I'm been thinking about trying to put together a M2M team in D3 that focuses REALLY heavily on ATH, SPD, and DEF. My goal is to see if I can dominate on defense, and get enough free throws / easy baskets on offense to be successful. I had a couple of questions on this.

1. Obviously, at D3, I'm not going to get all-around stars, so focusing very heavily on those 3 ratings probably means I'm going to sacrifice lp / per / bh / pas in a lot of players. Can D3 players score effectively with high ath / spd and not much else in terms of offensive skills?

2. For high ath / spd to succeed, I'm guessing I have to get to the line a lot more than my opponents do. My assumption was that if I commit to this kind of strategy, I've got to go all-in; a few guys with high ath won't be enough, because I won't be able to get the other team into foul trouble (and my team into the bonus) quickly unless all of my guys fit the profile. True or false?

3. What if I try to get the lion's share of my scoring from just 2-3 guys? That would free me up to look at a wider pool of recruits to be just defensive stoppers, but I've never had 2 guys score the lion's share of my pts before. Can this be successful in D3?

Thanks for any input.

I think you need some lpfor this kind of player to work. I am saying this because I have an 81/93 player in D3 but only 1 in lp, 37 in per. He's shooting .431 this season, .444 for his career. 

I think it will work....try using fast break.   I would play 12 guys and go uptempo.  Since you'll have to put 20 minutes into conditioning your stamina will be high by accident. 

I bet that you'll accidentally get someone with a high LP, BH, and/or PER.  If you play it, they will score.

IMHO,

1)  Certain offensive sets utilize spd/ath more than others.  And some utilize other things.  So you'll have more success with certain sets that value spd/ath versus ones that rely less on that and more on lp or pe or pa or bh.  Picking the right set is important and worth 5-10 points a game.

2)  True.  All-in.  But you will need to focus on REB/PE/LP/BH/PA too for some of your players.  In other words you'll need at least one guy who can hit the 3 or 1 guy who can go down low or who is an exceptional rebounder in addition to spd/ath/def.  But imho you don't need one player to do all of those things.  I haven't seen a d3 player being exceptionally efficient with only spd/ath.  They need something else too (either lp or pe or a combo), but you don't need 5.

3)  I think great teams have at least 3 very good offensive players.  Fairly easy to gameplan against a one-dimensional team.

4)  Good FT shooting always helps.

"True. All-in. But you will need to focus on REB/PE/LP/BH/PA too for some of your players."


That isn't ALL-IN.  That is hedging your bets.....

I say go all the way, set a minimum search requirement for ATH/SPD/DEF at each position and pick the best guys of the bunch.   I think you'll accidentally get a PG, Scorer and big or two.  Ignore the other stats.

With that being said, FT is important ;)

I would say you would need to at least add rebounding to your holy trio for that to work . . .based on personal experience.

I wouldn't do it with a man defense if you're going heavily in that direction, I'd definitely go with a press - you'll need those easy points off turnovers more than another team might.

Posted by dahsdebater on 9/29/2011 5:18:00 PM (view original):
I wouldn't do it with a man defense if you're going heavily in that direction, I'd definitely go with a press - you'll need those easy points off turnovers more than another team might.

Yeah, I was thinking about that too. My concern was that if I went with press, I'd have to add high stamina to the 3 categories I'd already need high in. Maybe it's worth it though, for the easy points.

Now, if I go press, can I lower my threshold for DEF a little bit? I know it's still important for press, but I wonder if I can get by with less than in M2M.

Posted by Trentonjoe on 9/29/2011 4:06:00 PM (view original):
I think it will work....try using fast break.   I would play 12 guys and go uptempo.  Since you'll have to put 20 minutes into conditioning your stamina will be high by accident. 

I bet that you'll accidentally get someone with a high LP, BH, and/or PER.  If you play it, they will score.

That's exactly what I'm hoping for. It's not that I don't want LP, BH and PER - I just know I probably won't be able to get guys who have the 3 ratings I'm keying on, PLUS 2 or more of the above. So if I can get one of those in each player, I hope that'll be enough (combined with the ATH and SPD) to make them pretty good scorers.

I suspect the toughest position to get will be PG - I can't skimp on BH and PAS there, otherwise I'll get killed by other press teams.

If you are going to do this, don't go the fb/fcp route. I know Trentonjoe loves the FB since he runs it with his Princeton team but there is a reason that FB is the least used offense in HD.

You need high def for the press. It lowers fouls and I believe it also helps in generating steals. 

You can also run M2M with this scheme and still be extremely successful. Superior ath/spd/def will dominate in D3 under any defensive scheme. 

