Date: Mon May 5 12:16:34 2008
Sender: Red Burley
I been looking at my opponent for tommorrow (North Carolina) and Im wondering
a) how can they possibly be 1-4 and b) do i have any chance of beating them.
They have good PFs , so good paint scoring. Thats all fine and well, but then I
have to contend with this:
292 S.Newell PG So 8 2 3 7 6 7 3 16 100 6' 6" *S A A SF
A 6'6" guy who can pass AND score. My PG is pretty good defensively, but I dont
see what would be the best way to defend against a team that can score inside
and outside. Of course, I dont have much of a clue as far as game tactics goes.
Maybe I can confuse them by waving lots of white flags?
Date: Tue May 6 09:15:15 2008
Sender: Jay Schlegel
Df=2? If you have SGs/PGs that can shoot at all, then try to score against Mr
Newell.
Date: Tue May 6 14:00:54 2008
Sender: Red Burley
Unfortunately my only decent outside shooter was injured.
A more general problem I have (besides not being able to recruit the players I
want/need) is, I dont know what defense works best against what. For example:
Shooting, by location
Inside: 4/10
10-footers: 7/10
15-footers: 3/6
3 Pointers: 6/23
Fast Break: 5/7
I scout a team and see a lot of box scores with similar shooting breakdowns.
Now intuition says, a 3-2 zone would work best. However, I have certain
questions I cant answer.
1) Is a 15-footer considered perimeter or medium? What is a 10-footer
considered?
2) In a zone defense, who is in the zone that covers 3-pointers? And the other
types of shots?
3) When is the best time to play zone and when to play man?
4) What to set press/trap at? How do I figure this out?
Im sure there are more things I would be wondering about if I looked at things
much longer. Same thing with the offensive side of things.
For me the basketball sim is by far the most frustrating, because I cant
intuitively figure out how to set my orders, and the help pages are singularly
unenlightening. So if I seem kind of negative when I post here, thats why- it
frustrates me to no end.
Date: Wed May 7 10:24:54 2008
Sender: James Mathis
I'll take a shot, but take with a grain of salt, I am a very uneven coach:
1) Is a 15-footer considered perimeter or medium? What is a 10-footer
considered?
Inside: Inside
10-footer: Medium
15-footer: Medium/perimeter
3-pointer: perimeter
Emphasizing inside shooting seems to be more powerful at preventing 3-pointers
than emphasizing perimeter is at preventing inside shots.
Emphasizing medium shooting appears to be weaker than emphasizing either of the
others, and seems to trend more towards 15-footers than 10-footers.
2) In a zone defense, who is in the zone that covers 3-pointers? And the other
types of shots?
Depends on the zone. I think that all zones except perhaps the 3-2 are more
susceptible to the 3-pointer than man-to-man, all else being equal. I am a
bigger fan of the man-to-man; I believe that it is more adaptable than
switching between zones. And I have no idea what the matchup zone is supposed
to look like, which is probably my biggest beef with the sim.
3) When is the best time to play zone and when to play man?
I generally prefer man-to-man, unless my team is pretty bad defensively (i.e.
more likely than not to have more than 2 bad defensive players on the floor).
The ability to set matchups is very powerful, IMHO.
4) What to set press/trap at? How do I figure this out?
I don't like to trap unless the other team can't shoot the three or is very
butterfingered. Fatigue-wise, it's hard to do if you are thin at the guard
position. My depth relative to the other team, the other team's Ps and, to a
lesser extent In, ratings, and whether I need to jack up game training ratings
(affecting fatigue) all play into my decision whether to press or not.
As an aside, the prototype scrimmages, while pretty imperfect (they don't allow
you to set player depth/shooting depth or shooter/handler/rebounder), can help
answer general questions like this.
Date: Wed May 7 16:10:52 2008
Sender: Red Burley
1) So if an opponent favors 10-15 foot shots, a 2-1-2 zone might work better?
