I think defense is overpowered

[dannyrond]

I've been playing this game a lot since release. It's great. I'm currently playing 3 or 4 different franchises and all of them are just dominating everyone else. I like to build my teams around defense and I know defense wins games (as they say). I've been holding off bringing it up because I wanted to get more data and play around with different teams, but I really think defense is way overpowered.

I run all my teams with 100% offense/defense rebounding, 100% defense intensity. My pace, offensive and defensive styles differ based on team composition, but I have switched to 100% man to man defense because it produces much better results; more steals, more blocks, and a lot more misses. This comes at the risk of A LOT more fouls, but it doesn't seem to matter much because the results are insane. If you're up by 20 or more by the 3rd or 4th quarter, losing a few of your best players to fouls isn't a big deal.

Looking at the team defense rankings for my 1976 Philly team composed of:

PG Slick Watts (10 stealing, 9 defense)
SG Lionel Hollins (9 stealing, 6 defense)
SF Julius Erving (8 stealing, 6 defense, 5 blocking)
PF George McGinnis (9 stealing, 6 defense)
C Kim Hughes (7 stealing, 9 defense, 5 blocking)

My team is only allowing 77.1 points per game. The next team in the rankings is 89.5. Field goals allowed 56.1 compared to 70.6. Steals are at 10.7 compared to the next team at 8.6. My team is #1 in opponent turnovers at 20.3 compared to the next team at 15.4. This team is currently 14-0 with most wins in the double digits and even winning a game by 44 points! I'm running 100% full court, 100% man to man.

Team #2 (1985):

PG Lafayette Lever
SG Reggie Theus
SF Marques Johnson
PF Larry Nance
C Hakeem Olajuwon

Record is currently 45-5. Points allowed is 83.4 compared to 98.2 for the next team! I ran zone defense and 0% full court defense for some of this franchise.

Team #3 (1990):

PG Tim Hardaway
SG Alvin Robertson
SF Chris Mullin
PF Dennis Rodman
C Horace Grant

Record is currently 28-2. Points allowed is #1 at 93.9 compared to just 94.7, but I run a super fast paced offense that has my team averaging 112 (#2) points a game too. Again, ran 0% full court defense and some zone on this franchise.

I want to reiterate that the biggest indicator that it's a defense issue was going from 100% zone to 100% man to man defense. I still won the majority of my games with an all zone defense, but with man to man I'm just smoking these teams left and right.

[Gary Gorski]

I'm interested in some further testing here. It seems like the offsets to the defensive intensity are not enough. I would be interested in your results with the same teams if you lowered the intensity in increments but just off the top it looks like there is not enough penalty for pushing the intensity to the max

[dannyrond]

Ok, sounds good. I'll do some further testing and get back to you with those results.

[dannyrond]

Ok, played 9 games with the Philly team with decreasing defensive intensity for each game. Won every game by double digits save one. The first game versus the Celtics (defensive intensity 9) I won 94 - 64. The last game versus the Suns (defensive intensity 1) I won 82-63. Fouls were generally lower on the less intensities, but not much difference overall. 23-0 record.

Second set of 9 games versus the same teams as Philly I put the defensive intensity to the lowest setting and played them out again. Same result. I won all the games by double digits except one. The Celtics game came out 87-72. The Suns game was 88-66. 23-0 record.

Overall, not seeing much difference between lowest and highest defensive intensities, even in terms of fouls per game. I don't get it. Guess I'll play around with some other settings.