Same here. Everyone I play with we always default everything to HOF/Simulation, I guess just out of habit since the Lakers vs Celtics days when we always put it on whatever's the highest settings.
But 2K12 is borderline unplayable on HOF unless you wanna experience complete frustration. There's only so many times I can take seeing PG's like Mike Conley stuff a Blake Griffin dunk on the break.
I've found a reasonably playable setup for me, though, where I put it on SS/Sim and put a 10 pt differential between HUM and CPU sliders (+5 for HUM, -5 for CPU) with pretty much all the sliders, and it helps to lessen some of the ridiculousness. Not all though.
MyPlayer needs sliders more than anything though, because I've found that no matter what difficulty you're on, the CPU is a bunch of Hakeems and Ray Allen's and you're teammates play like bush league amateurs.