I'm looking at a couple of PF/C recruits who look great for the most part, except that they have low defense ratings, with neutral potential. However, they have excellent ratings and/or potential in shot blocking. Based on the FAQ, all I see is:

Defense (DE)	Affects defensive ability.
Shot Blocking (BLK)	Affects ability to block shots, including altering shots, which reduces opponent shooting.

This doesn't make it super clear to me what the tradeoffs are between these two attributes. For example, if I were to compare 2 players, one of whom has a poor defense rating but elite shot blocking, and the other of whom is good but not great in both, how does that impact their performance?

For what it's worth, I imagine this works a bit differently depending on which defensive set I'm running. The particular team where I'm looking at this right now plays man-to-man defense, but I'd be interested to know how you guys think about these situations for each set.

Thanks in advance!

in general, blk is one of the areas where sets actually function materially differently. blk is most important in zone, then man, then press - with the spread between zone and press more than 2:1 IMO. this makes blk very unusual, normally we are talking about stuff like, well maybe bh is worth 10% more in the 3pt scoring equation in motion than it is in triangle, smaller stuff like that. note that in the 2-3 zone, the C uses his own equation and IMO relies extremely heavily on blocking.

anyway, basically, from a game consequence standpoint, i would say blk and def are both big drivers of 2pt defense, with def being important for 3pt scoring and blk being almost useless for 3pt scoring, with blk also being useful for blocked shots (which are basically half a turnover on top of the missed shot). you can't rack up blocks like you can rack up turnovers, and generally speaking, block-heavy zone teams have no better 2pt defense than block-light press teams. so its not like the blocking sets get better fg% out of their heavy blocking, its more they need the blocking to get good 2pt defense, and then the extra couple blocks a game are worth a turnover a game, or what have you.

also, fouling - defense plays a major part. i do not think block does. low defense players will foul more.

so i guess that's how i'd break it down. in m2m, defense is comfortably more important than blk for bigs, and much more for guards (although i think blk for guards is a bit under-respected in this game, outside of press teams). blk will drive down 2pt scoring, especially in the zone (where every player helps defend every shot - not just because blk objectively is worth more). blk will help on the possession battle because each blk is basically a half a TO. but meanwhile, i think blk does little for you on 3pt defense and fouling. a high def low blk m2m big would see lower 2pt defense and blk than a top tier big, while a low def high blk m2m big would see lower 3pt defense, lower 2pt defense, and more fouling than a top tier big.

I look at blocking as a bonus. I love players who are high in blocking and if you get 2 or 3 of them together on a roster they can wreak havoc.

Defense skill, however, is essential. I won’t sacrifice or trade off bad defense for good blocking. Defense is the high priority skill set. A superior defensive team opens up windows of opportunity for you to exploit varying playing styles of your opponents. Great blocking is a bonus.

Billy gave you the long answer. The short answer is DEF is far more important than SB. I would take an slightly above average defender with very low SB vs a bad defender with good SB. It’s not mentioned in your question but ATH should be the second attribute you are chasing for defense in a big. As mentioned, in a zone SB is more valuable than in the other sets but I still think the paragraph holds true for a zone D, just to a lessor degree.

For bigs, I look at SB like I look at LP. It’s very, very useful to have but I will always prioritize ATH-DEF-Reb first in recruiting.

In press I don't look at BLK at all - if I find a great big and he happens to have great potential in BLK - awesome - but I don't actively seek it out. In M2M it's a nice-to-have like others have said...but I still don't actively look to have more than 1-2 very solid shot blockers on my team and will take 90 DEF/50 BLK over 90 BLK/50 DEF any day in M2M.

I've literally never run zone...so I'm just going to trust gil's assessment.

i agree with these guys. i didn't touch on magnitude of importance, well i didn't mean to - but not sure how something like calling the 5 in the 2-3 'extremely heavily' reliant on blk, comes across... i would agree that in m2m and press def is far more important than blk. i sort of consider that the baseline. plus in m2m def is known to be super important and is sort of a top line core for everybody (perhaps some players have to focus on offense, but for all positions at least, its a major core), so talking m2m its like, def rating always gets respect. blk is way less regarded, and i generally agree with that.

on the high end, for a center in the 2-3, i put blk roughly on par with def - my guess is probably not quite as important, but perhaps 80-90% as important, which coming from press background, seemed REALLY high to me. so blk is pretty valuable over there IMO, but that is putting def and blk on similar footing in the most extreme favorable case for blk. m2m and press on average, def 2:1 over blk seems pretty easy, its a low end core - and for scoring bigs, definitely one i can live without. i'm probably closer to 3:1 in a lot of cases there, def is generally speaking way more important outside zone.

Awesome, thank you all for the detailed responses-- these have been super helpful. Sounds like I should probably tread carefully with the low DE/high BLK players.