Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't press most helpful when used against teams that are "better" than you (i.e. you are the underdog)? Again, I may be wrong, but press is designed to maximize outliers. You increase your chance of getting steals/turnovers at the risk of committing more fouls and giving up easy baskets. "Normal" half-court defense is the status quo. By running press you're essentially turning up the randomness factor in an already too-random simulation. Theoretically, against a better opponent, you should see your chance of winning increase, but also your chance of being blown out increase, as well.
This would be like Louisiana Tech playing Alabama in football and basically throwing out their traditional playbook and going for it on every fourth down and running crazy fakes and generally being unorthodox. It's an extreme example, but isn't the basis the same as running press - at least in this simulation? You slightly maximize your chance of being a superior opponent at the cost of being run out of the building if it fails.
This led me to remember reading something on Grantland a while back:
Malcolm Gladwell, in one of his great exchanges with Bill Simmons, said "I am a bit obsessed with the full-court press at the moment. I just did a story for The New Yorker about how underdogs beat favorites, which had a lot about basketball in it. For the story, I went down to Louisville and had a long chat with Rick Pitino. He argued that the press is the best chance an underdog has of being competitive with stronger teams, and I think his record proves the case. That Providence team he took to the Final Four in 1984 has to have been just about the least talented team EVER to reach that level. Then, of course, Pitino takes one of his first Louisville teams to the Final Four in 2005 and this season's team to the Elite Eight, and no one's going to argue that either of those teams were filled with future Hall of Famers. Given that, then, why do so few underdog teams use the press? Pitino's explanation is that it's because most coaches simply can't convince their players to work that hard." http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090513/part2
Anyway...thoughts?