Posted by mullycj on 12/19/2020 5:07:00 PM (view original):
I think you are confusing slow tempo with "X is playing a spread offense (hold ball) ". Most shots in slowdown come with about 10 seconds left on the shot clock. Hardly rushed.

I could argue the opposite and say the shooting % should be better as the offense takes its time to get the best shot possible (aka the old Princeton pick and roll/backdoor cut offense).

I could also argue the slow down offense should tire out the opposing team more because it takes more energy to play defense than to play offense. But neither scenario is built into the engine (and I don't think it should be).

As I have said before the only difference I see between the three tempos is :
1) at what point in the possession is the RNG rolled to see the result
2) the effect on stamina

Downsides to slow down are
1) its harder to get opponent into foul trouble
2) its harder to get their starters off the court
3) its harder to come back from a big half time deficit (less possessions)
4) domination in rebounding has less of an impact (again less possessions impacted)

Simple probability suggests if you are consistently waiting until the last 10 seconds of the clock to look for a shot, instead of operating the offense as normal, you will have some percentage fewer good shots. You are essentially shortening your own shot clock, passing up possibly better shots that could have presented themselves 10-20 seconds sooner. In real life, I suspect we wouldn’t see weaker teams try to do this much for this reason (among others, I think, though I’m only a very casual fan anymore, so I’m just speculating).

I don’t think those downsides are really downsides. 1&2, unless I’m a big underdog (which would be the traditional case I’m not talking about here, because I don’t really think that’s so much a problem) I’m not running slowdown based on my opponent, I’m running slowdown as a strategy based on my own team. I want to keep MY starters out of foul trouble and in the game, first and foremost. With 3, that is mitigated somewhat by allowing for the computer to change if you’re trailing. And 4, if you’re dominating rebounding, with fewer possessions, your rebounds have MORE impact, not less. Anyway, even if I was to accept some slight disadvantage (in the 3rd point) it pales in comparison to what the uptempo option causes for most teams. So at best, the overall effect still seems pretty skewed, even if we’re accepting no impact other than possessions and fatigue.

Posted by shoe3 on 12/19/2020 4:14:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 12/19/2020 2:00:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 12/19/2020 11:35:00 AM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 12/19/2020 10:37:00 AM (view original):
if the thread is suggesting that uptempo has a more narrow use case than slowdown, in HD as it stands today, i would agree - although the usage of slowdown in HD tends to be pretty sensible, while the usage of uptempo tends to be pretty poor, so part of it is really the coaches, not the game. if the suggestion is the counter to slowdown by the favorite is more slowdown, i would disagree.

if you think slowdown is OP, the counter is straight forward, run press. slowdown is not nearly as an effective counter against press as it is against top tier m2m and zone teams. the m2m and zone teams can counter with a powerful top 7. if your sole concern is beating the short stack slowdown teams, run a normal tempo deep fb/fcp, having someone running slowdown into those teams is a major benefit to them.

perhaps its my long history of running press myself but i have few qualms with slowdown from a balance standpoint. i think tempo is implemented somewhat superficially and not terribly well, in all cases. but i do not think slowdown is overpowered in general.

From a game-to-game standpoint, that’s incoherent. A coach can’t just switch sets to run press against a short stacked slowdown team, in the same way a team can just click the slowdown button and run slowdown with no real risk or drawback. That’s the point. You’re suggesting that the “counter” to a gameplay strategy is to completely overhaul a coaches program design, a process that effectively takes at least 2+ seasons. That’s... not a serious suggestion, is it?

sure, i'm serious. i don't see a problem with slowdown balance, but if someone *does* think it is overpowered against the slower sets, you can offset it by running a higher pace scheme. or by running slowdown yourself, it follows logically, but it feels to me like making one wrong two wrongs, not two wrongs making a right. generally speaking, running press isn't a game-to-game counter (not sure where i suggested it was), but it can be if you run hcp or dual scheme as you have in the past. i'm just saying - if someone is THAT worried about slowdown - i'd suggest a scheme change over going into a slowdown vs slowdown battle.

but yeah. my 2 cents is, nothing to see here. except a tad bit of irony if you want to see the 'everyone else only has a problem with X because it affects them personally by diminishing their advantage over the have-nots' guy take a twist and actually advocate for the big guys to have a bigger stick. oh, poor exceptional teams, their opponents might run slowdown! cry me a river.

