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I shall agree with Vinseks, lately I feel that playing LI / MoM is THE way to go. When you see PGs with 14-15-16 IS being bought for enormous amounts of money ... you can think it isn't about to change.

For a game that is tactically rich as basketball, it seems a bit worrying to see all the best teams playing all the same. I don't think it is about to evolve, but it could : perhaps turn the useless 2 - 3 defense into something usable, or lower the salary increase generated by inside defence.

That's all what this is about : a 19 OD is waaay cheaper than an 19 ID, thus everybody has a wonderful OD and a lower ID.

And yes !ngkor, there are too few belgian managers active on the forums, but what can we do ? :)

We can hope for better. This is called "the complaining wall" for a reason :p

I shall agree with Vinseks, lately I feel that playing LI / MoM is THE way to go. When you see PGs with 14-15-16 IS being bought for enormous amounts of money ... you can think it isn't about to change.

For a game that is tactically rich as basketball, it seems a bit worrying to see all the best teams playing all the same. I don't think it is about to evolve, but it could : perhaps turn the useless 2 - 3 defense into something usable, or lower the salary increase generated by inside defence.

That's all what this is about : a 19 OD is waaay cheaper than an 19 ID, thus everybody has a wonderful OD and a lower ID.

And yes !ngkor, there are too few belgian managers active on the forums, but what can we do ? :)

first off:

2-3 isn't useless. You just need the right players to play it. Just like you need Od to stop JS on bigs, you need OD to stop penetrating guard.

say you play 2-3. opposing guard dribbles your guard and penetrates. the C ( or PF or SF) then has to make a decision. Move towards the incomming guard to stop him, or stay where he is and give up an uncontested shot. If he does the later, then that usually means 2 easy points for the opponent. If he moves out towards the guard and the guard takes a jumpshot, you need OD to defend it. Say the guard wants to pass the ball to his teammate behind the C. You need OD to intercept (or pressure) the pass to force a turnover.

Now, most C's have OD lvl 5 (and i think i'm being a bitt optimistic with my llv 5 OD). a guard comming in with JS 12 vs OD 5 ==> no effect. Guard with PA 12 comming in and going for the pass against OD 5 ==> very little chance of intercepting that ball, let alone force a bad pass.

So, if you want to play 2-3 correctly, you need bigs with OD. Why do you think that most NT's are replacing all there C's by PF's. The PF's have a lower ammount of ID, RB and SB ( in most cases compared to a C). However, they got more OD. With the OD that those PF's got, you can actually use the 2-3 zone correctly Futhermore, having PF's with decent guardskills ( as you see them popping up all over BB nowadays) means that you can better play the Princeton attack.

So Motion and RaG might not be very good attacking options anymore with the new GE, but Princeton is very effective against 2-3 zone.

Whereas the focus used to be on Motion/RaG for outside and LP for inside, it now is Princeton for Outside and LI for inside. The idea behind the GE now is that a team full of SF's is better than a team full of primairy skill monsters.

That is why they introduced cross training, etc. Sadly it also reflects the NBA to a certain degree: Look at Durant, Lebron and Melo. At the Olympics, they played SF and PF spot. and they were untouchable.

Aslong as height isn't factured in when it comes to defense like it is in the NBA, then you'll keep have these players with wrong proportions.

I'm pretty sure that once people see the effects of a Bigman with JS 14 JR 13 playing in outside tactics, that they will start training those bigmen again and that you'll see that the other outside tactics become more popular again. But we got to face the facts: It's much easier to train Guards with a high amount of IS than to train Bigmen with a high amount of JS and JR without giving them somekind of OD. I'd love to try and play RaG with a PF with JR 13 (without that PF being a SF!) The problem is finding a person who's willing to train it.

so the 2-3 zone isn't useless. It's just that hardly anyone has the team to play it correctly.

Thank you for your most precise answer.

I learned much reading your post, and while I understand and agree on all discussed matters, you must reckon that a tactic that is only usable using rare (thus expensive) players isn't a good tactic. It should be "usable" at all levels ... or so I think.

I have recently bought a player with "surprising" skill in regard to his playing position, I must say I'm amazed by him, although this would have never been the kind of players I would have bought otherwise.

it's usable at all lvls tbh. In Div IV and III, you have trainee's with OD lvl 6-7 on the bigs. Their OD is enough for it to work. At II and BBBL lvl, you'd probably required OD 10-12 on the bigs for it to work really well. That is also the reason why most NT's nowaday's are replacing there C's by PF's. Not only are PF's harder to defend with their JS, HA and DR, but the small trade off in ID, RB and SB that you make, can be made up for by playing a succesfull 2-3 zone. And the bonus is that if your PF happens to have a decent JR, you can use him in the Princeton attack aswell.

So where as 5 seasons ago, The things deciding good teams from the less good where the teams with Passing PG's ( OD, HA DR and PA) and high attacking bigs ( high IS), Nowaday's, it's PG's with OD, HA, DR, PA, IS and preferably ID, with instead of having the C's with high IS, it's now PF's with less IS but more JS, HA and DR.

It's pretty realistic. just think of it. Dwight Howard ( Lakers C) if a big guy, but isn't very good at defending jumpshots (not great OD). Chris Bosh (PF) is much better in defending jumpshots (so better OD) and better in making jumpshots, but isn't that strong on the inside.

If you put Bosh vs Howard in a game, you'll see that Howard will dominate inside play ( in scoring defending and rebounding). Bosh will try to pull Howard away from the ring to take a jumpshot since his defense isn't very good at that...

