I am still very much learning HD, even at 10 seasons in, and I am ever tweaking my current offense to try to make it as optimal as possible. Right now on my Puerto Rico Bayamon team in DII Tark, I am pretty blessed to have the following guard:

Alphonso Rivas

Athleticism	63
Speed	97
Rebounding	1
Defense	70
Shot Blocking	3
Low-post	1
Perimeter	99
Ball Handling	82
Passing	83
Work Ethic	80
Stamina	85
Durability	32
FT Shooting	C

During the course of the season I have been making adjustments to my distro, depth chart, etc. to try to maximize the offense of my team as a whole. However, I am wondering whether a winning strategy might just be to give the ball to Rivas an absurd percentage of the time, like something in the 40% range or even higher.

It seems whenever I see teams with one big scorer, those teams rarely end up winning a lot of games because the rest of their team doesn't end up contributing much and one guy can only do so much. My team has several legitimate scoring threats, with a bench full of guys who could post (and have posted) good offensive performances with some regularity. I have another guard who is a big scoring threat and a few guys down low who give me legit LP opportunities. You can look at my roster for the whole picture, but the bottom line is, none of them can touch Rivas' mixture of speed and shooting ability. Rivas is by far the fastest player in my conference and is in the top 5 fastest players in all of DII. And since he's only a junior, there's even a possibility he could still improve a point or two there (I still haven't gotten the maxed-out e-mail, knock on wood).

So my question is this: do vets believe I would be better served giving Rivas the lion's share of the distro but still spreading the ball around judiciously to the rest of the floor, or is it a viable option to simply hand him the ball a gazillion times when he's on the court and let him go to town? I feel like any team I face from here on out, at least in the regular season, won't have a player who could beat Rivas defensively, and he should dominate at least against M2M and Press. But the fact that most teams with high distro on one player end up with mediocre records is concerning to me and I was wondering if this strategy is ultimately a bad one. I run a motion offense if this makes a difference to anyone.

Thanks!

I  believe, if one player takes more than 50% (it may be a different %) of your shots, his success drops. That was a change made a few months ago to discourage coaches from doing what you suggest

I wouldn't do it all the time, but you could certainly give him a higher than normal distro if the situation dictates it.  You just have to remember to take into consideration the dropoff that comes.  But I don't think It's not overly dramatic, though.  I think they get tired faster and their % drops, but if he's already much better than everyone else than he'll still be better after the decline.  You can look at my team as an example...I load up distro with Sarinsky from time to time (Although only once this season so far(W&J)) and it's usually against far inferior teams, so I haven't really noticed much difference. 

Okay: the greater a player's distro is, the less effective he becomes.  Think of it as, if a player gets an average 5 good looks per game (for example), each additional shot he takes is a lower percentage shot than those first 5.  I.e., he's starting to force it.  The extreme example is giving a guy 100% -- he'll be chucking up 28-footers, left-handers behind his back, turnaround fadeaways with 3 guys in his face, etc.  Still, an excellent shooter taking lower percentage shots will still be better than a poor shooter taking high-percentage shots -- until a point.  The trick in HD, IMHO, is finding that point.  In your case, that means playing around with Rivas's distro until you find (approximately) that point where below it, the team is underperforming because Rivas isn't shooting enough (i.e. he's still hitting 54% of his shots, and you'd be fine with him hitting 50%), and above it, the team is underperforming because Rivas is underperforming (i.e. he's hitting 46%, and those extra 3 shots per game or whatever are not getting a good return on your investment).  Don't forget -- the more Rivas shoots, the better your other players will do as well, since they'll mostly be taking their "good looks" and not venturing into "forcing it" territory.

Take a look at my Alabama team -- McCarl shot too well when given 20% of distro -- he wasn't being used to maximum benefit; and not well enough at 30% -- his lower percentage was starting to hurt the team.  When he got about 25% of the shots, though, he hit his sweet spot (53% from the floor), allowing the rest of the team to hit 54%.  You'll never get it just perfect, of course, and there's only so much time to play around -- but in my opinion, this is sort of the right direction one might want to try to play.

Thanks for the advice, guys!

prez, that's a hell of a DII player, nice work.

I'd take the advice above from jeffdrayer re: finding the right distro in general. I wouldn't go too overboard on one player, as it reduces his effectiveness, makes your team very predictable to prepare for and one-dimensional.

And I know you didn't ask, but two other things that I'd do w. this team:

-Start running slowdown. You have a pair of fantastic DII guards that are capable of leading you deep into the NT. There's a significant drop-off behind them. I'd want to keep those starters on the floor as much as possible. Also, you have below average rebounding for a top DII team, and you want to minimize that disadvantage.
-I'd scrap the zone. I don't think your team plays well with the zone, and all those practice minutes could be devoted to strengthening your offense and m2m iq's. Instead, you've got seniors who are only A- in your core defense, and that hurts you. No reason this team should be borderline to make the NT.

Best of luck ...

Thanks girt, I appreciate the advice! I'm mainly switching to zone because I feel it gives me more leeway in playing a guy with lower defense like Rangel without killing me down low. I will re-evaluate however and think about switching back to M2M full-time. I really do appreciate the advice as I still consider myself something of novice at this game and I consistently feel I don't get the most out of my teams.

Ah, I didn't realize that you were in the process of changing defenses. That's different. If you prefer playing zone (either in general or for this team) and that's what you're going to commit to long term, that's a different story entirely. I thought you were trying to run both and practice both, and I felt like it was making you mediocre in both rather than really good in one. Don't let me talk you out of a full-on switch if that's your strategy.

Haha gotcha, sorry for the miscommunication.