How does BLK work? And how do you see that it’s working? A quick search in Naismith showed that only 1 players was averaging over 2 blocks a game and that the top-rated PGs, SGs, or SFs in BLK were averaging less than a block a game. This made me wonder what is BLK actually doing? And is it worth anything for such a low statistical yield vs. a replacement player?

Additionally, if you had a team of all 100 BLK players with otherwise normal ratings (assuming there are guards like this, which appear to be quite rare), what would you see out of that team?

The short answer is that BLK improves the overall defense of the player. It’s widely accepted that it’s the third most important attribute for post defenders after defense and ATH.

It may be second for centers in a 2-3 zone.

Plenty of people virtually ignore the BLK rating and are reasonably successful.

Cosmetically, once the event tree decided a shot is blocked (which is after if it is a make or miss) the game assigns who gets the block based on the block ratings and position of the guys on the court.

I believe it's also relevant as far as altering shots. Whether a shot is actually blocked or not. Which is touching on what Joe said, as far as having an impact defensively overall.

Think of it like when you see a coach holding a broomstick at practice and forcing the player to shoot higher to avoid the block attempt. The higher the BLK rating, the longer the broomstick Haha

The higher the block the lower the chance the shot has to go in.

Additionally, I believe that low guard block scores is what make LP based guards so effective. If the type of shot is important (which I think it is) then those guards that use the ath/lp equation use the defenders block more than most people think.

So if I am understanding correctly, a team of all high BLK would cause the opponents to be less likely to make shots but not more likely to get blocks in the box score. So high BLK is mainly reflected in opponent 2pt fg %?
Does it also help defenders force turnovers?
Is it a factor in every shot (3pt FGAs included) against a man to man D?

Unrelated but now I’m thinking:
I know that zone is one overall defense score and that man is obviously mainly player vs player. How is the defense’s effect on the shoot determined for the FCP?

others are more expert, but I do not think zone works with one overall virtual score

I think that 2-3 zone combines the SF and PF and combines the PG and SG.....and 3-2 zone combines the PG, SG, SF and combines PF and C.

Posted by fd343ny on 11/23/2021 1:44:00 PM (view original):
others are more expert, but I do not think zone works with one overall virtual score

I think that 2-3 zone combines the SF and PF and combines the PG and SG.....and 3-2 zone combines the PG, SG, SF and combines PF and C.

its tricky, but here is my understanding:
- all 5 players contribute to the defensive score of every shot
- in the 2-3 zone, there are 3 formulas used to evaluate the player's defensively. the pg/sg each use the same formula, as do the sf/pf. what this means is you could flip your sf/pf in the 2-3 with no defensive impact (does impact rebounding, which is a part of defense in a bigger sense, but still).
- in the 3-2, there are 2 formulas used, one for the pg-sg-sf, and one for the pf-c

distance is a factor in all of this. this is the wildcard. according to seble, the 5 players are not weighted in the zone defense, not generally and not by distance. but the individual formulas, which presumably translate to something like a defensive score for each player, do factor in distance. its likely things like blk and spd have varying importance with distance, with long range shots depending more on spd and close range ones more on blk. such a reality would drive something akin to a weighting. it would make true a statement like 'players are not weighted defensive in the zone; however, in general guards are more important to the defense of long range shots while bigs are generally more important to the defense of short range shots'. my personal belief is that everything contemplated in this paragraph is reality.

Posted by bpielcmc on 11/23/2021 12:16:00 PM (view original):
So if I am understanding correctly, a team of all high BLK would cause the opponents to be less likely to make shots but not more likely to get blocks in the box score. So high BLK is mainly reflected in opponent 2pt fg %?
Does it also help defenders force turnovers?
Is it a factor in every shot (3pt FGAs included) against a man to man D?

