Posted by shoe3 on 6/6/2022 10:53:00 AM (view original):
One of the big differences in the sets, from what I’ve found, is in how much you can lean on your best scorers, ie how high distribution% you can give them before they start taking a hit; and to a slightly lesser extent, where on the floor is the optimal place for you to get scoring from. In flex and triangle, I think you can have those leading scorers up very high, even 40%, before starting to feel any negative effects (not getting into doubleteams of course). You can go even higher if you don’t feel worried about doubles, because the penalties don’t hit hard until you push up past 50%. In flex it works better if a lot of that is from perimeter based scoring - doesn’t have to be 3pt shooting, but distribution from players with higher perimeter. LP is utilized more in triangle, which is not to say you don’t want perimeter or 3pt shooting - of course it’s always good when you can get it - but extreme LP players are at their best in triangle, hands down, in my experience. So that’s the set where they can handle a high distribution load the best. Motion and FB both tend to favor a little more balance, to varying degrees (FB moreso), so you can feel the pain from pushing distribution too high for any one player a bit sooner. I stick close to 30% there.

So in terms of bench rotations, I agree with gil in that you do want to be sure you have enough good scoring options on the floor at all times for the sets you are running (at least 2 in flex and triangle, at least 3 in motion and FB; add 1 for each to be best prepared for doubleteams). Beyond that though, the overriding concern for games you are trying to win is normally that your best *players* get the most minutes on the floor.

i mostly agree with all this, but man, i was having a devil of a time in triangle trying to push scorers on the backup line. it seems like it most certainly is picking 3 players for the triangle, yeah? i guess i never noticed that before. so if you have two non-zeros on the floor with 3 zeros (not ideal to start with, i know), it ends up picking one of those 3 zeros and putting them in the triangle and giving them shots anyway. that was really screwing me up when my 0s were not stacked, it felt like to really get things going right on offense, i needed to be stacking my 0s at the same position to make sure they didn't end up killing me when they played together.

it also seemed like uneven distro in the 3 in the triangle caused a problem past some point?

i had this one team like 12 years ago that made me crazy, so i 0d out their distro part way through the NT and just let them do whatever. i had done it on and off all season and it really ****** me off that it worked better than the best i could come up with. they were triangle, it kinda makes me wonder if in a way, triangle has mechanisms that benefit from balance more than any other scheme. there was a lot of weird stuff about that team though. once i 0d them in the NT they became unstoppable gods and absolutely flattened top 5 teams, i think it was 40 and 26 points for the last two games. its only two games, but it takes a rather large amount of evidence from the regular season for me to go into the final 4 and completely wipe out everything i'd done. so its not like it was a surprise. after that i always knew there must be stuff i was missing about triangle... i think the HD forum wisdom about the offenses all being the same, and about that hoops 101 page being total gibberish, probably had too much of an impact on me. then playing it at florida a&m in tark, man, i was freaking dying over there, with everything making so little sense. triangle definitely feels like a unique breed to me, now.

I’m not sure many folks use the 0-out min/max approach with distribution, so maybe you can talk a little more about how you use that gil. My triangle team is set up with the triangle 3 scorers getting 25 (usually 10-8-7, sometimes 12-8/7-6/5) total, two “non-scorers” usually set to 1-3 each. It’s my first season with the team and I’m just getting to know them after a couple years away from triangle, I’m sure I’ll adjust as the year(s) goes, but in general, the only times I 0-out guys are non-scoring freshmen and other players whose attributes lead me to expect any distribution will hurt the team’s efficiency. And I do end up with those players on my FB/P teams because I need to fill those rosters, but otherwise it’s kind of rare that I have that kind of player on my roster, after their freshman season.

My question with triangle has always been whether the game ignores the two lowest distribution players on the court each possession (so if I have 20-12-12-6-0, does it ignore the 6 and 0 and run the offense through the other three?). I’ve always assumed yes to this question, so I put small distribution on my less efficient scorers so if I end up with 5 of my “not great” scorers on the floor (like a 6-4-2-0-0 where those players wouldn’t get any shots when my 3 elite scorers are in), the offense will still run through the 3 better players and not the “0” players. But that’s just how I imagine it in my head, nothing to back it up.

In my experience with Triangle, the answer is no. The lower distro players aren’t entirely ignored.

Posted by craigaltonw on 6/8/2022 11:36:00 AM (view original):
In my experience with Triangle, the answer is no. The lower distro players aren’t entirely ignored.

They’re not. Unless you do what gil does and zero them out, of course.