I thought there was a thread that touched upon this, but I'm unable to find it.

Just for kicks, for my two exhibition games in Iba D2, I decided to shake things up and mirror image my starting five, just to see what would happen.

Basically, I just rearranged my depth chart and swapped my PG hierarchy with my C hierarchy, and also swapped my SG hierarchy with my PF hierarchy. I left my SF hierarchy as-is.

Results were uneventful. My big forwards, playing in the back court, still got their rebounds. My guards, playing up front, still got their assists. Basically, nothing statistically jumped out as "whoa!". But I was playing against noticeably weak opponents.

So do the positions really matter? Maybe against a press if my bigs were taking the ball down court, they might produce more turnovers if they had poorer ball handling and passing skills than my real PG/SG. But against a M2M defense, might I be able to take advantage of switching my positions around to take advantage of out-of-position match-ups against weaker defenders?

Just looking for thoughts.

Interesting experiment, but I would be more interested to see how it works over the course of a season, against good human coaches with strong teams. I suspect the position modifiers in each set would be more pronounced as you face more skilled opponents.

OK, this might answer my question as to whether or not I'm going to spend any more money on HD. I'm going to switch my starting PG and C for the next few games, and see what happens.

Years ago, the coach jack_duck had a thread or two on this as he would do it regularly in exhibitions.

The thing to keep in mind is that basketball in general is a much more open ended sport than baseball or football, where rules prescribe roles for positions fairly rigidly. As I understand it, there used to be sort of a “out of position” penalty that was applied in HD, but this was removed, so you can basically play guys wherever you think their ratings will work for you. The only “penalties” you will incur are in those places where the system, and your offensive and defensive sets, *may* have modifiers in place that affect players performance in those positions, in those sets. It’s up to you to decide if those modifiers exist, and if you think they’re strong enough to influence personnel choices.

If I did this with my press/3-2 zone scheme against human coaches, I’d be paying a significant price, because we know for a fact that zone defense groups the players listed in the pg-sg-sf slots and places them on the perimeter defending my opponents perimeter scorers. Does that mean a coach can’t devise a winning strategy of recruiting 10 excellent, interchangeable SF-type type players, and compete for championships with a motion-man set? Absolutely not.

Obvious to anyone that experimenting in exhibs or experimenting in the way described is

- not unfair play based on what we all should know about sportsmanship
- not a violation of any game rules

different if one did it for the first time - for example - in the postseason against a team coached by a relative - which would be obviously wrong and we all know it.

I think the caution about throwing a game via "massive lineup changes" would be referring to sitting your first team All-American in favor of starting a walk-in.

Rearranging your starting five in different positions for match up purposes could hardly be considered the same.

Posted by bjschumacher on 9/7/2020 9:17:00 PM (view original):
OK, this might answer my question as to whether or not I'm going to spend any more money on HD. I'm going to switch my starting PG and C for the next few games, and see what happens.

Alright, first game is notso hotso. Lost to totally **** ratings/IQ sim. only won by 5 on the boards by wasting James More at the 1. Gamble scored well at the 5 but Moore (who is your best defensive player by far with that ath/de/sb) was dominated by Sheffield.

Yeah, but my center with ball handling & passing ratings of 5 and 3 had 1 assist and only 2 turnovers in the 1 spot. I'm skeptical whether or not reversing those 2 guys actually made any difference. In any case, I went back to the normal line-up for the next game.

Posted by bjschumacher on 9/8/2020 1:45:00 PM (view original):
Yeah, but my center with ball handling & passing ratings of 5 and 3 had 1 assist and only 2 turnovers in the 1 spot. I'm skeptical whether or not reversing those 2 guys actually made any difference. In any case, I went back to the normal line-up for the next game.

This looks like a pretty common misunderstanding of how ratings work in this game. HD is a little different from GD, where ratings are position specific, and can change when you change a player’s position - see above regarding the differences between the two sports, ie prescribed roles and rules, etc. A player with 1 speed, for example, in HD, that speed doesn’t mean he’s going to finish his 40-yard dash next Thursday. It means he’s on the very low end of speed relative to other college-level athletes; and for any equations where speed plays a role (perimeter scoring, perimeter defending, getting steals, etc), that low rating will significantly reduce his effectiveness. So if you don’t care about your guard positions scoring or defending on the perimeter, for whatever reason (for example, your opponent doesn’t have any perimeter scoring threats), playing traditionally frontcourt players in the backcourt may not hurt as much as one might initially think, especially against sim controlled teams.

Against good human teams, this is a losing strategy, guaranteed. But it could be a way to learn something about the game.

Posted by bjschumacher on 9/8/2020 1:45:00 PM (view original):
Yeah, but my center with ball handling & passing ratings of 5 and 3 had 1 assist and only 2 turnovers in the 1 spot. I'm skeptical whether or not reversing those 2 guys actually made any difference. In any case, I went back to the normal line-up for the next game.

This won't solve anything by doing one game test samples. Do it over the course of a season or something.

Also, to be honest, as far as "finding out if you wanna spend any more money on HD"..... The only way I ever grasped if this game was "legit" or not, was by getting good. When you're new, there's just things that can't be put into words that you don't really grasp. For an example, sure you can view the game thinking all the best ATH/DEF teams are the best. Say at D2 you face a 70ath 70def type of team. But there may be a team that is 65ath 65def which is pretty significant of a difference, that is miles better because of various factors. Sets playing against each other, ball skills involved, IQ, perimeter shooting, etc. And you won't grasp that for quite some time to be honest.

Often I can look at all the teams and see who are the best 8, or who will make the E8 basically. And it's not always the highest ratings. So many things factor into that. This game IS legit. It just may take a long time for you to learn to see the game correctly. (Who knows, maybe it won't take you long)

also, say you build a team that is "the best" in your eyes. And you lose and you get all mad about it (not you specifically. Just any coach).... even then, it doesn't matter. Upsets happen. And unless you are investing a fairly decent amount of time to see the ups and downs of different things in HD, you're not gonna find an accurate reading on the game.

Hope this is helpful

Posted by bjschumacher on 9/8/2020 1:45:00 PM (view original):
Yeah, but my center with ball handling & passing ratings of 5 and 3 had 1 assist and only 2 turnovers in the 1 spot. I'm skeptical whether or not reversing those 2 guys actually made any difference. In any case, I went back to the normal line-up for the next game.

assists are pure window dressing with no bearing on how the game was actually played. do not use them to measure anything ever. you can use turnovers.

rebounding is one of the least unbalanced ratings in the game going across the spectrum, meaning you still get substantial value from the 1. i think these experiments are a good way of making sense of the hit to rebounding, which is probably less than most of us think (myself included, and i am a massive rebounding guard fan).

the combination makes it pretty easy to see stat lines that look reasonable-ish from these flipping experiments. i'd also caution against reading into games like those of the OP where he's playing a legitimate d2 team against a less than NT level d3 team (in a time where d3 NT entry only requires a pulse).

anyway, i do not think this approach would work out well for anyone when playing against real opponents - but i definitely encourage folks to try it. also just to note, AFIAK, experimenting in the regular season or over the entire season is also totally fine. intentionally losing and experimenting are different; coaches have extremely wide latitude in how they seek long term success. i wouldn't have any concern about getting in trouble for running a team this way even for a couple seasons, post season included (the worst case IMO is a warning which is rescinded upon explanation / examination, but 'experimenting' in a massively detrimental way for 1 particular NT game after playing normal all year would be ill advised :)