Unrelated but now I’m thinking:
I know that zone is one overall defense score and that man is obviously mainly player vs player. How is the defense’s effect on the shoot determined for the FCP?

the block does both things - TJ was basically explaining, there are 2 impacts from shot blocking. one is blocking shots, one is altering - the former contributes to the blocked shots stat - the latter contributes to lower 2pt% mostly (perhaps slight impact on 3pt% but its either none or far less).

so for a team of high blk players, you'd see both better 2pt defense, and more blocked shots. the point is the value of a player's blocking exceeds what you can see just from the blocked shots statistic.

that said, blocking isn't super powerful in this game. in press, you can more or less ignore it. this is somewhat less true today - in the olden days, high reb players, which was a priority for everyone, usually had high blk too. so you didn't need to focus on blk to get plenty of it. but i used to straight ignore block at the highest levels of press play and it held me back precisely zero. now its a small factor for me. in man, block is a fringe core for bigs for me. defense is clearly much more important, and like defense, there's really no other value to blk outside strictly defensive things. i think block is less than half as important as defense in man, but probably more than a third? perhaps about a third, i kinda waffle. in zone i tend to value block near defense levels in my 2-3 centers and as a meaningful core, perhaps 2/3rds the value of defense, in my 2-3 pf/c. but i do wonder if i am overdoing it there. zone is my least played defense by a good margin.

your last question is a super interesting one. i should really know the answer definitively, its probably top 3 press questions i feel like i should be able to fully explain, but i can't. maybe top 1? but i will take a stab anyway, i'd defer to someone else if i could.

in general, press falls back on a man-like scheme in the half court. this has been stated generally by CS but this topic of conversation has basically been ignored forever, i don't really know why. i can't remember having or seeing a meaningful conversation with CS on this topic, and i don't really recall much of conversation on the forums, either. my experience leaves the picture somewhat muddy. i don't think press just falls back onto straight man in the half court, but it sure as **** doesn't fall back into zone. ath/def importance in press half court, and the lesser importance on speed and blk, makes the half court defense in press feel much more man-like than zone-like to me. my elite press teams will generally compete with elite man teams in terms of their ath/def prowess for this reason (well, really the causation is reversed there. my elite press teams had to have great ath/def to be so amazing, and that contributes to my understanding of the half court press defense being man-like). it still doesn't feel exactly like straight man to me, i'm not sure what's different. but if a newer coach was trying to gain a basic understanding, i'd tell them to basically think of the half court defense in press as very man-like.

importantly... perhaps tellingly... will i ever change my players around so that i have a better half court defender on an opposing scorer, in a press defense? yes. less often, but yes.

Posted by gillispie on 11/23/2021 2:20:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bpielcmc on 11/23/2021 12:16:00 PM (view original):
So if I am understanding correctly, a team of all high BLK would cause the opponents to be less likely to make shots but not more likely to get blocks in the box score. So high BLK is mainly reflected in opponent 2pt fg %?
Does it also help defenders force turnovers?
Is it a factor in every shot (3pt FGAs included) against a man to man D?

Unrelated but now I’m thinking:
I know that zone is one overall defense score and that man is obviously mainly player vs player. How is the defense’s effect on the shoot determined for the FCP?

the block does both things - TJ was basically explaining, there are 2 impacts from shot blocking. one is blocking shots, one is altering - the former contributes to the blocked shots stat - the latter contributes to lower 2pt% mostly (perhaps slight impact on 3pt% but its either none or far less).

so for a team of high blk players, you'd see both better 2pt defense, and more blocked shots. the point is the value of a player's blocking exceeds what you can see just from the blocked shots statistic.

that said, blocking isn't super powerful in this game. in press, you can more or less ignore it. this is somewhat less true today - in the olden days, high reb players, which was a priority for everyone, usually had high blk too. so you didn't need to focus on blk to get plenty of it. but i used to straight ignore block at the highest levels of press play and it held me back precisely zero. now its a small factor for me. in man, block is a fringe core for bigs for me. defense is clearly much more important, and like defense, there's really no other value to blk outside strictly defensive things. i think block is less than half as important as defense in man, but probably more than a third? perhaps about a third, i kinda waffle. in zone i tend to value block near defense levels in my 2-3 centers and as a meaningful core, perhaps 2/3rds the value of defense, in my 2-3 pf/c. but i do wonder if i am overdoing it there. zone is my least played defense by a good margin.