Still not a coherent take, gil. If you read more closely, you’d see the problem is not that slowdown is a limited possession concept to allow less talented teams to *sometimes* compete - that’s a given, and accepted. The problem is that it’s being used by exceptional teams to win championships, with no viable gameplay counter.

And if what you’re looking for is consistency from me, here you go - A+++ prestige teams can (and currently do) just take 3 walkons every year, sign nothing but elite-for-level players, run 8-9 man rotations at slowdown with the double dip perks that come with it. I don’t have any problem with the first part, never have. That’s a viable team building choice. But I do have a problem if there is a feature of the game allowing them to reap risk-free benefits of the strategy. That’s a competitive gameplay problem the developers should be looking at. That’s a feature of the game which closes off viable paths to success, and promotes one-path strategic thinking, which is a terrible model for a large multiplayer game for obvious reasons.

the last half is just giving you crap for your utterly ridiculous contributions to these threads when they aren't your own. no need to follow up.

the rest is just nonsense. you are talking about a team building strategy, and calling for a game planning counter. it makes literally zero sense. team building strategies are countered with team building strategies. an 8-9 deep slowdown team is inferior to a 12 deep less talented press team or a 10 deep roughly as talented m2m team - and is well countered by both (or fb/fcp normal). from a championship standpoint, running slowdown is very tough. the major change in going from a regular top 10 team to a regular champion is getting volatility under your thumb. how one is supposed to do that running slowdown for 6 games is beyond me.

i suppose i'm struggling to take this seriously, given the source, and the quality of the argument. in general, i would just suggest, if you really think building an 8-9 deep slowdown team is an overpowered strategy, that you use it, and prove it. at the present, it sounds like a load of rubbish.

edit: btw, the whole description is just so weird. 'game planning counter'. for what? a non-descript but very talented team running slowdown? there's nothing to counter. that's just a normal strategy. you run your normal strategy. if their team is way better, sure, you are probably done for. if there is something specific these teams are doing you want to counter, that is different. overall, just too vague to really address head-on.

Gil, read better. You are arguing years old debates based on a game you don’t currently play. Keep up. Look around. Observe. Many people are doing this, there are folks “proving it” all around, including someone you just congratulated.

Choosing tempo is a game strategy, it is not a “team building” strategy. You are the one confusing the concepts, and then projecting that onto my points. Stop doing that, please. Having a slowdown option that has no real negative downsides does potentially *lead to* team strategy choices, but that’s your argument, not mine. The point of this thread is that the game to game tempo choices should all have risk/reward choices that are rational and balanced, and when they don’t, there are negative consequences for gameplay. If you’re going to continue long winded rebuttals to points I’m not making, please first at least address the points I am making. Thanks.

In essence gil, you go off the rails after your first sentence in this thread - which is essentially the only one that has been on point. That’s where we should get back to if you’re interested in actually discussing, rather than resurrecting whatever old conversations are going through your head today.

”if the thread is suggesting that uptempo has a more narrow use case than slowdown, in HD as it stands today, i would agree”

This. This is what the thread is suggesting. You can even ignore usage for the moment, because people are always going to vary in how well they use the tools. Slowdown benefits far more teams than uptempo, because it does not come with the same sort of extreme negative risks uptempo has. That is the root of the gameplay problem. Everything I discuss in this thread stems from this factor. If it was *just* possessions and fatigue, I would not expect slowdown to rather consistently beat uptempo in otherwise even-looking teams; but that’s what I’m seeing. I’m not the only one.

"Slowdown benefits far more teams than uptempo, because it does not come with the same sort of extreme negative risks uptempo has."
Your pension for hyperbole is outstanding.

Not every team has the depth to run uptempo. EVERY team has the depth to run slow tempo. That in itself would lead to more use of slow.

"I would not expect slowdown to rather consistently beat uptempo in otherwise even-looking teams"
Me either. And I don't see it.

I do hope Kimball sees this thread and starts using slowdown though........

Posted by mullycj on 12/20/2020 5:15:00 PM (view original):
"Slowdown benefits far more teams than uptempo, because it does not come with the same sort of extreme negative risks uptempo has."
Your pension for hyperbole is outstanding.

Not every team has the depth to run uptempo. EVERY team has the depth to run slow tempo. That in itself would lead to more use of slow.

"I would not expect slowdown to rather consistently beat uptempo in otherwise even-looking teams"
Me either. And I don't see it.

I do hope Kimball sees this thread and starts using slowdown though........

