sports strategy observation

[Don]

One of the strangest thing I noticed about sports is that people always assume you got to have a variety of strategy to be successful. It happens in exaggerated form in say, manga, but you can see plenty of that just in discussion threads. For example I'm reading a thread on 96 Bulls vs 01 Lakers, and the argument against the Lakers always goes something like: "Well they can just defend 1 on 1 on Shaq and lock down all the other guys." Well if you know for sure Bulls will put only 1 guy on Shaq, what's stopping him from power dunking on the 1 guy for 100 points? During last year's Spurs vs Suns, it was pointed out that Spurs seem inadequate at stopping the Suns' Pick & Roll, and there was a game where the Suns ran Pick & Roll on every play and went on to win pretty easily despite trailing significantly at the beginning. Why stop running the play you know the other side can't stop? In Kenshin, Saito says if you're sure your best move can kill the other guy before he figures out how to kill you, then there's nothing wrong with just using your best move over and over. In sports I see teams running the same play over and over if the other side can't stop it, but apprently in sports discussion this doesn't work!

Of course in reality if you try to have Shaq power dunk every time the other team will eventually double/triple him, so you don't do that every time because even Shaq can't always dunk through 3 guys. But most of the time the Lakers offense still starts with Shaq because it will almost always open up a hole somewhere else since you got to double Shaq.

I find it strange people assume you got to do something the other side doesn't anticipate to win. Maybe it makes sense if the two sides are equally matched, but if you got a 2001 Shaq on your team there's no way the other side is equally matched against you. You pretty much have a trump card and you should use it every time. I see the Patriots almost always pass because they're clearly much better at passing than rushing, and it's not like the other side doesn't know that, but when you're that good at one thing, even knowing that the Patriots are far more likely to pass on every play isn't going to make it easier to stop them.

[Kupek]

It all depends on how good you are at what you're good at. If you're so good that people can't prevent it even when they know it's coming, then, yeah. Fire away. At that point, you're not just good, but probably better than just about everyone.

I can think of two Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighters (Marcelo Garcia and Roger Gracie) who use the same strategies when they compete. People know it's coming, but they're so damned good very few people can stop them.

[Don]

I saw a game on ESPN classic one time and it was saying how one team always runs this exact play on a 4th and short situation so the other team studied that play over and over to figure out how to stop it, and did on some crucial game. So of course you can get too overconfident, but then the team running the same play obviously had a lot of success until that point since it worked on all the other teams up to this point.

I'm pretty sure in most kinds of game that does not depend solely on one possession for the outcome, the best strategy is to go with your best strategy until the opponent can stop that. If you can run through the middle and get a 1st down every time there's no need to switch it up until you get stopped. I've seen strong rushing team just run the ball 10 plays in a row and if the other side can't stop them, why not?

Heck, I remember seeing Street Fighter 2 video of pros who just do a fireball/dragon punch pin down with Sagat. I guess people expect the pros to do something they can't do, because anyone can understand how to throw fireballs and DP when the opponent jumps, or that you just keep on hand the ball off to the unstoppable guy so we expect the pros to do something we can't possibly imagine. Of course that's rather ironic since most pro anything is extremely methodical.

[Don]

Here's I think where some of this idea may come from. In one of the classic Spurs vs Suns triple OT or so games, there was a point where Tim Duncan made a 3 pointer to tie the game because no one was on him (at least not close enough to affect his shot) in a crunch time situation. It was considered a brilliant move by Popvich who is considered one of the best coaches in NBA. Obviously nobody expects Tim Duncan to shot 3, so clearly the strategy worked because nobody is expecting it. Of course, since nobody still expects Tim Duncan to shoot 3s, clearly the Spurs should just do a screen for Duncan on crunch time for 3 pointers (if that's even necessary, since people rarely guard Duncan closely at the 3 point range).

But this of course ignores the fact that Duncan shooting a 3 was not really the kind of shot you want. It may have been a good option compared to taking a contested shot with your good 3 point shooters well defended (they need a 3 to just tie at that point) so that was the best shot they got, but ideally they still want to run some screen or whatever to free up someone who is better at shooting 3s than Duncan (which is probably anyone else on the team, which is why Duncan wasn't guarded in the first place).

The Lakers never guarded Rondo at the 3 point line either, so you can just have him start shooting 3s too. There's at least 1 game where he started making quite a few and the strategy appears to backfire, but that's just probability. Even a bad 3 pointer shooter will make them some of the time. Assuming you have no reason to believe Rondo or Duncan is now a changed man in their ability to shoot 3s, if you continue to let them shoot 3s that's most likely the worst shot their team should take so you'll live with some occasional makes. There was a game winner by Kobe Bryant where his defender slipped and left him unguarded at the 3 point line and he made the shot for the win. He could have missed that shot too, but it doesn't mean having your defender slip and totally miss his man on the other side's best shooter is a good strategy just because he missed. Well, certainly nobody expects that as a strategy, but it wouldn't be a good one.

[Zeus]

The New Jersey Devils won the Stanley Cup in 1995 with one simple strategy: dump the puck, let the other team get it in their zone and try to bring it out, hoping they make a mistake along the way as they tried to get through your neutral-zone trap. If they don't, clutch and grab then, have Brodeur or your defensemen get the puck move it back into their zone, repeat. It worked so well not only did they win the Cup, they actually had to change the rules in hockey to stop it from working so well (it was quite boring to watch).

You don't need a large variety, just enough to get past your opponents. Sometimes it can be just one strategy, other times it can be multiple. Depends on a lot of factors including the rules in place at that time. Imagine how basketball would change if they ever decided to call travelling or palming properly.....

[Don]

A while ago I saw this advertisement for a Texas Hold'Em variant published by some random guys that promises it to make every hand as epic as Yugioh where every hand will involve a royal flush. I looked at the cards and apparently they draw from 2 decks and 1 card is used for special effects, with effects like "Take one of your opponent's cards and add it to your hand" (you don't give anything back in return). So yeah, that's obviously going to produce a very epic game if epic is defined by getting impossibly rare hands, but clearly there's nothing that'd remotely resemble Texas Hold'Em strategy in a game like that.

I think people are more interested in seeing exciting stuff as opposed to winning stuff, and then you have the logical followup where something that is exciting must be better because it's, well, exciting. The Suns play a very exciting brand of basketball but they usually lose in the playoffs to people playing boring basketball. Now I think Suns' style could work but clearly you don't get bonus points for being more exciting or unpredictable than the other team. If the rules favor you playing in a very boring way then that's the rules. I know sports like to change rules so you don't end up with behaviors like Zeus described because then the sports loses its value as entertainment if you see stuff like Shaq powerdunking for 100 points every game, or that he ended up shooting 90 free throws because people needed to resort to Hack-a-Shaq to stop him. But until the rules change, there are some surprisingly effective but boring methods to winning. I'd say effective but boring is still most likely the norm not the exception.