How much does it really matter now a days? I routinely try to put together teams that have one defensive weak point (like ray allen, or steve nash) but does that even matter? Can I field a starting 5 of guys who have 50's as Defense and routinely win?

I think defense is one of the few stats you can actually think about like real basketball.  You want to have a good defender on the other teams top scorers so you want flexibility.  If your PF has poor defense then you want to have a good defensive C, if your PG is weak defensively then you want a SG that can shift up to defend, etc.  Some players can shift around on defense better than others so it's just something to consider just like you consider their positioning % when building your offensive depth.

You can definitely tell the difference in overall team defense.  If you have a team of all good defenders you will see the difference and your team will limit others offensively.  You can use the SimMatchup to confirm this.  As with any stat though you have to consider dollars spent and not leave yourself with other weaknesses that are too many or too severe.

That is my opinion but I don't have a ton of experience.  Though I have done MANY SimMatchups.

I just feel like the benefits between drafting mostly 70D guys and 90D guys is very limited from what i've seen. Karl Malone throwing down 30 and 10 with 70 D seems almost better than Hakeem with 25 12 and 100 D

Posted by wjsalm on 4/28/2011 10:47:00 AM (view original):
I just feel like the benefits between drafting mostly 70D guys and 90D guys is very limited from what i've seen. Karl Malone throwing down 30 and 10 with 70 D seems almost better than Hakeem with 25 12 and 100 D

You need to look at defense as a whole rather than one player.  I'm a pretty big believer in a strong D but you need to weigh everything.  The main thing I would try to do is have three guys over 80 but that's just my opionion.  There's many more would say that's too much.