If a three point shooting team winds up being higher variance than an inside offense team (all else equal), then they're less likely to win when favored (regardless of relative effort),
The estimated standard deviation of a single sim that's been previously crowdsourced is 16 points, and assumed to be a normal distribution (via the handwavy statistical fact that the overall simulation is the sum of a bunch of random events of the individual possessions).
If Team A is on average 2 points better than Team B, then they'd win 55.0% of simulations at a SD of 16 points, or 53.3% of simulations at a SD of 24 points. Given the theory that net effort effects which simulation gets picked, if Team A was at -2 effort to Team B, they'd have to win all 5 sims to win the game (so that the worst game was a win for them), at -1 effort they'd have to win 4 of 5 sims, and so on.
Which means that the probability of winning the game for the "average variance strategy" would be:
Team A -2 effort: 5.0% chance to win
Team A -1 effort: 25.6% chance to win
Team A equal effort: 59.3% chance to win
Team A +1 effort: 86.9% chance to win
Team A +2 effort: 98.1% chance to win.
While with the "high variance strategy" (3 point shooting team), the probabilities would be:
Team A -2 effort: 4.3% to win
Team A -1 effort: 23.1% to win
Team A equal effort: 56.1% to win
Team A +1 effort: 85.1% to win
Team A +2 effort: 97.8% to win
So at the higher variance strategy, the power of using more effort is slightly higher, but the loss of using less effort is slightly lower (below are net change of win% compared to equal effort):
-2 effort: -54.3% at avg variance, -51.8% at high variance
-1 effort: -33.7% at avg variance, -33.0% at high variance
+1 effort: +27.6% at avg variance, +29.0% at high variance
+2 effort: +38.8% at avg variance, +41.7% at high variance
Which kind of fits with the way real basketball works... if you think about tournaments like March Madness or such, the conventionally accepted wisdom is that the underdog should play David strategies - higher variance offense & defense strategies, slow the game down to keep the number of possessions low so the variance has more power, etc. While the favored team wants to push the pace and grind the game down with superior consistency.