It’s “penchant”, and you’re thinking of... um... some other player... again. If you don’t think the risks of running uptempo are extreme if your team is not well suited for it, I don’t know what game you’ve been playing.

No argument from me that not every team has the depth to run uptempo. That’s not the only factor, either, but it’s a big one. But again, it’s not so much about how many teams *do* use it - I’d like us to get off of usage, it isn’t that important. It’s what *happens* for the teams that do use them. My premise is that a team should not *have* to be built specifically to go uptempo (the way Kimball’s FB/press teams traditionally are) in order to see the equivalent benefit on a deviation from normal as a team that runs a 8-9 man rotation on slowdown. By the same token, a team that clicks slowdown as a wing and prayer should see the same type of *risk* or *cost* on the deviation from normal, for the same types of reasons.

Teams that are built to benefit from uptempo have high stamina, and don’t turn the ball over. Teams that aren’t built to benefit from that tempo but choose it for other reasons are *rightly* running a risk. It would stand to reason teams could be built to benefit from slowdown as well, for instance high FG%, excellent rebounding, emphasis on skills rather than physical cores, etc. “Being short-handed” should not be a valid characteristic. It should never be a viable crutch. And a simple “well there’s no real downside, so might as well” isn’t good for gameplay, either.

Posted by shoe3 on 12/20/2020 3:06:00 PM (view original):
In essence gil, you go off the rails after your first sentence in this thread - which is essentially the only one that has been on point. That’s where we should get back to if you’re interested in actually discussing, rather than resurrecting whatever old conversations are going through your head today.

”if the thread is suggesting that uptempo has a more narrow use case than slowdown, in HD as it stands today, i would agree”

This. This is what the thread is suggesting. You can even ignore usage for the moment, because people are always going to vary in how well they use the tools. Slowdown benefits far more teams than uptempo, because it does not come with the same sort of extreme negative risks uptempo has. That is the root of the gameplay problem. Everything I discuss in this thread stems from this factor. If it was *just* possessions and fatigue, I would not expect slowdown to rather consistently beat uptempo in otherwise even-looking teams; but that’s what I’m seeing. I’m not the only one.

you are full of it. i already agreed to all that. that was my first post - i said i agreed slowdown had a wider use case and that tempo is poorly implemented in this game as a whole. your response was that i should read better (i'll also agree, running uptempo is not a great counter to slowdown in many cases). you said

"If you read more closely, you’d see the problem is not that slowdown is a limited possession concept to allow less talented teams to *sometimes* compete - that’s a given, and accepted. The problem is that it’s being used by exceptional teams to win championships, with no viable gameplay counter."

and now, in your last 2 posts, you BOTH tell me to ignore the usage, that its only about the raw balance of slowdown itself, not to worry about the favorites running slowdown - as well as telling me, its already been proven by plenty of other coaches and i need to wake up to today's game.

dude, make up your freaking mind. either you want to stake a claim that elite teams running slowdown is causing a balance issue, or you don't want to stake the claim. you can't claim it at all moments except when someone is arguing against it, and then say that person is responding to random stuff you never said.

Posted by gillispie1 on 12/20/2020 6:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 12/20/2020 3:06:00 PM (view original):
In essence gil, you go off the rails after your first sentence in this thread - which is essentially the only one that has been on point. That’s where we should get back to if you’re interested in actually discussing, rather than resurrecting whatever old conversations are going through your head today.

”if the thread is suggesting that uptempo has a more narrow use case than slowdown, in HD as it stands today, i would agree”

This. This is what the thread is suggesting. You can even ignore usage for the moment, because people are always going to vary in how well they use the tools. Slowdown benefits far more teams than uptempo, because it does not come with the same sort of extreme negative risks uptempo has. That is the root of the gameplay problem. Everything I discuss in this thread stems from this factor. If it was *just* possessions and fatigue, I would not expect slowdown to rather consistently beat uptempo in otherwise even-looking teams; but that’s what I’m seeing. I’m not the only one.

you are full of it. i already agreed to all that. that was my first post - i said i agreed slowdown had a wider use case and that tempo is poorly implemented in this game as a whole. your response was that i should read better (i'll also agree, running uptempo is not a great counter to slowdown in many cases). you said

"If you read more closely, you’d see the problem is not that slowdown is a limited possession concept to allow less talented teams to *sometimes* compete - that’s a given, and accepted. The problem is that it’s being used by exceptional teams to win championships, with no viable gameplay counter."

and now, in your last 2 posts, you BOTH tell me to ignore the usage, that its only about the raw balance of slowdown itself, not to worry about the favorites running slowdown - as well as telling me, its already been proven by plenty of other coaches and i need to wake up to today's game.

dude, make up your freaking mind. either you want to stake a claim that elite teams running slowdown is causing a balance issue, or you don't want to stake the claim. you can't claim it at all moments except when someone is arguing against it, and then say that person is responding to random stuff you never said.

