I intended to go 2-3 Zone in this game with both Asher and Williams dt’d if leading scorer.

I made a mistake with the settings and went 3-2.

The question is: if the depth charts, distribution, tempo, and defensive settings were exactly the same but I went 2-3 instead of 3-2...

What would this boxscore look like?

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=19471147&tab=boxscore

Well your personnel is much better suited to 3-2. I suppose with Fernandez at the 3 it’s passable, but you’re going to get much better results with that lineup going 3-2, 19 times out of 20, I think. Even if your opponent is shooting all 2 point shots, I’d go 3-2. The times I would consider 2-3 is 1) when my personnel strongly favors it, ie I have lots of quality forwards (or more importantly, a scarcity of quality guards), and/or 2) less often, but sometimes when I have a flexible team, and my opponent gets most of their scoring from the front court. Notice, I’m not talking about most of their scoring from 2 point shots, I mean most of their scoring from the 4 and 5 position, primarily. The kind of team with a distributing only PG, some lock down defensive guards playing the 2 and 3, and then star forward/C types down low getting most of the points. That’s the time I’ll go out of my way to play 2-3.

In most cases, 3-2 is just a more effective defense against humans, because most humans get more scoring from guards. But still sometimes my teams are set up to be more effective as 2-3 teams, and that’s what I play more of those years.

So TLDR; I think you probably lucked out, because I think you likely would have seen a worse outcome had you played 2-3, everything else equal.

I’m not sure I agree... because of Anderson’s Orchard as a huge offensive threat in the front court.

Fernandez I usually play at the 3. The reason I moved him to the 2 was for his defense skills to cover (and double) Anderson’s guards in a 2-3 zone.

Maybe I’m backwards... but if Guard defense is my weakness, why do I want to default to a 2-3 zone to expose them and allow the opponent’s backcourt to dominate?

Did I misunderstand you?

Related: why don’t sims ever play the 3-2?

Posted by craigaltonw on 4/20/2021 10:33:00 PM (view original):
I’m not sure I agree... because of Anderson’s Orchard as a huge offensive threat in the front court.

Fernandez I usually play at the 3. The reason I moved him to the 2 was for his defense skills to cover (and double) Anderson’s guards in a 2-3 zone.

Maybe I’m backwards... but if Guard defense is my weakness, why do I want to default to a 2-3 zone to expose them and allow the opponent’s backcourt to dominate?

Did I misunderstand you?

You may have misunderstood. I’ll back up a little.

My approach, if I’m not absolutely settled on what type of zone or personnel I’m going to use, would be to first look at Anderson’s scoring tendency. I see a C (Orchard) at 11 ppg, 2 guards at 10 ppg, then a few more PF/C below them at ~7, with some SF (who shoot some 3s) also around 6.5. Up top, it’s 2-1 in favor of guard scoring. Of the secondary scorers, it’s fairly balanced, maybe a little more toward forwards and frontcourt players, but not so much that it’s going to sway me. So basically, unless my team is really geared toward 2-3, I’m definitely going 3-2 here; if I’m really concerned about Orchard hurting me for some reason, I’d rather cheat down low at -3 or -4, and/or perhaps double him, than go 2-3 with personnel that doesn’t fit well.

The big problem with playing true guards at the 3 in a 2-3 is that you’re using a guard to defend a forward position. In zone, you’re defending zones, not individuals, and the system uses the same formula for SF and PF to determine the defender’s quality for that zone. So beyond the obvious rebounding you’re giving up playing a guard at the 3, you're also lacking block. Zone utilizes block more than the other sets, and while it’s most important at the 5 in a 2-3, it matters at the forward positions as well. Now at D3, it’s not super important to have it up high, which is why I said Fernandez might be “passable”, but that’s passable in the way that a D3 SF with 30 BH is passable, but with 1.... think twice, you know? You’re giving up an awful lot there. I’m not saying you can’t win like that, it just isn’t anything close to optimal.

I guess I don’t see guard defense as a weakness. Half your 10-man rotation is guard, and the average defense is over 60, which is fine (60%, and well over 65, if you include Fernandez, which you should). Ignoring promises and potential, I’m starting Bailey at point, Lucas at SG and playing Fernandez at the 3 in a 3-2 against everyone, except the kinds of teams I talked about up top. Then, and only then, I might think about slowing down and going 2-3. But then you have to get creative with your depth chart, because you only have 4 true front court players (if you’re not playing Yazzie), and with a 2-3 defense, you have 3 front court defenders on the court at all times.

So in short, your guard defense is fine, but even so, what I’m saying is default to 3-2, NOT 2-3. Thats my advice, because it is the superior defense against most human teams, and also because your team is better suited to it.

Posted by hypnotoad on 4/21/2021 5:50:00 AM (view original):
Related: why don’t sims ever play the 3-2?

Same reason they never play combo defenses. Not very intelligent. ;)

Thank you Shoe. That detailed response helped.

On the topic of zones, I'm playing it for the first time with a first season rebuild. We suck in many areas but because rebounding is so poor I've been playing 2-3 regardless of opponent.

With a more competitive team, should I use 2-3 to cover rebounding deficiency or go with whatever makes more sense based on who's playing the 3?

Posted by jweatherman on 4/21/2021 4:10:00 PM (view original):
On the topic of zones, I'm playing it for the first time with a first season rebuild. We suck in many areas but because rebounding is so poor I've been playing 2-3 regardless of opponent.

With a more competitive team, should I use 2-3 to cover rebounding deficiency or go with whatever makes more sense based on who's playing the 3?

i think shoe touched on this some, too (great advice in shoe's posts!) - but you definitely want to take into account the opponent as well. ideally, you are able to utilize zone's ability to switch from the 2-3 to the 3-2 based on opponent, which is one of the best things about zone. if you only have 1 option for SF and they are a really poor option for one of the two, it definitely makes it tough, but for this reason i like to prioritize versatile, quality SFs in zone. alternatively, if you have solid depth, you can often juggle your guys a bit to make either the 3-2 or 2-3 work.

anyway, i agree with using the 2-3 if your rebounding is poor, but note that because the TO generation is weakest in zone, if the zone team has poor reb, they are going to get absolutely slaughtered on the possession game. zone teams more than any teams really cannot be competitive without quality reb, IMO. so when you say with a more competitive team, i'm naturally going to assume that means they are good at rebounding now :) and in that case, i think the main driver of the 2-3 vs 3-2 is how your opponent scores and how to best counter act them. that drives what kind of 3 you want to play, which is why you really want that SF versatility. i think it is a mistake to be satisfied taking whatever SF you can get and then just playing the 2-3 or 3-2 accordingly.