your last question is a super interesting one. i should really know the answer definitively, its probably top 3 press questions i feel like i should be able to fully explain, but i can't. maybe top 1? but i will take a stab anyway, i'd defer to someone else if i could.

in general, press falls back on a man-like scheme in the half court. this has been stated generally by CS but this topic of conversation has basically been ignored forever, i don't really know why. i can't remember having or seeing a meaningful conversation with CS on this topic, and i don't really recall much of conversation on the forums, either. my experience leaves the picture somewhat muddy. i don't think press just falls back onto straight man in the half court, but it sure as **** doesn't fall back into zone. ath/def importance in press half court, and the lesser importance on speed and blk, makes the half court defense in press feel much more man-like than zone-like to me. my elite press teams will generally compete with elite man teams in terms of their ath/def prowess for this reason (well, really the causation is reversed there. my elite press teams had to have great ath/def to be so amazing, and that contributes to my understanding of the half court press defense being man-like). it still doesn't feel exactly like straight man to me, i'm not sure what's different. but if a newer coach was trying to gain a basic understanding, i'd tell them to basically think of the half court defense in press as very man-like.

importantly... perhaps tellingly... will i ever change my players around so that i have a better half court defender on an opposing scorer, in a press defense? yes. less often, but yes.

My understanding of fcp in the frontcourt is that it's just M2M with every opposing player set to "Always" for double team.

that might be a way to think of it or something along those lines, but that is definitely not how it is. i wouldn't recommend thinking of it that way either.

anyway, if you have 3+ always players on the floor together, there are not enough defenders and the setting is ignored. also, the complexity of fcp is significantly more than that.

Man how I love your paragraph responses Gill! I mean this genuinely.

Two threads to follow but I'll break it up:
On BLK: if what TJ said is true (and I believe it) "Cosmetically, once the event tree decided a shot is blocked (which is after if it is a make or miss)." This means that the shot has already been missed so, even if a higher BLK makes it higher that a shot is labeled as a block vs labeled as a miss, the BLK function of shot-blocking is irrelevant because it hasn't turned any otherwise made shots into misses or lowered the number of shooting opportunities. Therefore only shot altering is of any importance? Unless... are blocked shots more likely to be rebounded by your own team?

On press:
Does anyone know then what are the frontcourt defense differences between FCP and HCP/M2M?

After trying to write my HD novella, I was kicking myself for not having saved more Gil posts. My new policy is to start all of these. Great info happening here

Posted by bpielcmc on 11/23/2021 6:11:00 PM (view original):
Man how I love your paragraph responses Gill! I mean this genuinely.

Two threads to follow but I'll break it up:
On BLK: if what TJ said is true (and I believe it) "Cosmetically, once the event tree decided a shot is blocked (which is after if it is a make or miss)." This means that the shot has already been missed so, even if a higher BLK makes it higher that a shot is labeled as a block vs labeled as a miss, the BLK function of shot-blocking is irrelevant because it hasn't turned any otherwise made shots into misses or lowered the number of shooting opportunities. Therefore only shot altering is of any importance? Unless... are blocked shots more likely to be rebounded by your own team?

