Posted by car_crazy_v2 on 8/3/2014 10:57:00 AM (view original):
Posted by gillispie1 on 8/2/2014 10:11:00 PM (view original):
by definition, a game cannot be a solid example of the impact of defensive positioning. you need at a minimum, the aggregate games from the season. trust me, if you take the time to aggregate, you will find the negative settings do help on the boards. these are all subtle effects though - an HD game result is the culmination of over a hundred factors and hundreds of random number generations. you can't expect one single factor to have such a huge impact that it jumps out an punches you in the face!
Should a -5 defense NOT have a dramatic effect compared to running a 0 or +1, though? I understand that it won't always be evident on a single-game basis, but looking through all of my games this season, I sincerely cannot find a correlation between my +/- and opponent's offensive rebounding rate.
And emy, I completely agree that my current roster is not set up to rebound well. I'm just making the point that in relation to our typical rebounding performance and our opponents' typical rebounding performance, playing a -5 defense didn't seem to have a noticeable effect over running a 0 or even a +1 positioning.
But I'm open-minded. I'd love to see some more data on this because I'm all for collectively figuring out how we can improve the game. Perhaps my POV is skewed by my deep-rooted disdain for WIS and their efforts to improve the game, but again I'm all for making changes in the game where the community as a whole finds fit.
yes, it should NOT have a dramatic effect. one single factor should not have a dramatic effect, that would make game balance impossible. tempo and +/- have a large impact relative to the number of overall factors, but that doesn't make it dramatic on the scale of the whole game. what are you looking to see? -5 means you wreck them on the boards? that would be dramatic, but then wouldn't everyone play -5? or are you expecting them to also make 5 extra 3s from that -5? wouldn't that then inappropriately overshadow the many, many other things going into a single game? so no, i don't think it should be dramatic - i do think it should be meaningful though.
two questions i'll ask when you comment that you can't see a difference (so you can understand why you aren't seeing it, not really so i can get answers out of you :) - are you running the numbers through a spread sheet or similar tool? or just eyeballing it? if your team was pulling in a relatively normal 72% of the boards on your side (for a 72% def 28% off rebounding split), a meaningful increase to 76% (taking away a full 15% of your opponent's offensive rebounds) is not necessarily something you can eyeball - most likely, its not - but its still a VERY meaningful change.
the second question is, are you tailoring your +/- to your opponent? most likely, the answer is yes. if so, consider this. you usually play a heavy negative in a couple scenarios. one such scenario is that the opponent hardly shoots any 3s. typically, teams without strong perimeter shooting have better bigs (or else they just suck altogether - im not really concerned about that type of opponent, however). if you are looking at your own performance, relative to your normal performances, wouldn't it make sense that the games you are playing a +2 or whatever are probably against lower quality rebounding teams, and visa versa with a heavy negative? and therefore, you were going to do worse off rebounding wise because of the opponent, so there are multiple factors at play, not just the +/-? for example, if you were getting back to even with the heavy -, thats actually quite a meaningful impact. another time people often play heavy - is to counteract a significant rebounding advantage. that has a similar but more obvious and direct effect, to the 3 point shooting example.
i guess what i'm getting at is if you are changing your settings based on your opponent, when you aren't gathering the data for real (not just eyeballing), and you aren't considering your opponents performance relative to their average as well as your own - then its simply not realistic to expect to see the impact. of course you don't see it! and you won't, unless you are really set out to study such a thing. even if the -5 did have what i'd still consider a dramatic effect, its very possible you'd miss it because you were 1) eyeballing, 2) only considering your own performance, not your opponents, and/or 3) not objectively setting the +/- for the purposes of study, instead setting to compensate for your opponent - the skewing of those things, as a whole, can be quite dramatic itself.
8/3/2014 5:43 PM (edited)