2) I usually favor man-to-man but my players (as a team) arent that great
defenders. What I was looking for was something like this: if Im playing 3-2
zone, do all three outside defenders set up on the 3-point line? That seems
unlikely, so I assume that one or two are responsible for a zone outside the
line.
4) What I was asking, not very clearly, was more like: what kind of
teams/players/strategies are most susceptible to trap or press?
As far as protos-Ive gotten a lot of useful info from them regarding offense,
but not defense. Maybe Im not looking at the right things . . .
Date: Fri May 9 05:26:43 2008
Sender: Jeff Luddingsmash
On positve about zone is that it doesn't induce as much fatigue for the
defense. This is important if you have an injury, if you are pressing, playing
the bench less, etc. For instance, I once had a team with a great starting five
but a weak bench. I played zone to keep them on the floor more often.
One bit of advice on the sim... use scouting reports. The look/shot numbers
give a pretty good indication of how things worked.
Date: Fri May 9 09:25:58 2008
Sender: Red Burley
Jeff, do you mean the scouting reports for protos?
Date: Fri May 9 09:41:14 2008
Sender: Jeff Luddingsmash
scouting reports are fairly useful for games, protos and scrimmages. They'll
show you the effect of doubling, the quality of looks, etc.
For example, check out this report (offense only shown):
Num Name Dist Look Dbld Dist Look
R.Rahija 3.1 1.8 2.6 2.4 3.1
G.Maldanado 2.8 0.6 2.9 --- ---
T.Hoveland 5.6 1.9 0.1 4.3 3.3
E.Rhee 5.7 0.3 0.3 --- ---
T.Kuhn 4.5 1.4 0.8 --- ---
A.Upton 7.7 2.7 -0.8 3.6 3.6
D.Sager 7.9 1.2 -0.9 --- ---
S.Potter 8.3 0.6 -1.0 --- ---
G.Chokel 8.2 0.8 -1.0 --- ---
S.Hale 9.6 2.5 -1.0 --- ---
W.Gurevicius 9.8 1.4 -0.8 --- ---
My opponent doubled inside, which caused my centers to be doubled more often.
My power forwards played a bit further away from the basket (10-15 feet) so
they were actually doubled less often than they would have been against a
straight defense. My SFs and guards were all left open about an equal amount in
the game because of the double inside defense.
Looks... not all looks are created equal. Take Upton for example... he had
virtually the same shooting look as Rahija and Hoveland, however, his passing
look was much better. This basically means he was left open more often, which
is why he went off for 31 points.
Anyhow, my advice is to play with these things and see how the numbers move
around. A good time to test is during the preseason in scrimmages.
Date: Fri May 9 13:55:20 2008
Sender: Red Burley
Ok, some questions. I guess I was misinterpreting a lot of the scouting reports
in the past:
"My opponent doubled inside, which caused my centers to be doubled more often.
My power forwards played a bit further away from the basket (10-15 feet) so
they were actually doubled less often than they would have been against a
straight defense."
-Did the PFs play further away because you set them to do that, or do they move
out as a response to the defense?
"Looks... not all looks are created equal. Take Upton for example... he had
virtually the same shooting look as Rahija and Hoveland, however, his passing
look was much better. This basically means he was left open more often, which
is why he went off for 31 points."
-Does "passing look" indicate his look when he gets the ball, or when he is in
his position without the ball?
-Something I see a lot is, a guy with a shooting look of 4.x who shoots
2-for-12. What should I take from that?
Date: Fri May 9 14:27:11 2008
Sender: Jeff Luddingsmash
"Did the PFs play further away because you set them to do that, or do they move
out as a response to the defense?"
I set them that way. If you flip back to previous box scores you'll see that my
PFs typically play at about a 5.3 distance. On other teams you'll find PFs that
have distances around 4.0.
