”when your opponent is running slowdown, i agree there is volatility - but i do think double slowdown still adds more.”

I want to focus on this for a second. I think a significant part of the funkiness, and why slowdown feels a bit overpowering, is that when they are matched up against each other in traditional cases, ie where a deep, balanced favorite expects the underdog to slowdown to limit possessions, and chooses uptempo to mitigate that effect, the slowdown “wins” the possession tug of war. I’m drawing again on Texas A&M in Naismith, in part because joey’s huge upset of them in the 2nd round was a big reason this thread exists. If you look back at their season, they went uptempo most games. From a traditional standpoint, I don’t think we should have any problem with that. If we are thinking in terms of tempo only affecting possessions and fatigue, well they were the best team in the world pretty clearly, had no stamina problems, no turnover issues, and would be the clear favorite in every game. Why not run uptempo in most games?

Just superficially eyeballing it, looks like about a 20-25% decrease in A&M shot attempts simply from the opponents choice to go slowdown, even when A&M is uptempo. I understand that’s not the full possession picture. But attempts don’t drop too much farther for those traditional flex/man teams when its slowdown/normal or slowdown/slowdown. You can compare the changes in outcomes, too, in the pairs of matchups with Texas, as well as with the earlier non conference meeting at Vermont. Both featured different tempo approaches by one team.

FWIW . . . I think both slowdown and uptempo have their places. It's up to each coach to deploy the correct/best one based on the game at hand.

This thread made me curious, so I looked at the PBP for all three of my teams in their current seasons and counted how often I ran each tempo, along with my record in each of those games (52 games total).

Slowdown: 33% - 17 games (9-8)
Normal: 48% - 25 games (22-3)
Uptempo: 19% - 10 games (10-0)

Of course, mileage will vary based on circumstance. One season with one of my teams, I had a severe rebuild in a strong conference. I think I ran slowdown every single game that season. I'm planning to move to a new team in one of my worlds next season, that will likewise be a severe rebuild but in a much weaker conference, and I'm anticipating that I'll be running a lot of (but probably not exclusively) slowdown.

Posted by shoe3 on 12/21/2020 12:24:00 PM (view original):
Now is it “breaking the game”? Not at this point. That isn’t what I’m suggesting. My suggestion is that the developers look at it and dial it back (if indeed those fg% and turnover advantages are baked into slowdown) if it’s becoming a problem in a big picture, because all I have is my own anecdotal experience, and chatter I’m seeing. Otherwise, the point of this thread is to talk about tempo and bring the strategy to light. Like the “doubleteam the 2 highest scorers” trick, among others, there are lots of things coaches do we can learn from, and the forum is a good place to talk about it.

Wait, whut?

What is the "doubleteam the 2 highest scorers trick" ?