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Vote for me!

I'll open a topic.

Personally i think the most undervalued position right now is the Small Forward position. I would like to see us focus on better developing these players to balance the team's ability to play multiple styles.

Last year's team was very guard oriented and as a result most teams identified a 3-2 as the way to nullify our offense. We lacked size with our starting SF being only 6-4.

What are the groups thoughts on the balance and construction of the team?

Just some thoughts. I would love to hear others' opinions.

I hated last season that our roster made us largely one-dimensional. We simply did not have the same standard of bigs to compete with other nations. That got me to thinking a bit. Almost all of our players owned by American players are in D3 or lower. To be competitive with top bigmen at this level requires a hefty salary that really can't be sustained by a D4 team. I really can't make myself tell a team in D3 or D4 to train a 16/16/16 big that is going to decimate their economy and is pretty worthless when you try to unload him.

I really hate our community at times. Other countries (France and Canada) have a "organizations" set up to scout out rookies, help them get to people who care enough to train them and keep GS up when it matters, and help out in the training process. France's group has near 30 people helping out. We have ~5 posters in the offsite forum. I believe this is the main reason that we can not move about the 5-8 ranks in the world.

This season is going to be a lot of fun. Rainey, Trickle, Meeks. I expect a lot of excitement just from Shaq (or whatever your username is now) alone. The most fun in the U21 is when people draft or buy a player early and develop a bond with them. Players like Lundy and Rainey are really what the U21 is about. A owner taking pride in their player and seeing them through to their goal.

I'm not sure if you have realized, but a good SF is vitrually impossible to train by age 21. The best we had in the last two seasons was Rod Goldstein. He was behind at OD in the beginning of the season and was not playable at SF (or PF since he was more oriented towards the outside). Once his Od went up, be became a good option at SF, but only when using a LI offense. Last season our best options for SF were either Waller or Pham depending on which way we offensively, but neither could defend both outside and inside well. In addition, the normal way to play the SF position at this level is to either stick a big there or a big JS guard. So any SF with balanced training through age 21 will find himself grossly overmatched.

I agree that we need more people in the offsite forum. I have been semi-active on it...

but id like to help whoever the coach is with anything if they need it.

oh also jelme check your bb-mail in a few minutes please :P

Last edited by shawnvb at 10/6/2010 8:53:52 PM

no, its best to vote for me , i will lead our USA team to victory, i have won so many games and won the titleso many times, and i can do the same by bring the USA the championship

I can run your USA Team!!!
USA USA USA!!!

Vote for Jelme

Jelme - I think your biggest flaw this season was that you seemed disinterested. I think you are well-qualified to run a team from an articulate and tactics stand point. However the U21 manager must also be integrated in the social aspect of the game and I don't think you were. Most of your off-site post on the forums were posted and no interaction with the community existed. Maybe I'm wrong? That's just how I feel. I know you stated that this was an important job -- to build the community up -- but I feel you may not have the drive to do that or else you already would have?

Jelme,

I hope you are up for some friendly debate because I think there's a few things we may disagree on.

I don't think training a SF for the U21 team is impossible, I just don't think its encouraged! I think we tend to promote training PGs and C's and then fill out a 5 position roster with an imbalance of converted PGs and Cs. But if you think about, you are naturally going to get a dominant center (or 3) and a dominant point guard (or 3), so why not focus on training the weaknesses?

There's a few guys in the NT database that are 21 and are fairly close to being ideal SFs. Now I can't see their heights, but I would guess at least one of them has the size to play the position.

Personally I think the SF position is one that requires more balance and less specialization. My post Nigel Marcus is a highly specialized post with over indexed IS, ID and REB. But it cripples my game style because he's so one dimensional. I'm pretty easy to scout. I'm likely to play LP or LI a majority of the time, and I see a lot of 2-3. I learned quickly to balance out my attack with shooters to take the pressure off and keep the defense honest. The only problem? I focused so much on the JS and JR categories that I ended up with a team that had no handling because everybody only trains the sexy categories.

Which leads me back to my point. . .I think you can still focus on single position training a SF. OS, HN, Pressure, ID, SB and Passing all allow for single position training. And all are valuable skills for a SF to have.

But I don't think this discussion is about our philosophical differences about the SF. I think its more about strengthening the program. . .something we are both committed to.

You once replied to one of my previous posts in the forums that this is a strategy game. I believe it was a training discussion about developing bigs. You also said that you would hesitate to encourage your friends to train for the NT because of the salary impact. Why aren't we communicating this upfront? Training an NT player is a 3 season (minimum) commitment. When I started this process I was a D5 team with no revenue, a basic trainer, and no concept (or mentor) to help me in developing my player. No one reached out to me. I reached out to Burlington Mountain Goats and a few of my friends for guidance. They told me to single position train and get a good trainer. That was it.

I completely agree with you that this is a strategy game. The top teams can play motion, RnG, PTB, low post, look inside, and they vary their defensive looks and change up their rotations. They do this based on matchups, game shape, training progressions, or even just a deep down gut feeling based off of their research of the opponents tendencies. Look at the Philippines this year. In their first 5 games they played 4 different styles. That's 4 different offensive AND 4 different defensive styles. Something I think we could have used more of last year.