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My guys suck at driving and they seem to do more of it in the Princeton, so I think the engine makes them. I don't like that because the philosophy of the Princeton is avoiding bad ISO matchups with passing, cutting and screening. But as the programmer said (thanks for that!), think of this as a new strategy similar to Princeton, but not Princeton.

ahhhhhhh but is it a chicken and egg scenario?

ie: Are they driving because they have high driving?

Or are they driving because the game engine is telling them to do so? Maybe if they had low driving, the game engine would attempt to find them for the open jumper?

Clearly, I can not drink the wine in front of me.

Several seasons ago I analysed Motion, LI, Princeton, RnG, both Isos and LP.

Princeton (only bigs and mid-range jumpers vs. driving vs. inside shots):
The breaking point was the PF. He's the key in Princeton in BB. He combined the inside shots (dunk, tip in and tough inside shots) from the C with the mid-range jumpers (baseline, foul line, top of the key and the wing) from the guards and SF.
From all five players, the PF took most of the inside shots and was only a little bit behind the PG, SG and SF (jumpers). But this is only the average. I played Princeton with a JS 12, JR 7, DR 8 and IS 15 PF for three seasons. And he took more jumpers than inside shots. He wasn't a big fan of driving either.

As an average the PF takes:
0.75 driving layups/game
6.5 mid range jumper/game
2.1 dunks/game
1.5 tip in/game
1.6 tough inside shot/game
1.8 3pts/game

But again, this is only an average of all kind of PFs. An the problem here is that there is no real "Princeton material" out there.

I talked with a veteran manager from Germany and he said one sentence which I found very interessting: "The Engine will force your players to take shots which are benefited by the chosen tactic. If your players have the needed skills, they will play more effective, if there skillsets are garbage you will fight against the Engine." I think same goes here for the bigs in Princeton. But because the PF takes all kind of shots, he won't fight against the Engine, he will just rely more on one kind of a shot. So short, in Princeton there is no "wrong" shot for the PF.

As for the C: The Center took only 12% of all shots. Their main actions were dunks, tip ins and tough inside shots. Most of these actions are a result of offensive rebounds or passes. A tip in is always after an offensive rebound, dunks and tough inside shots have a assist-needed rate of 70%+. I think the C will benefit more from Princeton if the others have high passing. But as long as the passing is low, he will rely on his reboung skill.

Clearly, I can not drink the wine in front of me.

This week I'm training my wingmen in resistance to iocane powder.

As for the C: The Center took only 12% of all shots. Their main actions were dunks, tip ins and tough inside shots. Most of these actions are a result of offensive rebounds or passes. A tip in is always after an offensive rebound, dunks and tough inside shots have a assist-needed rate of 70%+. I think the C will benefit more from Princeton if the others have high passing. But as long as the passing is low, he will rely on his reboung skill.

What were your C's shooting and passing skills in comparison to your PF? Did he have JS 12 and JR 7 as well?

As for the C: The Center took only 12% of all shots. Their main actions were dunks, tip ins and tough inside shots. Most of these actions are a result of offensive rebounds or passes. A tip in is always after an offensive rebound, dunks and tough inside shots have a assist-needed rate of 70%+. I think the C will benefit more from Princeton if the others have high passing. But as long as the passing is low, he will rely on his reboung skill.

What were your C's shooting and passing skills in comparison to your PF? Did he have JS 12 and JR 7 as well?

No. JS 4 - JR 4 - DR 1 and IS 16. His home was the paint. I used him as a rebounder and second-chance scorer.

Last edited by Nachtmahr at 8/5/2014 4:08:40 PM

Ah, I see. I wonder if he had a similar build as your PF, would have taken more than 12% of your teams total shots and from a similar variety of locations as your PF?

Cool.
I did an entire PL seaso n once playing princeton so imight have a look at the stats from that.

I had a similar PF to you but I also had a different C. Sounds like a job for the weekend for me.

The question would be: Do you want him to take more shots?

The GE rankes every palyer as a possible offensive option. The first three options will take most of the shots. Option four and five will take less. Let's say you have s really strong SF (option 1), an offensive PF (option 2) and a strong SG (option 3). The PG is only a little bit weaker than the SG and ranks as a fourth option. He would support your team if one of the first three struggle to score. Your C is only the fifth option. Why should I pay a lot of money for his IS? Wouldn't it be better to have a weak offense, but a top defense? He will support the other four with his ID, RB and SB. But still stay really cheap.
I have such a team. Yesterday my option 1 and 3 got injured. The whole thing was recalculated and some of my weak offensive players had to score. But because I have an overpowered defense, my opponent couldn't gain any advantage of this. It's a trade off. Some managers want all five players as potential scoring options and the pay a lot of salary or play with an average defense. I'm one off the managers who wants offensive players and defensive players. The players have a low salary (despite almost all of them have skills with 17 and 18) and they perform exellent. And again back to Princeton: this tactic gives you the opportunity to chose which three guys can outperfom your opponent. Today it's the SG-SF-PF combo, tomorrow it could be a PG-SG-C combination. Just by switching positions, you can create huge mismatches...

And again, a longer post than I intended..

And again, a longer post than I intended..

story of my life.

I think this is fairly logical with look inside offence. People will skimp on the guards, particularly SG and jump range, simply because of the number of 3's that these guys taken when using LI.

So the same logic applies with other offenses. I think this is where Driving is most critical offensive tool no matter the offense. Driving really supplements a forwards IS and a forward with high driving but 'average' IS by comparison will still score quite reasonably.
With specific regard to Princeton? Yer id probably sacrifice IS on a C. I think a high passing C would help the offensive flow.

I ran Princeton extensively back in season 17-19 (I forget which season I heavily relied on it, but there was one). I had a team with guards with very high hnd/drv and good JR (one of whom I played at SF), and a very balanced power forward who was pretty much between 10-13 at every skill. Most importantly, I had a center with prolific passing.

Watching the sim, my guards had a lot of layup attempts and got fouled often. My center barely shot, but when he did it was long 2s and 3s. He also averaged about 5apg and had a lot of key passes. My PF took a lot of outside shots.

I find it a really good offense to run if you're building a team on the cheap and, in lieu of high weekly salaries, want to focus on cheap skills (hnd/drv for guards, outsides and passing for bigs). Even when overmatched, your team will keep the pace of the game down and maximize possessions. I had one of the league's lowest salaries and still made the playoffs that season in my USA II league.