I tried to do a hybrid form of this with a DII team.  I had an average of 80 ATH with only one lower than 70.  Great speed and almost everyone was above 70, most above 80 in DEF.  I didn't sell totally out, I think I had one starter who was 60 ATH (95 RB) and another who had 65 DEF (85 PE), still put a little focus in RB, PE and LP, but those were secondary to the top trio of  attributes.  The biggest problem I had was that I was not able to do all this and get good FT shooterS.  I would go to the line 30 and 40 times a game but missed 40 or 50 % of my FT's.  It doomed me!  Plus if I was NOT getting to the line they were throwing up bricks for 5, 6 and 7 minutes at a time without scoring.  Made for a really frustrating team.  Give it a shot.  You may have better success but I would highly recommend getting most of your players to at least a B or B- FT range.     

I'd probably go motion/fastbreak if I were you.  Motion is designed to give everyone a look, since you wont be recruiting the most talented offensive players this will probably utilize their Ath/Spd combos. Although you can have success giving higher distro to several players too.

Like other people have said, on defense the press will make use of the ATH/SPD/DEF the best and transition to steals and more baskets.  I think you'll be able to snag enough talented offensive players to have 2 on the team at a time which I think could be enough.  I'm really curious to see how this goes let me know!

Posted by bhansalid00 on 9/29/2011 9:48:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Trentonjoe on 9/29/2011 4:06:00 PM (view original):
I think it will work....try using fast break.   I would play 12 guys and go uptempo.  Since you'll have to put 20 minutes into conditioning your stamina will be high by accident. 

I bet that you'll accidentally get someone with a high LP, BH, and/or PER.  If you play it, they will score.

That's exactly what I'm hoping for. It's not that I don't want LP, BH and PER - I just know I probably won't be able to get guys who have the 3 ratings I'm keying on, PLUS 2 or more of the above. So if I can get one of those in each player, I hope that'll be enough (combined with the ATH and SPD) to make them pretty good scorers.

I suspect the toughest position to get will be PG - I can't skimp on BH and PAS there, otherwise I'll get killed by other press teams.

  tiyanni is right, I am a big fastbreak/FCP guy and now that I think about it, this is pretty much how I recruit.

I make two exceptions (so I guess I am not all-in either):

1. I make sure I have two PG's.  It actaully isn't that hard because those guys usually have high SPD/ATH to begin with.

2. I try to get two rebounders, there are two ways to go after this, guys with high rebounding to start and high potential at ATH/SPD  or guys with good starting ATH/SPD and high rebounding potential.   What I find is that although the former is easier to get.   Normally, my FR/SOPH play center (because of lower speed) and my JR/SR play the 4 (because they have increased their speed enough).

3. The other 8 spots are LITERALLY the fast, most athletic guys I can find that can (or will be able to) do something else.    I had a DII center one time average like 14ppg (in 20 minutes) with only a mid 40 LP and no PE or BH.  His ATH was in the 80's or something and he had 55 FG%.   I don't recall exactly but I think he was like a B FT shooter. 
 

I would strongly urge anyone running FB to add Ball Handling to their priorities.  While FT shooting can win games for you, turnovers can also lose games for you if your wings and bigs have hands made of concrete.

Posted by Trentonjoe on 9/29/2011 4:15:00 PM (view original):
"True. All-in. But you will need to focus on REB/PE/LP/BH/PA too for some of your players."


That isn't ALL-IN.  That is hedging your bets.....

I say go all the way, set a minimum search requirement for ATH/SPD/DEF at each position and pick the best guys of the bunch.   I think you'll accidentally get a PG, Scorer and big or two.  Ignore the other stats.

With that being said, FT is important ;)

i would really advise against going this kind of all-in. its fine to be really focused on the strategy you described. however, what you cannot overcome is the law of diminishing returns. plain and simple, that first high-caliber offensive player over zero is SO valuable, there is no strategy in the world that is better off without having that first guy over zero. i think rails is right, 3 high caliber offensive guys is the way to go. try not to have them be awful on defense but honestly in a m2m set you can help hide these guys anyway if you do it right - at least to some extent. 

also, im with rails on the rebounding front. my age-old saying on rebounding is... if you can't rebound, it doesn't really matter if you can do anything else. of course, it depends on the context - that is very true for teams looking to be very successful. but if success is just making the nt and crapping out early, sure, you don't really NEED to have good rebounding. i also think it would be highly unwise to have terrible bh/pass... to me, lp and per affect the shot itself, not really getting a shot. if you have bad per/lp, you better be taking some solid shots. if you have terrible bh/pass, you are going to have poor shot selection, and then, get the double-whammy of bad lp/per.