Against a man to man defender, how much faster would a guard with solid BH skills need to be than the player defending him to become an effective scorer assuming moderate but not unreasonably low PER/LP skills?  10 points of speed faster?  20 points?  I know the conventional wisdom is that defense matters a bit more than speed in the M2M, but at what speed differential does it become untenable?  Or does that never happen?  Thanks.

Posted by dahsdebater on 3/10/2011 3:02:00 PM (view original):
Against a man to man defender, how much faster would a guard with solid BH skills need to be than the player defending him to become an effective scorer assuming moderate but not unreasonably low PER/LP skills?  10 points of speed faster?  20 points?  I know the conventional wisdom is that defense matters a bit more than speed in the M2M, but at what speed differential does it become untenable?  Or does that never happen?  Thanks.

i don't feel like that really happens. i know people talk about it a lot on the forums, like, my player was way faster than player X , so i tried to exploit that, or whatever. but i don't really think it works that way. i think the sim engine just computes defensive ability and offensive ability and just goes with it.

Hmmmmmm.  That's interesting.  So you think a post player with great defense and SB ratings would be able to successfully guard on the perimeter?  I had always assumed that was not the case, but I never actually tried it.  Do you think fouls are at all related to speed?  IE the slower player might be more likely to foul the faster player?  Or that's based on purely "defensive ability" and "offensive ability" as well?

I think ath/sp are factored into defensive ability. I actually think speed matters a bit more than it probably should just from my recent observations.

Posted by kmasonbx on 3/10/2011 4:19:00 PM (view original):
I think ath/sp are factored into defensive ability. I actually think speed matters a bit more than it probably should just from my recent observations.

My gut - without any statistical analysis to back it up - is also that speed plays a larger role than it should, at least with respect to the zone defense (which I play).
 
In my mind, it makes far more sense for speed to play a larger role in Press and a much smaller role (probably with Ath becoming more important) in the Zone, but I don't think the current engine really works that way.

Posted by dahsdebater on 3/10/2011 3:29:00 PM (view original):
Hmmmmmm.  That's interesting.  So you think a post player with great defense and SB ratings would be able to successfully guard on the perimeter?  I had always assumed that was not the case, but I never actually tried it.  Do you think fouls are at all related to speed?  IE the slower player might be more likely to foul the faster player?  Or that's based on purely "defensive ability" and "offensive ability" as well?

i think if their defensive ability was comparable to a guard playing the position (i.e. their ath and def compensated for the spd), then yes. there might be a couple particular areas in which mismatches are taken into account - the foul possibility is one, but i haven't ever noticed anything about that either way. i think the big's ability to defend on fb opportunities might be a weakness, but that is a pretty small % of cases. there could be other edge cases like that, but its really the normal half court case i am talking about that i think its all about defensive ability (primarily a combination of ath, spd, def, sb, and iq).

Posted by dahsdebater on 3/10/2011 3:29:00 PM (view original):
Hmmmmmm.  That's interesting.  So you think a post player with great defense and SB ratings would be able to successfully guard on the perimeter?  I had always assumed that was not the case, but I never actually tried it.  Do you think fouls are at all related to speed?  IE the slower player might be more likely to foul the faster player?  Or that's based on purely "defensive ability" and "offensive ability" as well?

in fact, due to the large # of bigs present in texas, i was strongly considering playing a 4 big, pg lineup. i had a bunch of guys with decent spd, bh, passing available. sadly i took 4 walkons so that won't happen, but i thought it would be pretty effective, and an interesting case study.

I think, just from observations over the past few seasons, that speed plays a fairly large role in defense, especially man to man. But as far as matchups go, I think a 60 spd 80 def PG vs. an 80 spd PG with good BH would be able to defend him just fine. Also, an 80 spd 60 def I think would have a tougher time defending in that situation.