I always thought that Princeton needs a lot of passing to be successful whereas patient does not.
It's different sides of the same coin. Princeton seems to require that everyone has good passing, though it does not require really high end passing anywhere (though, of course, it never hurts). If you have a big man with awful passing, you're going to see him turn it over a lot or jack up poor shots, or likely both. Patient just means that they're going to try to get the ball to your "best" position, unless there's something on that play that's better. You need the passing to get those better plays, though, otherwise it'll just dump to your position and they'll fire it up. Of course, the French patient with an outside shooter against a low-OD tree may prefer it that way - a contested three against a terrible outside defender may well be a better shot than an uncontested drive attempt.