I have played for several seasons and have never really found success with the uptempo offense. I will start a new season in a week or so and have a (what i feel) good team. In the past I have tried uptempo against very poor opponents (with this team) and find the score to be higher but also much closer. It seems the games are far closer than they should be. Thus, I have mostly resorted to normal or slowdown. What are your thoughts on what may help a team running uptempo, and what my hinder? Feel free to look at my team as well. It's not necessary to run it to succeed but many good teams do and I would love to find the key ingredients. Thanks for the input.

I may be totally unjustified in thinking this, but my experience leads me to believe that uptempo relies more on grabbing rebounds and getting tip-ins than other tempos; therefore attributes leading to offensive rebounds (REB, ATH) become more significant, while PER and LP (and possibly IQ?) become a little less so. This is completely theoretical, however. In unrelated news, FT shooting becomes more important because you're more likely to get into the bonus...

JJ - I like to look at the opposition's bench players as a helpful way of determining whether or not to go uptempo. If I had a significant advantage on the bench (vs. pretty even matchup for starters), I will go uptempo, and hopefully force a quicker game, where the backups are playing more minutes and my advantage is enhanced by being on the floor more.

Also, it obviously works when you have better starters and bench players :)

I go slow down if I have a slight edge in starters, and my bench is not that strong.

Since either a.) I sorta suck at recruiting or b.) There are a lot of crappy players out there in the recruiting pool, I like to get about 8 to 10 guys who are all about the same level of "eh, pretty good"-i-tude, and run uptempo hoping that the other reserves will be worse than mine. I also will try to put a good player (one who could reasonably start) with the second unit. This 6th man is my leading scorer about half the time if both teams run up-tempo...

i see some good logic in the preceding posts. i also think stamina is a huge factor. if your opponent is about equal to you but you have a clear stamina advantage, i think uptempo is the way to go (especially in a home game).

up-tempo should give you more possessions and therefore, if your team is actually better, give you a better statistical chance of winning.

That said, you do need to have good stamina or a deep bench in order to keep the advantage up as your players get tired.

For me it is just about 100% about bench and stamina. If My bench has a bigger advantage over their bench than my starters over their starters(Or a smaller disadvantage) And I have enough stamina to make sure my bench will be playing their bench, then I want uptempo. If the reverse is true, I want to play a bit slower.

I suppose the same can be said about defense as well. I run a M2M and don't have the defensive numbers that I would like. I suppose I get more possessions but so does the other team. That may explain the higher scores and closer games. I also like the athleticism idea. It does seem to reason that athleticism would be instrumental to rebounding and uptempo.

Quote: Originally posted by jjwarden on 12/14/2009I have played for several seasons and have never really found success with the uptempo offense. I will start a new season in a week or so and have a (what i feel) good team. In the past I have tried uptempo against very poor opponents (with this team) and find the score to be higher but also much closer. It seems the games are far closer than they should be. Thus, I have mostly resorted to normal or slowdown. What are your thoughts on what may help a team running uptempo, and what my hinder? Feel free to look at my team as well. It's not necessary to run it to succeed but many good teams do and I would love to find the key ingredients. Thanks for the input.

this is a tough question. i really struggle with the same thing. i can't get uptempo to work well for me, it seems like it might increase the average margin of victory against significantly weaker teams, but does not seem to decrease volatility, as i believe it is intended to.

i have resigned that uptempo is not for my system. i play a press defense, and more possessions result in more fouls, which is bad for me bc as the pressing team i am probably committing more than my share of them, and also, my ft ratings are usually pretty bad. so maybe that is part of it. but, on the other hand, i love when other teams run uptempo against the same teams of mine. so there is definitely more going on that just the number of possessions.

anyway, if you find that uptempo does not work for your system, that doesn't necessarily mean you are doing anything wrong, or missing anything. it might just be the case that normal is better for your system.

Thanks gillispie, I have pretty much taken that philosophy. No use changing something that works to force something that doesn't. It has just always been a big mystery to me, why it doesn't seem to work for my system. Some teams with above average teams seem to run it with great success....

It has vaguely seemed to me that the lower my defensive ratings, the more fouls I was committing, one downside to the "Stockpile speed ignore defense" method of running the press. Or perhaps that is just my imagination.

I don't like using uptempo much, but I do feel it works pretty well against the press due to the fact that most steals in the press come off the pass and with an uptempo O' there is less passing. The biggest thing with uptempo is that you need really good ball handlers, if not you will still turn it over way too much. Even with that I never run uptempo against anything other than a press. I feel it's just too inefficient against a zone or man D.

I have won all my NTs running up tempo. I always run press so up tempo is huge there. My teams are built around ath/speed/reb and depth and uptempo causes more To's (for both teams) so my teams constantly sub in and out eventually wearing the opps out.

I have definitely used the strong 6th man strategy as mentioned by a previous post. Uptempo is something I use 90% of the time but when inheriting a team that my not quite have 'my type' of players I run normal. I usually do look for the Stamina and the ability for me to have a quality 6th man as key factors (meaning not losing much with the other guy who starts in his place). I actually consider IQ a bit of a factor, but that could just be me. With a younger team I would rarely run uptempo until I reached the conf. games because I needed them to have a base understanding of what they are running. Totally theory for me and I know many think that IQ does nothing but I do noticed a higher level of success with my more veteran teams running uptempo compared to running than normal. It has almost always helped me avoid major upsets; because of the extra opportunities and it has allowed me to upset another team; most of the time I feel that is because of the 6th man advantage who gets more PT than he would in a normal offense and is playing a backup most of the time.

For me the decision is based purely upon my shooting and IQ vs. thier defense, IQ and depth although the speed differential helps on breaks. If I have better shooters and IQ, I'll definatley be up for shooting the ball more quickly. Never really seen that it affects a team's stamina much unless you play FCP as well, since you aren't neccesarily rushing the shot or exerting more effort, just taking the first "open" shot, which favors good shooting teams against average defenses and below.