Is it counter productive to have traditional big men playing both the PF and C positions when running the Flex/FC Press combo? I'm thinking that it would be more beneficial to run 4 guards and one big and go all in on the styles. 2 slower players in the front court with lower passing and perimeter ratings seems like it takes too much away. How much is the lack of rebounding going to outweigh the benefits?

Bear in mind I'm transitioning a D+ Pepperdine team so it's harder to find elite bigs to fill those roles.

It definitely works to have a SF at the 4 in a fcp defense. As a D+, I'd try to target someone with 70+ ath, 60+ spd, 50+ reb, and 50+ BH/pass.

It's all about possessions and offense/defense efficiency. If you put a traditional guard at the 4, you might get an extra steal or 2 but you'd be giving up a lot of rebounds so it's probably a net negative in possessions. You also might struggle to guard the post which would hurt your defensive efficiency.

This is in D3, and I don't know if he does it on the regular, but piman314 has ridden the wave of a 4-guard Flex/Press lineup to the Final Four in Iba.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=6768

Posted by shane182436 on 5/11/2022 5:30:00 PM (view original):
Is it counter productive to have traditional big men playing both the PF and C positions when running the Flex/FC Press combo? I'm thinking that it would be more beneficial to run 4 guards and one big and go all in on the styles. 2 slower players in the front court with lower passing and perimeter ratings seems like it takes too much away. How much is the lack of rebounding going to outweigh the benefits?

Bear in mind I'm transitioning a D+ Pepperdine team so it's harder to find elite bigs to fill those roles.

IMO, the rebounding hit from 3G-SF-C is going to be more than the benefits, but it depends on your 1-3 to some extent. If you have a strong 1-3, I find very little additional value in playing small at the 4. But it does seem beneficial to add more bh/pass and spd for turnover generation, from the 4, when you aren't that strong from the 1-3. In general, I find that fcp can fairly easily take the hit from 3G-PF-C compared to a more traditional 2G-SF-PF-C, but then when you compound that with the PF being small too, I struggled to get justification.

it DEFINITELY can work well though, not saying it can't. i just find it works against you when you are focused on deep runs. one of the nice things about it is, it really does help make team building easier - you really need to focus on your back court, and if you are running 4 back court players, its a bit easier to make sure you get enough because you are so focused on them. if you end up with an extra big its easy to swing them back out to PF. and i have found like, you can get better SFs who can play PF, at a little lower standards. when you are trying to build those really good teams for deep runs, those kinds of SFs that fit at that 4 well, they are really heavily sought after. that is probably d1-only advice though. from what i understand, there are a LOT of lower reb/blk, higher ath/def type SF/PFs in the lower divisions. so you may really not face this problem in d3 or d2 at all, no matter how competitive your team?

I feel like it's important to have a great rebounding 5 in the press and then at the 4 go best player available that's at least 50 REB. I wouldn't necessarily shy away from small ball but I wouldn't force my team to do it either.