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You would think that a 3-2 is more effective when the opponent has a good PG, but it's actually the opposite that i find is true. a 3-2 is more effective when the PG has a more pedestrian PA rating. I'm sorry in advance to Cletus for this one, but here's a game from my s39 worlds run when i 3-2'd Canada:

http://www.buzzerbeater.com/match/43093/boxscore.aspx

We knew that Canada's flow rating from previous matchups was never above a mid 6. Given that, it seemed likely that the PG could not have a PA rating above 13 in most instances, and instead was more likely to have a 12 PA. At worst he had not enough handling in our eyes.

It works really well when the opponent also walks into your 3-2 zone with a patient. About every time we predicted the patient correctly against a decent opponent with a 3-2, the results were devastating. Unfortunately, i went to the well one too many times (or two too many maybe). Anyways, this speaks volumes to the necessity for a good owner to develop a good PG for their club team even, if you want to attempt to run slower offenses in general a good PG is paramount to breaking some of the defensive holds that the opponent can put on you.

Funny that we have different views on what makes a certain defense successful. In the end, you can see that the PG is what decides if you use a 3-2 or not. The PG has always been IMO, the second most important player on the court, after a small forward. Since small forwards can be so diverse, it really makes the PG the most necessary player to train to your exact expectations.

I would agree that the 3-2 can work well against a patient. Yet, if you have a shutdown defender, and you know where the opponent will play their star shooter, MtM is a better option.

Man to man is almost always the better play over a zone. The problem is the risk attached with the matchup. In that game above, a shooting guard played center. If I use a 14 od 5 I’d guard at center and parks doesn’t play center and Cletus puts him at sf instead..... the threat of a bad result is far more likely

Fair. It really is a game of risk vs reward.
Zone = Lower Risk Lower Reward
MtM = Higher Risk Higher Reward

I've had two former US national team managers come in here and vouch for me, as well as someone that i didn't see eye to eye with on the US side even come in here and speak. So some people like me, some people dislike me. I'm sure if i looked a little bit i could probably find people here who would speak ill of you. That is why i keep trying to push this back to the actual team.

no problem with this from your post.

If you want to know why i don't want to be a part of the u21 USA team, i suggest you take a gander at the spam and the craziness in that u21 thread. Then let a few of those guys run rampant on discord all day long without punishment, and then let them also spam mail onsite with no BB punishment. If i wanted to watch a circus act, given that Ringling Bros. has stopped bringing the circus to town i suppose that would have to suffice for me. But no, i have no aspirations any time soon of participating in the us u21. Maybe if those managers eventually fade away perhaps.

Then you go to here.

Are you kidding me Fury? I thought you didn't want personal attacks, and then, you out of left field start this crap about me again. you need to grow up.

Dear Canada:
(276706.80)

read from that post- down to 276706.90

That was the largest circus of a u21 discussion I ever saw...


Phyr and I still talk. almost daily.

but yeah, With Fury, be ready for petty squabbling, and him blackballing you or ignoring you completely because he "doesn't take you seriously"

Sparky. I would bet my team, you're already in this boat.

edit: Canada deserves the truth.

Last edited by RandyMoss at 10/29/2018 7:32:36 PM

Also, I'll note. Fury Updated Pham, on 10/27/18 to the USA.

Prior to that, the last update was literally the end of the s41 worlds.

Managers, did try and get in contact with him.

I'll leave any theories on that out of this, and just leave the facts.

Pham was NOT updated, a single time, to the USA, for over 2 whole seasons.

Zone works moderately well if one of the two conditions are right (either no passer with significant passing strengths). Thats why it gets more play almost always, because there is a 50/50 chance at getting one or the other right.

http://www.buzzerbeater.com/match/46991/boxscore.aspx

Team with less than 100 players picking it and getting the inverted patient against a team that had just at 975 users at the time. they mitigated some risk by double guessing LI and running 3-2, meaning they could've won by more than they did. That's the danger of running inverted patient, if someone predicts it you are dead to rights. So it becomes a cat and mouse game in the u21 a lot of times: will someone pick LI like normal, will they pick patient, or will they pick up tempo neutral or outside offense and ruin your attempt to utilize 3-2 to mitigate passing.

That's probably the extent of what i would call more public knowledge of the u21 strategic scene from a defensive perspective. More than that, while i know you hate secrets, is probably best not to be divulged if you don't want them to backtrack and figure out how to guesstimate what is being planned.

Once again, I still think that 3-2 works better when there is a strong point guard passer. Yet, to each their own. I believe that the country deciding on the better manager is more important than being scared about speaking publically about tactics.

On the subject of 2-3 zones, I wouldn't be so radical, it helps when the team is not the best rebound wise (and it works even better with U21 as they tend to have lower %fg so more offensive rebounds to catch). Against big teams there's no match anyway, but against similar teams with strong discrepancies between guards and bigs, it can help. I experimented with it in the past seasons and it wasn't as bad as you made it to be.
Then again I'm not talking about winning against the USA or France or China here. But the "I will never use it" seems premature

Edit : the game against Malaysia comes to mind. They had way better bigs than us (Katem was already at 50k salary), it was the first week so equal GS, yet we out-rebounded them. Don't know if that made us win the game but it sure helped

Last edited by Fwinns at 10/29/2018 11:15:38 PM

I agree with you on that. Every offense and defense has some kind of use. Just some will probably never come around to being the most useful in a given situation. Yet, we shouldn't rule them out.