defense in this game is very hard to achieve. at any moment for one reason or another you may have a defensive liability, or at best, a shortcoming.
while man to man is prefferable due to the fact that whatever hole you may have it will not cost you unless the opponent specifically targets that player, and due to being able to switch positions defensivly you may get away with that.
this being said, if having a strong 5 man line up with no defensive liability, zones are even more of an unicorn because you need superstar defensive players.
i have played 3-2 with 2 behemonts that had 17 ID RB SB and they still ended up being a liability at times due to poor outside defense. there are some great 3-2 teams that are so good at that make it a grind to play against.
one such team is Knätofs BBK
(173598) i played a game against him with a player that had over 18 JS JR DR HA and IS and he barely scored. the rest of the time was completely shut.
(103100023)point of it, same as with offense, you dont play that style of defence if it is not suited to your team's strengt.
to go further, i think 2-3 is also a great zone to play, but here you need such large amounts of OD on the 3 big men that it makes having such a team financially noneffective. you would basically be playing 3 tremendous SF and the 2-3 zone would compansate for whatever rebounding they lacked.
as regards to "best offense" against such teams i think you dont need a balanced attack but 2 super-scorers and hope that you also can beat them defensivelt. all in all this is more of a rock-fight with the endscore being 70-60
so to recap, for any zone to function you need players with high secondaries, i.e. OD, aside from the copious amount of SB.