You are a trip gil. I’ll give you that.

In your first post you agreed with the premise of the thread (kind of) but went on to explain that we should be “countering” a slowdown strategy by building deep press teams. That’s what got us off the rails. That’s why you’re twisted in knots right now telling me to make up my mind, because I’ve responded to a bunch of weird side tangents you’ve gone off on (mea culpa, my bad, I should have said from the very start, dude, just stick to the point).

Again: a deviation from normal is a game-by-game gameplay decision. That gameplay decision should have a risk/reward proposition attached to it that is balanced. If it’s not a balanced proposition, that leads to lots of other potential gameplay problems. My Oregon team has no real stamina or turnover concerns. If a team like that can get all benefit and no real risk by choosing slowdown, the same should be true by deviating from normal the other way, and that isn’t the case. So again, before you go off on all the other stuff you want to get off your chest again tonight, please do respond to this actual point first. Because for all the words you’ve typed in this thread, including quite a few that have gotten pretty personal for some reason, you still haven’t touched this one.

Seems to me if an exceptional team wants to run slowdown, the best way to counter is to also be an exceptional team. I don't necessarily agree that great teams running slowdown are breaking the game...there should not be a magical gameplanning counter to make up for a talent/recruiting gap. It's not news that 80% of this game is recruiting.

In summation, I’d say Shoe’s point is (correct me if I’m wrong):

Deviation from normal tempo should be on a scale of risk/reward. That scale should be balanced so that uptempo and slowdown are equally weighted on the either side of the scale; equal possibilities of risk/reward.

Further, his theory is that the game engine currently is not a balanced scale, that it seems slowdown is greater reward and lesser risk than uptempo.

The statement makes sense to me... whether you agree with it or don’t.

Posted by craigaltonw on 12/20/2020 10:59:00 PM (view original):
In summation, I’d say Shoe’s point is (correct me if I’m wrong):

Deviation from normal tempo should be on a scale of risk/reward. That scale should be balanced so that uptempo and slowdown are equally weighted on the either side of the scale; equal possibilities of risk/reward.

Further, his theory is that the game engine currently is not a balanced scale, that it seems slowdown is greater reward and lesser risk than uptempo.

The statement makes sense to me... whether you agree with it or don’t.

I agree with your breakdown of what Shoe is saying.

Couple of questions...
(1) What are the actual differences in FG% between uptempo, normal and slowdown?
(2) Are there any pro-uptempo factors that we're overlooking? Like, beyond FG%, does the defense create more turnovers per possession vs a slowdown offense cuz they're holding the ball an extra 12 seconds per possession?

Posted by shoe3 on 12/20/2020 7:21:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 12/20/2020 6:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 12/20/2020 3:06:00 PM (view original):
In essence gil, you go off the rails after your first sentence in this thread - which is essentially the only one that has been on point. That’s where we should get back to if you’re interested in actually discussing, rather than resurrecting whatever old conversations are going through your head today.

”if the thread is suggesting that uptempo has a more narrow use case than slowdown, in HD as it stands today, i would agree”

This. This is what the thread is suggesting. You can even ignore usage for the moment, because people are always going to vary in how well they use the tools. Slowdown benefits far more teams than uptempo, because it does not come with the same sort of extreme negative risks uptempo has. That is the root of the gameplay problem. Everything I discuss in this thread stems from this factor. If it was *just* possessions and fatigue, I would not expect slowdown to rather consistently beat uptempo in otherwise even-looking teams; but that’s what I’m seeing. I’m not the only one.

you are full of it. i already agreed to all that. that was my first post - i said i agreed slowdown had a wider use case and that tempo is poorly implemented in this game as a whole. your response was that i should read better (i'll also agree, running uptempo is not a great counter to slowdown in many cases). you said

"If you read more closely, you’d see the problem is not that slowdown is a limited possession concept to allow less talented teams to *sometimes* compete - that’s a given, and accepted. The problem is that it’s being used by exceptional teams to win championships, with no viable gameplay counter."

and now, in your last 2 posts, you BOTH tell me to ignore the usage, that its only about the raw balance of slowdown itself, not to worry about the favorites running slowdown - as well as telling me, its already been proven by plenty of other coaches and i need to wake up to today's game.

dude, make up your freaking mind. either you want to stake a claim that elite teams running slowdown is causing a balance issue, or you don't want to stake the claim. you can't claim it at all moments except when someone is arguing against it, and then say that person is responding to random stuff you never said.

