I think you also have to factor in rebounding. If my top rebounders (ATH + REB) have a CLEAR advantage and our stamina is comparable to the other team, many times I'll run uptempo. The amount of tip-ins on offense will surprise you!

Do you find tip ins are distro depended?

I think teams can be better suited to slowdown or uptempo, so I don’t really agree that the non-normal tempo itself decreases expected points per possession. But of course that will be the by-product, if the team is not well-suited to the tempo. In my thinking, this is a much bigger factor with uptempo with slowdown. Generally, I think the penalty of playing slowdown pretty much begins and ends with fewer possessions, period. This leaves less margin for error, and makes it more difficult to overcome an opponent’s hot stretch.

With uptempo, if you don’t have speed, ball-handling and stamina advantages, you are likely to commit more turnovers, which turns extra possessions into a negative.

It really comes down to how I want to try to win a particular game, for me. Am I going to try to win by taking care of the ball with high IQ, good passing, and high percentage shots and rebounding? Slowdown might be a consideration. Am I going to try to win by exploiting advantages in speed and ball-handling and stamina, to maximize possessions and reduce variance? Then I’ll think about uptempo. Now, I probably stick with normal about 85% of the time. But my best championship level FB/press teams were pretty much exclusively uptempo, because I had built that team to do that thing.

Posted by Benis on 5/14/2019 4:06:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Trentonjoe on 5/14/2019 2:16:00 PM (view original):

Posted by topdogggbm on 5/13/2019 10:10:00 PM (view original):
This is excellent stuff. And weird because the amount of threads we've had here where coaches say they don't even look at stamina. It's a big factor

Stamina is only important when you don't have enough of it. Like light beer.

Not really. Having great stamina is a big advantage.

I just don't understand this logic.

if my team is a 10 and yours is a 9, your team having a better stamina doesn't help until I am fatigued. If i have "enough" stamina to avoid fatigue it doesn't matter what your stamina is.

That logic really only works if your bench are equally talented with your starters.

You can avoid fatigue by playing your starters 26 minutes and your backups 14 minutes, and he can avoid fatigue by playing his starters 29 minutes and his backups 11 minutes.

Even if your team in the aggregate is a 10 and his is a 9, if your benches are both, say, 4s - that's probably pretty realistic, even for a good team - then your team averages out to a 7.9 and his team averages out to a 7.625. Stamina may not have made his team better than yours, but it sure closed a lot of the gap.

A lot of good thoughts in this thread. Just a couple of further notes

1. If two teams have exactly the same depth but one team is just darn better, the weaker team should run slowdown - and the stronger team should consider going fast. Lets say the teams are identical but one team is +10 in every rating. This is because more possessions - more events - favors the better team. If A markov chain with more events tends to favor whoever is better.

2. some darn good teams end up needing to go slow because they lose players EE and their backup recruiting plans fail - and end up with some years where they are not deep. I dont think those teams - mostly - are good because they go slow. I think they are good because their players and coaches are good - and they go slow to handle that situation

but also agree with many other notes in this good thread

Agree, lots of interesting perspectives here -- I think a lot of the comments on tempo/value of stamina depend on what offense and defense you're running. I almost never look at stamina in recruiting, but I always run M2M defense.

Re: uptempo, I am leery of running uptempo unless the other team has a short bench (9 or fewer players in the rotation). I've seen a lot of odd "uptempo vs. slowdown" game results, where it feels like the better team running uptempo rushes and shoots itself out of the game. That said, if the other team has a short bench, and I have 10 or more players, I almost always run uptempo if the players are close to equal, even if the other team is slightly better.

Re: slowdown, I think that is a tremendously underused strategy, and I am often surprised how few teams run slowdown, especially when one team has a talent deficit. If I'm short (9 players or fewer in my rotation), or if my team is worse, I almost always run slowdown.

Posted by dahsdebater on 5/15/2019 11:37:00 AM (view original):
That logic really only works if your bench are equally talented with your starters.

You can avoid fatigue by playing your starters 26 minutes and your backups 14 minutes, and he can avoid fatigue by playing his starters 29 minutes and his backups 11 minutes.

Even if your team in the aggregate is a 10 and his is a 9, if your benches are both, say, 4s - that's probably pretty realistic, even for a good team - then your team averages out to a 7.9 and his team averages out to a 7.625. Stamina may not have made his team better than yours, but it sure closed a lot of the gap.

Yeah exactly. If your starters are better than your bench (which on most teams is true) then why wouldn't you want them to play more? If you can get 3 more minutes per starter, this is an advantage. Is it the most important thing ever? Maybe not - but no one thing in HD is like that.

In a game where the champion is decided in a single elimination tournament and each game can be decided by a single possession, why wouldn't you want this extra advantage? Its not unimportant.

Okay, I see that point and I certainly agree that I want my best players to have as much stamina as possible. My counter point is that the difference between my second and third post player isn't 10-4; it's probably 6-5 or 7-5. I want my 10's to have high stamina but I don't care so much about my bench players or role player starters.

Posted by Trentonjoe on 5/15/2019 2:30:00 PM (view original):
Okay, I see that point and I certainly agree that I want my best players to have as much stamina as possible. My counter point is that the difference between my second and third post player isn't 10-4; it's probably 6-5 or 7-5. I want my 10's to have high stamina but I don't care so much about my bench players or role player starters.

Well yeah, your bench guys don't need as high stamina because they don't play many minutes. It's not really helping all that much - unless a starter fouls out extremely quickly, which can happen.

Another potential and practical benefit of having overall good team stamina is that you could afford to RS a guy and lose some depth if your starters and backups can handle the extra minutes easily.

Posted by Trentonjoe on 5/15/2019 10:48:00 AM (view original):
Do you find tip ins are distro depended?

No not really. One of my best rebounders last season had an almost-zero distro but averaged 10 pts per game on tip-ins and free throws because I played uptempo. Admittedly it's not a huge sample size but I'm going to keep trying it against poor-rebounding teams and see what happens.

Posted by Trentonjoe on 5/15/2019 2:30:00 PM (view original):
Okay, I see that point and I certainly agree that I want my best players to have as much stamina as possible. My counter point is that the difference between my second and third post player isn't 10-4; it's probably 6-5 or 7-5. I want my 10's to have high stamina but I don't care so much about my bench players or role player starters.

you are getting at the nature of stamina. who cares about the stamina of your 10th best guy? nobody should. for your best guy? its awesome. more than half the time, i'd wager, stamina is the #1 most important marginal stat for the best players on top teams. i guess bigs its often ath, but for lead scorers (the players who should be lead scorers on great teams), its stamina like 90% of the time. why? extra anything else makes you marginally better, but if you can increase your playing time by 10% on that guy, it would be *huge*. there basically are no elite players in this game, except those who have great stamina.