In that article I found that even teams playing with high pace and outside offense focused, would not take 3s with anywhere near the frequency of NBA teams of the same year. Even if they hit at higher percentages.
I therefore concluded that it was perhaps a limitation of the engine.
Our Commish seemed to agree, but also wondered if a commitment to trying the offense and better shooting bigs might make up some.... or all of the difference.
With that in mind, this article is to outline, and then look at the results of trying a true 5 out style this pre-season.
To prepare, I have sent all the Hornets' traditional bigs to IR where they can't be inserted due to injury.
The pace is as fast as possible, the offense focus outside.
I used a fairly deep rotation to assure players are relatively fresh to prevent a decline in Pace.
Now... the shooters:
The lowest OUT rating on the team will be a C+, shared by starting C Anthony Davis and backup C Lauri Markkanen
The rest of the starting lineup should be A, A-, A-, B+ off the bench are an additional A- and B shooter.
This is a very deep 3 pt shooting team with no obvious outside shooting weakness, the team is young, and deep so playing fast and 5 out should not be a concern.
I will edit this space to analyze results after the sim.
EDIT- RESULTS
First and most obvious.... the defense was truly atrocious, interesting since it was a team with mostly quite good defenders, but size and strength play big roles in DASL defense, so going small seems to be punished often.
Now on the the offense....
The Hornets put up a respectable, but not outrageous 19.5 3PA per game, good for 4th in DASL... In the last real-life NBA season this would have ranked........ dead last in the NBA by more than a 3PA per game. DASL just doesn't take 3s like the real league.
Now maybe this was a product of pace rather than rate? Looking at the stats, the Hornets were 7th in DASL at 88.5 FGA per game.... this would have been good for 2nd in the NBA last season. So the pace is fine, in fact overall DASL plays very fast, it is the rate that is at issue.
Looking at 3PAr.... the Hornets put up a 3PA on 22% of all FGA. In the NBA, as you would expect this would have been BY FAR the worst 3PAr in the league. In fact league AVERAGE in the NBA this past season was 31.6%.
Looking at it on a player by player basis, a few players (Barnes and Lamb) took the kind of 3PAr that you'd expect, howevet they were the only 2 players to get above what the average NBA team puts up.
The other guards shot a disappointingly low number of 3s, and the Bigs just didn't take 3s at all. This may be either player or position based limiting.
Now.... Barnes taking so many 3s as a PF is interesting, it makes me wonder if the issue is:
1. A position lock on 3s taken (by the player's position not where they are playing) And/OR
2. A locked frequency of 3PA on each individual player.
Sadly, based on this data, obtained under as close to ideal situations as possible, we must conclude that pace and space, 5-out, modern basketball, whichever term you prefer, is simply not something that Fast Break Basketball software is capable of simulating.
There is ONE possibility for making the engine take the 3s, but it isn't a viable or realistic strategy. It is possible that by collecting a group of SG/SF all of whom take a very high rate of 3s, and playing them across the 5 positions, you MIGHT be able to get a 3PAr that more accurately reflected the current NBA.