Problem is, in BB, Bosh is gonna beat Howard 9 out of 10 times in a game. In Reality, Howard is gonna beat Bosh 9 times out of 10. The reason is simple: Howard is taller and thus makes it hard for Bosh to defend him inside. he'll try to push Howard away from the ring on attack too, to force him to pass or take a shot from futher away.

The problem with BB, is that it doesn't take the height of a player into account. Just imagen. You put a player 1 ( 221cm, IS 10, ID 10, RB 10) vs player 2 ( 198 cm, IS 13 ID 13 RB 13)r. In BB, player 2 will dominate player 1 ( assuming neutral tactics in attack and defense) both on attack and on defense. However, in reality, the difference in height makes player 1 much to strong for player 2 to apply decent defense. Give the ball to player 1 down low in the post, and he's practically walk over player 2 ( Player 2 will have to try and push player 1 away, but with such a height difference, chances are that player 1 weights more than player 2 and thus that becomes a nearly impossible task).

In BB, the players height only affects the trainingspeed. In Reality, it does much more. It would be very hard to implement the heightfactor in determinating rebounding etc. But because that is the fact, you'll see that guards with IS combined with a bunch of PF's will beat teams with normal guards and C's without secundairies. Just look at most NT's nowaday's. 5 seasons back, they had 400-500k Monster C's ( all primairies). Nowaday's, salary is much lower because you need good secundairies... You rarely see a C with more than 300k on NT's nowadays. Most of the large communities got PF's on their teams now.

As much as we like BB to be realistic, it's damn hard to replicate the real world into a Game. Imo, they've done pretty very well. But if they change the GE, they'll be improving some things at the costs of others. It's a trade off the Devs have to evaluate.

A change in the GE also gives large communities an advantage. Those communities have more players, with different builds. So they can addapt to changes much faster than mid-size or small communities.

So if you want to use the outside tactic, it's time to find what skills the bigs need for it to work well. i reckon a high Passing, JS, JR and secundairly HA and DR on the bigs would be required ( hey, that sounds like the description of a PF...) But untill someone makes a JS 14 JR 13 big and test it out, we won't know if that is what you need to make the outside tactic work...

I agree about player's height. Since it only affects player training, the GE only takes stats into account.

I also understand why most teams are now going for PF's instead of C. But isn't a little too sad if your starting 5 was down to 5 SF with only little difference ?

If the game is fine right now with PG or SG full of IS, so let it be. But then, it should also be possible to play outside with the right inners. As you say, perhaps high PA, JS, HA and DR should be enough. I understand these kind of players are quite rare on the transfer list, thus making it difficult (and expensive) to test, but right now I'm wondering if it would work out. I got an inner with such stats, and while he totally rocks on an inside play, I'm not quite sure about his outside play.

BTW, when playing outside, why is now princeton better than motion ? I have been playing motion often, and don't like slow tactics, thus princeton is quite unkwown to me. R&G I have forgotten since a long time, alas this is also an "old" tactic :(

with all the PF's being trained, people prefer to opt for Princeton than Motion.

If you got a PF with good JS/DR/HA and decent JR for a PF. you could play him at the PF and play princeton. In Princeton, the PF moves more to the outside (closer to the 3pt line). this, if your opponent play's man to man, and you play Princeton, your opponents PF needs OD or he's going to get dominated. everyone gots the PG's and SG's and most have SF's. But PF's with good OD remain rare and thus form a match-up that you'll want to exploit if you got the player for it.

Futhermore, since most teams play LI, some opponents dare play 2-3. what is better than having 3 guy's shooting from long distance? right, it's 4 guy's shooting from close to the down town area. That is why if a team play's outside nowadays, it's princeton that they use. The PF's got the Passing to pass the ball around. they got the JS to put up a shot. they got the HA/DR combo which influences the quality of the shot and to some degree, they got JR too. Thus, Princeton works now, where as it didn't work very well 6 seasons back because hardly any team had the players to use it correctly.

Very useful information, thanks for letting me know !

I didn't perfectly understood the importance of the PF in this case, and didn't know what the required qualities were.

And after the injuries, my coach makes the strangest decisions ever in my last game :')
Playing centers at the point guard and guards at the center... Letting my stars sit on the bench for most parts of the game, this way I allowed 43 points in de second quarter...
To give you guys an idea about how awful that is... I allowed only 78 points per game before this match up... Gogo Game Engine, you make so much sense :')

GE sometimes makes strange decisions...

i lost the first game of the season. up by 21 at the start of Q4 and had to make a buzzer to go to overtime. Opposing team goes on a run and coach did nothing till my team was up by 2 or 3 points before bringing the starters back... I sometimes wonder if the GE hasn't got written in it's code somewhere to just screw over a team just for the fun of it. like one game per 1000 games that it runs on that day.

I've seen insane comebacks ( the most impressive one was of LoD in the B3 where he needed 40 seconds to erase a 10 point deficit and force overtime to then win the game). I've seen teams lead for 47 minutes and then lose the game. I've seen teams give up 35 point leads, which is just unrealistic. And i've seen results where i know that just isn't possible.

If the Antwerp Giants would play any NBA team ( even the Bobcats!) it's still a 100% certain loss. Yet every now and then, i see a result that looks as if the Giants could beat a NBA team...

True, I got that same feeling!
I've seen some sick comebacks already! And my team started playing well all of a sudden in the last Quarter, even when the other team's starters we're on the court, my team kept on playing better...
Don't really see why, but ah well... No Home court advantage in the play offs then :o