Why is this? PFs from both teams are probably set to play at PF distance. I
often set my PFs to shoot from SF distance (since they are good shooters).
Teams with PFs at 4.0 probably have their shooters set to shoot at PF or SF
distance.
That being said, I also think players naturally adjust to the defense somewhat.
"Does "passing look" indicate his look when he gets the ball, or when he is in
his position without the ball?"
I think with the ball.
Something I see a lot is, a guy with a shooting look of 4.x who shoots
2-for-12. What should I take from that?
Bad luck. He had good looks, he just missed them. Over the long run this will
average out.
That being said, I know how frustrating it can be with guards, especially when
they have great looks but miss everything.
Bottom line... STUDY THOSE LOOKS.
They can show you a lot. How defenses play. How open players are. How much luck
factored in.
It can also illustrate players that forced up shots (when you have a player
with a worse shooting look that passing look).
And it can show you which players on your team are actually the better
defenders.
Date: Sat May 10 16:29:33 2008
Sender: Red Burley
Is there any way you can import individual box scores into Excel or MS Works
Spreadsheet? Just a thought . . .
Date: Sat May 10 18:26:15 2008
Sender: Jeff Luddingsmash
Sure. Just copy and paste into notepad. Then open excel and "import data
source" from the saved notepad file.
Date: Tue May 13 10:29:09 2008
Sender: Red Burley
Even I can figure this one out:
Num Name Dist Look Dbld Dist Look
191 D.Parti 2.7 3.5 7.7 0.5 6.7
The lesson being, doubling this guy is a waste of time!
Seriously- Im wondering if maybe I worry too much about defense? Maybe I'd be
better off to just set it to Straight Man and stop obsessing??
Date: Tue May 13 13:15:17 2008
Sender: Jian Lan
i always use man-man defense and set the amount of pressing/trapping base on
opponents. i like man defense cause it lets me set individual matchups. the
zones never really work very well for me. but i noticed that ryan has been
very successful with it though. and please stop doubling parti ;)
Date: Tue May 13 13:39:50 2008
Sender: Red Burley
"i always use man-man defense and set the amount of pressing/trapping base on
opponents."
Ever since Ive been in CBA, Ive used man-to-man, until this season. After I got
clobbered in the playoffs last season by teams switching up defenses, and after
I assembled a team this year that was not full of defensive supermen, I thought
Id try something different.
And Ive asked this before, and have yet to have anyone answer: what kind of
teams are better to trap against? Obviously teams without a good outside
shooting SG, but Im sure there's more to it then this.
Same with the press; I dont have the slightest clue what types of teams would
be most vulnerable to the press.
Date: Tue May 13 14:07:34 2008
Sender: Jian Lan
I like to trap when I see that I have good perimeter defenders (guards) that
can create turnover via steals and when an opponent have either bad/low int
guards.
I use the same method for deciding when to press but take into account the
opponent's perimeter scoring abilities and my perimeter scoring abilities. If
I have little to no perimeter scoring and/or if the opponent have a lot of
perimeter scoring I will press less.
I do not take stamina into account since I tend to go depth in my bench.
Date: Tue May 13 14:24:47 2008
Sender: Bill Edwards
Let me throw my 2 cents worth in. What do I look for in my team to indicate
press/trap? The first thing you need is depth. Trapping and pressing tire out
your team quickly. The second thing you need is a team that plays GREAT
defense. Pressure gives up easy baskets, so you MUST get turnovers for it to
be effective.
When to press?....I basically look at the other team's starters and do a quick
calculation of average Ps. If my average Df is better than his average Ps,
it's a good time to press. If his passing is better than my defense, it is
suicide.
When to trap?....The key is that the other team cannot have great outside
shooters or be great passers. When you are trapping the SG, the PG is NOT
being defended...if the SG is able to get a pass off to the PG it's a wide open
shot. If the team has a pure point guard and a great shooter/bad passer,
that's a good candidate for trapping.
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