You are a trip gil. I’ll give you that.

In your first post you agreed with the premise of the thread (kind of) but went on to explain that we should be “countering” a slowdown strategy by building deep press teams. That’s what got us off the rails. That’s why you’re twisted in knots right now telling me to make up my mind, because I’ve responded to a bunch of weird side tangents you’ve gone off on (mea culpa, my bad, I should have said from the very start, dude, just stick to the point).

Again: a deviation from normal is a game-by-game gameplay decision. That gameplay decision should have a risk/reward proposition attached to it that is balanced. If it’s not a balanced proposition, that leads to lots of other potential gameplay problems. My Oregon team has no real stamina or turnover concerns. If a team like that can get all benefit and no real risk by choosing slowdown, the same should be true by deviating from normal the other way, and that isn’t the case. So again, before you go off on all the other stuff you want to get off your chest again tonight, please do respond to this actual point first. Because for all the words you’ve typed in this thread, including quite a few that have gotten pretty personal for some reason, you still haven’t touched this one.

merry christmas shoe. there's a difference between a team building slowdown strategy and a game planning one, and i think both are valid (both were raised before i started posting). however, if we are only talking about game planning in this post, i'll go for that.

i don't really have anything to add to your question, that i haven't already said. as a game planning strategy, i don't think slowdown is substantially unbalanced, but probably a little bit, in terms of a lack of offsetting negatives for the underdog. generally speaking, no game planning response is needed to an opponent's slowdown. play your team first and the opponent second.

that said, i do definitely recognize tempo as a whole is kinda whack in this game, and i think slowdown has a broader use case than uptempo. i just don't think there is a competitive imbalance that results. so its sort of like... i'll agree there's an issue, but i don't think its a major one, and i definitely don't think it causes a rift in the competitive balance of the game. also, while not in this last post - i would agree uptempo vs slowdown tends to see the uptempo team disadvantaged compared to a normal/normal battle between the two teams. i'm not convinced this is a problem, however. if uptempo and slowdown were just opposites, i'm just not sure that's a good thing - right now, the better team doesn't always run uptempo, and that's good. the worse team also doesn't always run slowdown, although its definitely more common. but i think that is good, too. in general, the idea that a team would run slowdown one game and uptempo the next, as a regular course of events, seems a little silly (compared to reality). so i'm not really convinced tempo as a stand alone game planning decision makes a ton of sense, honestly.

back to oregon. the downsides of that slowdown, i agree, if you have the depth, you don't really pay in stats. you pay in volatility if and only if you are the favorite, which i think is pretty important. but also, if you are a short stacked team backed into slowdown, you've also lost the game planning option of uptempo (at least in most cases, presumably), which is something. if you aren't a short stacked team backed into slowdown, and you aren't the favorite, then IMO you are using slowdown as it is intended in this game, and in a way that isn't terribly balanced but not terribly dangerous from a competitive balance standpoint, IMO - because the favorites do not have this same luxury. as in all such things, balance at the top takes precedence.

Thanks gil. Happy holidays to you too. Just a couple things.

“in general, the idea that a team would run slowdown one game and uptempo the next, as a regular course of events, seems a little silly (compared to reality).”

That’s not what I’m suggesting, you’re making a leap here. I think the idea is that most teams should operate *best* at normal. Unless they are specifically designed (through team building) to do it, there should be a penalty (at least a risk of one, to balance against a potential reward) deviating from normal, in the way dahsdebater described early on. If that function ever existed, I don’t think it does now, or if it does it is so minimal it is basically ignored regarding slowdown. The way coaches use the tool is up to them, but have a rational tool available.

“the downsides of that slowdown, i agree, if you have the depth, you don't really pay in stats. you pay in volatility if and only if you are the favorite, which i think is pretty important.”

Right, but if my opponent is playing slowdown, I’m already exposed to that volatility of limited possessions. So why not also get the benefits from running slowdown myself? As I said in OP, I am lazy and don’t track anything, so this is speculative and anecdotal, but I suspect there are fg% and especially turnover advantages attached to running slowdown. It definitely feels like there are.