On press:
Does anyone know then what are the frontcourt defense differences between FCP and HCP/M2M?

thanks! i know there's sometimes a limited audience for these things, but i feel like there are pretty many HD fanatics out there other than myself! plus i do it for myself really, i learn immensely via putting things out there. both from that internal process of integrity checking, consistency checking that happens when one verbalizes things, and from other folks poking holes or raising interesting questions.

anyway - i agree what TJ said is true too. there's sort of a lot of potential for confusion around wording on this one... this is very typical of all this TSF decision stuff, and where we talk sim engine mechanics. there's sort of two ways to look at this, conceptually and mechanically. conceptually, a player might block a shot, but he might have also altered it, causing a miss - so one shouldn't look at block stats and conclude the value of blocking. that was my point earlier (although i did exactly that as a rookie, which is part of why i ignored blocking entirely on my first generation of really good press teams - and it didn't hurt me. but that was luck / circumstance!).

mechanically, the actual block stats, like so many others, are distributed in a way, at a time, disconnected from the actual point of meaningful decision making. however, this doesn't inherently make those stats meaningless garbage. they could be essentially perfect, in spite of the disconnect, although in HD that is rarely the case (because they assign the stats to make the box score look realistic, or at least, are influenced by that desire). what probably is happening is, there's a formula around that make/miss, that is factoring in blocking. maybe X extra big man blocking is necessary for 2% of the total shots to become a miss, in some specific scenario, but then later, only 1% of total shots are called a block when stats are assigned. essentially, the make/miss formula is going to be factoring in block towards a missed shot, but without distinguishing between how that blocking is helping - via a full block, or via an altered shot.

in that sense, is it really appropriate to call that full 2% of the total shots becoming a miss, purely a function of blocking's shot-altering? probably not - the blocking impact in the make/miss decision was set to account for both contributions of blocking, even if its happening in one place. they might even be doing two calculations there, one for odds of a shot block, one for odds of a shot alter, but it all happens in that one state, before the key make/miss decision, and they just deal with the assigning of stats later.

with these algorithms and programming, you can often do equivalent things, or from a macro level, equivalent-enough things, by breaking stuff down many different ways, handling steps in many different orders. the game's order doesn't really have to make sense a basketball standpoint, for it to still work well. one of the absolute trickiest lines of inquiry in this game is, to what extent are these individual and team stats, which are applied after the key decisions have been made, 'real'? or 'window dressing'? the range is theoretically 0% to 100%. its about the connection between the way the stats are doled out later, and the way the stats get factored in at decision time. sometimes, like with assists 10 years ago, there was 0% connection - bh/pass had no impact on the fg% of team mates, and assists were just made up afterwards, completely disconnected from anything that happened earlier. other times, like with blocking, there is a relatively good tie (in my opinion), meaning the way the game distributes the block stats seems to mostly line up with each player's contributions to the team blocking effort that was factored in at make/miss time (although i agree with TJ that blk is more important at the 1-2 for shorter range 2s than the stats show, and than folks tend to believe - still, blk is definitely not a guard core in any system). it can get fairly complex, and its very hard for us to really know answers here, its a lot of speculation that requires an awful lot of context. and its very easy to be thrown off by underlying mechanical realities, its hard to think about this stuff and to make sense of it.

Posted by texashick on 11/23/2021 6:26:00 PM (view original):
After trying to write my HD novella, I was kicking myself for not having saved more Gil posts. My new policy is to start all of these. Great info happening here

i do do a lot of this stuff on the fly. its fairly complex topics and i usually just go straight 100wpm through my thoughts and post without reading (although i do usually read after the fact and edit a bit here or there but its often superficial). so i would just caution... i go through phases of clarity and fog on various topics, usually in cycles, but that rarely stops me from putting stuff out there! but i think you can *usually* tell if you read the whole thread, by how closely my initial claims align with what i'm still saying by the end, or even better if there's another version of that thread a couple years later. i definitely back off stuff or realize i've just made a total mess of things. but i'm glad you found some of it useful anyway! its just scary sometimes to think that some of these ramblings would be the basis for a guide, i suppose ;)

fwiw, I just finished a season playing Man defense, the SG had a 74 BLK rating ended up with 1 block. The SF, had a 48 rating, finished with 16 blocks.
As expected, the C had a 94 BLK rating, had 53 blocks.