In the recent past, I've taken in some mentors that have really helped me out. One of the things they are recommending is changing up my depth chart. Their opinions always help, but their philosophies are different then it comes to how they got to their depth chart conclusion.

My question: what are some of the philosophies you apply when making out a depth chart?

Example (one I always hear): put your best perimeter shooters in the SG spot.

Is that a good one. Any others? Feel free to expand into the fatigue/removal factor. Just curious in everyone's thoughts if you have some time.

One thing I like is having versatile players that can slide around a little rather than specialists. Then the lineup can change to take advantage of matchup problems, or say, if your opponent has really strong rebounding, you might swap in the beefy rebounder at sf.

Incidentally, I do have a few things I usually try to do on small forwards ...

I like starting someone that is a really good defender. Often my small forward is my best defender. The other is the concept of "small forward is the place to add to your starting lineup whatever it lacks elsewhere. If your guards have few perimeter skills ... Its a good place to add them. If your bigs lack post skills ... You can get a good lp small forward. If you are short on rebounding ... You can get a creditable rebounder at sf and make it work. And so on.

You also can often use players with odd collections of ratings successfully at sf, so you can expand your recruiting base if you don't limit yourself too much in your small forward roles.

All things being equal, to me, it makes sense to have your best perimeter scorer at the two guard and best ball handler/distributor at the one guard. However, if your opponent has a lockdown defender at the two spot and your pg isn't an effective scorer then why not switch the two to take advantage of the better match-up. The only downside to this strategy can be that if your sg has below average bh/ps skills then it's possible he turns into a turnover machine.

I wish the depth chart had a function that you could slot a starting five to match up to your opponent's starting five. I use alot of versatile players, and try to play the matchup game.  HOWEVER, when you move your PG to SF to be a defensive stopper against a great scorer, he moves that SF to SG to match-up against your SG who stinks on D.  Your defensive match-up should be by player, especially if you play man to man.