The relevance of defense to pace should be pretty straightforward: a defense that is listed as "slower pace" is likely one that will make you work longer in the clock to find a quality shot.
If that is true, then slower paces will be very dominating because you are saying they are better defenses (thinking against a rival who can go outside, inside and neutral with equal probability in a hypotethic situation) than higher paced ones.
Not necessarily. My statement implies nothing about the overall quality of shots taken, just about the time you need in order to find a good one, on average.
I'll give you a very simple example:
Imagine that a Man to Man defense gives the opposition a .400 chance to score a basket on both inside and outside shots, on average. Imagine that their offensive tactics require them to find a .350 or better shot before they take one. In these circumstances, the opposition will likely take the first shot they see.
Now imagine I switch from M2M to 2-3, where the chance of inside shots is lowered to .250, but the chance of outside shots rises to .450. The opposition still needs a .350 chance in order to shoot. Now, since the offense is a series of shot opportunities, they might see some bad inside opportunities before they shoot, but will only take an outside shot. This will make them work the clock a little bit until they get an outside opportunity, however the overall quality of shots will potentially be higher.
This is obviously very simplified, but that's how I think it works.
Last edited by GM-kozlodoev at 10/6/2009 10:22:21 AM"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."