I'm not super experienced with double teaming, so I don't know for sure how it works, but would love to hear feedback.  Double teaming a player only double teams them when they have the ball, correct?   Conventional wisdom is that you should double team your opponent's leading scorer, which is usually their best player. But I'm thinking that double teaming their leading scoring isn't always the best idea because chances are that player will have high ATL, SPD, and possibly BH and PA ratings, in which case they might be able to either break the double team or pass out of it.  

With that in mind, what if you instead double team your opponents worst players? The ones with low ATL, low SPD, low PA and low BH ratings.  Shouldn't that be more successful at creating turnovers since those players are the ones that are more likely to mess up in a double team.  And to take it a step further, shouldn't you double team the 3 or 4 worst players?  I imagine it would be similar to be playing a full court press defense, except just on the other team's bad players. Since you're only double teaming the player with the ball, it doesn't seem like there should be more negative effects versus just playing a straight full court press defense. But maybe I'm misunderstanding how doubleteams work or overlooking something else.  I'd love to hear feedback.

You ever see teams doubling the worst opposing player in real life? If the worst player is double teamed, that simply means one of the other 4 better players are left wide open, possibly the guy with 99ath/99spd/99per is left wide open. Why would you ever leave someone like ray allen, steve nash, or dirk nowitzky wide open at the corner for a 3?

And I'll tell you from experience, I have had opponents try to double team my C with poor bh and passing, it didn't work out. 

well fiirst ...
You can only double team a maximum of 2 players on the court at the same time. If you try more than the engine removes all the double teams.

second, double teaming also reduces the number of shots the player takes. So I don't understand why you would want to move that distribution from the worst players to the best players.

In HD you cannot "trap" the worst player in hopes of forcing the turnover.

Interesting. 

I believe the thinking of DT'ing the leading scorer is, yes, he's the teams best player and he's killing us! He's killing us worse than if he throws it to another player who is wide open under the rim. Or something like that. The example math would be something like the leading scorer shoots 57% but DT'd he shoots 47%. The other scorers shoot 35% but when their defender is off double teaming someone else they shoot 45%. And let's not forget that when being double teamed you will usually shoot less. So people will DT if the leading scorer takes a LOT of HIGH % shots. The goal is to lower his shooting percentage and lower number of shots taken. An extra turnover or two is also nice. 

If you DT the worst guy the effect on him will be greater than the best guy. Remember, though, the worst guy will have much fewer possessions than the star. So the overall effect on the other team is less. The difference between a normal double team and this unusual method  is the difference of a really bad player taking an occasional open jumper from 8 feet as opposed to the star throwing down a tomahawk jam.

However, what is the effect of double teaming everyone or almost everyone? I believe most of us believe it results in a slight increase in forced turnovers versus a large gain in shooting percentage. A very large gain. A large enough gain that you will wonder "what the heck was I thinking?"

I do see some merit in DT'ing everyone but the best scorer. I would call that defense the "we are going to let Jordan score 85 points against us hoping he tires out before the end of the game" defense. This might actually work in some rare instances especially if he is a bad free throw shooter.

EDIT: Or, as mully says, the game won't let you.

I forgot about the two person limit, so that's a good point.  

Also good point tianyi about the 99/99/99 player being left open for a shot. I guess I was just hoping that the benefits to double teaming the bad player would result in enough turnovers to outweigh the negatives (ie, more open shots for a good player if the bad player is able to pass out of it). 

But just to check - is double teaming really that fundamentally different than playing a full court press?  (Other than the obvious difference that the system will only let you double team up to two players as mullycj points out). 

i always wished there was a setting to double off of player X whenever we doubled player Y so that you maybe weren't leaving the 2nd best player wide open when you doubled the best player.  As far as I know it's kind of a crapshoot as to who doubles who

This is good stuff.  Now, I understand that when I chose "If leading scorer" DT on the top 5 scorers that no DT was done due to the logic of the engine.

Posted by ericsmith on 5/11/2011 6:48:00 PM (view original):
This is good stuff.  Now, I understand that when I chose "If leading scorer" DT on the top 5 scorers that no DT was done due to the logic of the engine.

is that true, or would it only be true as long as all 5 guys were tied for the leading scorer at that particular moment?

There can only be one leading scorer at any time(unless it's a tie between multiple people), so that should actually work like you expected it to

let's say you set players A and B to doubleteam when they're the leading scorer, and players A, B, C and D are all tied for the scoring lead, then you will be doubleteaming players A and B. BUT, if you had set players A, B, and C to doubleteam when leading scorer and the same situation occurred, then no doubleteams would happen until the tie was broken.

I dont recall Seble ever saying distribution affected anything other than number of shots taken.