaltonw on 12/22/2020 2:55:00 AM (view original):
In my experience, the trick works best if the 2 highest scorers are the only 3 point shooters on the team. Double them both if leading scorer and go -4 or -5.

It can also work if one of the leading scorers is a post guy who turns the ball over.

I find the trick less effective if the opponents have a balanced offense. Trick doesn’t work as well on a team with 4-5 players who average 10+ Pts/game.

If a coach has *only* 2 perimeter shooters, one as a starter, and one off the bench, this strategy is extra strong. Double both those guys (I’d consider always rather than leading scorer in this instance), and go heavy negative.

I think some folks refer to it as a trick or gimmicky, because it feels a little more effective than maybe it should be. Esepecially if you’re doubling two at the same time (always, not leading scorer). Presumably a decent IQ team with a good pg should be finding open guys in that scenario. If doubling is supposed to, at least in part, repress the distribution of the successfully doubled player, then it *should* automatically do that, right? How consistently it works like that is debatable, I think. I suppose it depends quite a bit on how your opponent has their distribution set.

Posted by texashick on 12/22/2020 12:02:00 PM (view original):

Posted by cubcub113 on 12/22/2020 11:43:00 AM (view original):
I'm a huge proponent of doubling multiple guys, and it usually works pretty well. Craig is completely right, if a team only has 2 shooters then doubling them and going -4 can be a super strong strategy (especially as a big underdog).

Out of curiosity, what is the delta in distribution you would generally look to between the 2nd and 3rd scorer? I realize every situation is different but is there a rule of thumb? I hardly ever apply the 2nd double because I worry the 3rd scorer will be consistently wide open.

My normal distribution is set 10-8-7 at the top to avoid getting stung too hard by this tactic, FWIW. Even at 12-8-7, I don’t think I’ve ever noticed being bitten by it. Sometimes I also let the 3rd guy slide down as low as 5, but never lower, and usually I lower my #1 to 8 in that instance. With some exceptions.

ETA - I know this is the reverse of what you’re asking, but might still be helpful. I personally don’t have a delta for applying a DT, because I’m looking at efficiency too, but in general I will start looking at a DT if a starter is up around 20% of the Off% (bench players ~12%) with good scoring efficiency.

As shoe has said before, it is most effective as a long-term strategy if you are unpredictable. I think this works well in conjunction with defensive positioning as craig pointed out as well. Don't let the other team feel like they know how you're going to line up. I've played a lot of zone since I rejoined the game last spring/summer and I have found that, especially at D3 (and possibly D2, but I don't have that experience) a zone D with superior athletes can shut teams down. The problem is, when you come up against a team of equal or slightly better athletes. Even if they don't have a top-level scorer they can tear you up and DTing is ineffective since they have good splits in distro. As a regular season strategy it works really well. I personally haven't found the right way to implement it in late NT games effectively. But I was able to flirt over and back across the very good line in strong def preference playing this way so that's at least something.

I've double teamed an entire team before a couple seasons ago in D3. Only slightly affected certain players and their shooting % wasn't affected any more than what they normally averaged

Three questions for you guys. This is what the game says about double teams:

"If you choose to double in a man-to-man defense, your team will simply leave one player unguarded. In a zone, your team will slide into either a matchup zone, or a triangle and 2, depending on whether you are double-teaming 1 or 2 players."

1. Are man and zone equal as far as the effectiveness of the double team function?
2. Does the "if leading scorer" option refer to the leading scorer on the court, or the leading scorer on the team?
3. Theoretically, could the matchup zone be ran as a base defense? If you selected "if leading scorer" for every player, you would be in a matchup zone the entire game right? Maybe matchup zone is better than regular zone?

Thoughts?

Posted by cubcub113 on 12/22/2020 11:43:00 AM (view original):
I'm a huge proponent of doubling multiple guys, and it usually works pretty well. Craig is completely right, if a team only has 2 shooters then doubling them and going -4 can be a super strong strategy (especially as a big underdog).

If you double team both shooters, isn't there the fear that this will leave the other shooter wide open against a -4 defense?

Posted by Jitter_Thug on 12/22/2020 4:40:00 PM (view original):

Posted by cubcub113 on 12/22/2020 11:43:00 AM (view original):
I'm a huge proponent of doubling multiple guys, and it usually works pretty well. Craig is completely right, if a team only has 2 shooters then doubling them and going -4 can be a super strong strategy (especially as a big underdog).

If you double team both shooters, isn't there the fear that this will leave the other shooter wide open against a -4 defense?

In a real basketball game on a real court.. Or in this simulated and completely calculated computer simulation?

Of course you can't double team 2 players at the same time with 4 of your players in real life. You can certainly try to rotate a helper on two players. In real life.. If one of them gets the ball.

But in this simulation, it is just a setting that is on or off. If on, do this, if off do this. You can do 2 at one time. Doing 2 or 1 does likely not make OTHER players be 'open'. You probably just have certain items applied to the shooter if the double team switch is set.