Now is it “breaking the game”? Not at this point. That isn’t what I’m suggesting. My suggestion is that the developers look at it and dial it back (if indeed those fg% and turnover advantages are baked into slowdown) if it’s becoming a problem in a big picture, because all I have is my own anecdotal experience, and chatter I’m seeing. Otherwise, the point of this thread is to talk about tempo and bring the strategy to light. Like the “doubleteam the 2 highest scorers” trick, among others, there are lots of things coaches do we can learn from, and the forum is a good place to talk about it.

Posted by shoe3 on 12/21/2020 12:33:00 PM (view original):
Thanks gil. Happy holidays to you too. Just a couple things.

“in general, the idea that a team would run slowdown one game and uptempo the next, as a regular course of events, seems a little silly (compared to reality).”

That’s not what I’m suggesting, you’re making a leap here. I think the idea is that most teams should operate *best* at normal. Unless they are specifically designed (through team building) to do it, there should be a penalty (at least a risk of one, to balance against a potential reward) deviating from normal, in the way dahsdebater described early on. If that function ever existed, I don’t think it does now, or if it does it is so minimal it is basically ignored regarding slowdown. The way coaches use the tool is up to them, but have a rational tool available.

“the downsides of that slowdown, i agree, if you have the depth, you don't really pay in stats. you pay in volatility if and only if you are the favorite, which i think is pretty important.”

Right, but if my opponent is playing slowdown, I’m already exposed to that volatility of limited possessions. So why not also get the benefits from running slowdown myself? As I said in OP, I am lazy and don’t track anything, so this is speculative and anecdotal, but I suspect there are fg% and especially turnover advantages attached to running slowdown. It definitely feels like there are.

i know you aren't suggesting that. i was making a general comment on tempo - in agreement with the theme that tempo is kinda screwy - but specifically, the entire concept of a team being able to flip at will between uptempo and slowdown strikes me as pretty strange. i'm just saying, i agree tempo is off, but i perhaps have a little bit of a different take. systemically, i don't think tempo is implemented richly. i think it is implemented superficially from a sim engine stand point and strangely from a game planning standpoint, and where tweaking the impact on something like fg% won't change that reality. none of that is meant to contradict anything you said, i do think the slowdown implementation is funky but i view it as part of a larger problem, if that is fair?

when your opponent is running slowdown, i agree there is volatility - but i do think double slowdown still adds more.

the fg% and turnover rate comments definitely get into the weeds. whether or not there are differences there is one of the longest and least resolved debates in HD history. i often feel like uptempo hits the team running it harder on fatigue, but CS says explicitly this is false. i also feel like the per-possession rate of TOs and fouls actually goes down as you have more of them, but again, i think CS explicitly says this is false. it does not seem to me that a 20% increase in pace (tempo + sets) results in a 20% increase in TOs and fouls (i think it is less). but, i really don't know. the thing i feel strongly about is a lot the conclusions folks drawn from CS comments on tempo, and perhaps even conclusions drawn by CS themselves, is those conclusions do not line up with my observed reality. among other things, the difficulty i've had making uptempo work in the press with ridiculously successful programs and excellent depth suggests to me there is more to the story.

the fg%, i honestly do not know. my personal opinion is that fatigue could explain those changes. it seems players who are playing green on normal don't shoot better under slowdown. i could believe there is a small fg% penalty for players on slowdown, which is hard to detect because team fg% should benefit in the face of even player fg% (from better scorers being on the court a higher % of time due to lower fatigue and fouls - at least in theory). players do seem to shoot worse in uptempo, but i think this is more for press or fb teams who are paying a higher fatigue penalty, i don't feel like the penalty is as bad for m2m and zone. specifically because the magnitude of fg% impact i see seems to track fatigue, i think fatigue explains most of it. my best guess is there is no direct or obvious indirect impact on player fg% from tempo, outside of fatigue and the way fatigue impacts fg% across pace in general (trying not to use tempo for both tempo alone and tempo with set tempo from press vs zone or fb vs triangle etc).

just to make sure its clear, these specific questions (to, foul, fg rate in tempo) are probably #1 on my list of questions i have contemplated a lot but have low confidence in a set of answers. so i definitely could be off base on all of the details. i think strategically, i understand how to use tempo well, but mechanically, i am like a child blinking at the sun.