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I guess my point is that ultimately, I think it's better for both the managers and the US community to train players the way you are currently training your own player, and so the U21 team should be focused on encouraging that.

And additionally, I think it's possible that a U21 team with guards mostly similar to what we usually produce now and big men with only 12's inside but 8-10's secondaries could provide enough match-up problems to at least compete in U21 games. At the very least it's never really been tried.

I was under the impression that top U21 teams were splitting the offensive/defensive duties of 2s and 3s, allowing for those players to only require either the offensive or defensive interior skills at high level. Similar situation for 4s but they seem somewhat more translatable to a 3 in inside tactics anyways.


Most of the issues with U21 are tied to over-valueing potential and to the split between what is better for an individual team and for the U21 team. Those are rather related as well.

Imagine a player with an unlimited potential. If you were going to single position train that player for 4 years, until 22, and then keep him for the rest of his career without any further training, would you really develop a player with such a focus on primaries? Even if salary was not a consideration would you develop the player in the 'U21 way' in trying to improve your team? If the goal is purely performance, my players wouldn't look much like U21 players after that time-span.


If you look at the crop of rookie star and all-star players, with skill-sums above 55 or 60, with good stamina and free throws; those players should match up very well between what is best for being sold, or kept (capped), after four years of focused training and for reaching a performance peak in that fourth year. These aren't future NT players who are sacrificing long term potential, or unsustainable players who the owning team cannot afford to keep.

At the 1 and 5 spots you'd need higher potential, but for the meat of the roster those players are where you should find the best performance, by getting higher initial skill-sums from a much larger crop of players and help develop the community by having the recommendations for those users' players better match between needs of U21 and their own teams.

Add the few 60+ skill-sum MVP/Hall-of-Famers each year who can have absurdly high primaries and that's where you can still have that crazy jump shot rating that is such a logarithmic loss for the entire team to have, because of shot usage breakdowns, if its viewed as being the best for performance.

Didn't want to post this in the speech thread because it said only one post per candidate, but I decided to run too and here is the continuation of my general speech/plan:

1) Get the most promising new trainees started training on something right now, so we don't waste this season.
2) Spend the next couple weeks hashing out the sorts of hypothetical players the NT would dream of: Smedlock's LI small forward, centers with ~10 JS/JR/Passing, world level guards with 12 IS or good rebounding, etc. Whatever people think would help most at the top level of competition.
3) Post to the US community these different prototypical players we want to see on the US NT someday.
4) Post a rough training plan and training projections for where we want these players to be at 20yr old.
5) Explain to the US community that this is the new way you get a player on U21. U21 will be about rewarding managers who are on track and helping create these players. Monoskill monsters won't be getting on the U21 team much anymore, because the U21 team's focus is no longer on winning games for its own sake, it's about developing NT talent.
6) Explain how this training can be better for the managers themselves too.

-It's a long term payoff; three seasons before these new sorts of player would be 21yr and on the team.

-Guard training would probably not be as radical a change as big man training, because guards already seem to transition pretty well from good U21 players to good NT players (ie Bronson). I think it might be nice to say: train him like before, but see if you can also get one of IS, ID, Rb up to 9 by 21yrs too, even if it costs a few pops in other stuff. If the community thinks that sort of thing isn't worth the payoff though, it's not something we need to do. My goal would be to set the benchmarks based on community consensus of what might be useful at the NT level.

-Most of the 20-21yr old players in the pipeline now would probably remain likely U21 players because the new multi-skilled 21yr olds are not on the horizon yet.

Beyond this sort of radical change in what the U21 is about, a lot of the community outreach stuff would be similar. We'd try to reach out to teams with good trainees, point them to the posts and discussions about the kinds of players we're hoping to develop and then try to find managers who think they can see a way to fit developing one of those players into their club's training plan. We might be able to tie it into the mentor program and have mentors help explain why the training is more beneficial to the owners club (and, mentors can make sure such training really IS more beneficial.)

We could do something like a fake news post each week highlighting a different young player's development, etc to keep interest up.

Anyway that's my spiel, there's a ton to more to address I'm sure so ask me anything on the debate thread or I will post things as they occur to me. Thanks!

Have we learned nothing from Herm Edwards? You play to win the game. I'm fine with encouraging managers to train well-rounded players, but they shouldn't be given spots on the U21 team just for following along and doing exactly what they're told.

The best players who give the team the best chance to win need to be the ones who play. Not those who may be NT worthy 3-4 seasons later.

Yeah, I realize it's a fundamentally different way to approach things, it just seems to me personally like there's more value overall doing it this way. And even though it's not likely, I also don't think it's certain that a team with similar guards and differently balanced bigs can't do equally well in U21 as the current system, especially if we are catching opponents off-guard.

I respect that reasonable people will disagree though. If people aren't persuaded they're going to vote accordingly I'm sure but I think it's healthy to have the debate at least.

Last edited by J-Slo at 10/7/2010 1:55:08 PM

@jfriske:
The major flaw in your NT plan is the dearth of players capable of making the NT. You NEED to have at least superstar potential, and that may be low now a days. If you are training for a well-rounded player, you will also need to make sure they don't have too many holes in those side skills. You'll never make the NT with your well rounded PF if you train him for 4 seasons to get to proficient OD and sensational JS. There simply aren't a lot of players capable of becoming an all-arounder.

You are basically making all the guys like Chuck Rainey useless. Great starting skills, but not enough potential to make the NT.

@jkatjkat:

Most of the issues with U21 are tied to over-valueing potential and to the split between what is better for an individual team and for the U21 team. Those are rather related as well.

From the my point of view choosing the roster, potential does not come in to play often. The only example I can think of was the center Singletary in season 12. He capped at the end of his 20 yo season, so giving him a roster spot was debatable since he would not improve during the season. Bobby Joe Jefferson was seriously one of my favorite players, with allstar potential. Guys below allstar have a hard time getting a roster spot since they should cap before their 21 yo season is finished. The second portion of this sentence is incredibly true though and I am very uncomfortable with it. I generally tell people if the advice for U21 team is vastly different than advice I would give to help their team. I really want me or the new manager to do a better job of this. It would involve more time (probably some volunteers), but more information on their team, economy, and position needs to be gathered before doling out advice.

All in all, for a succinct post, that invoked a lot of thinking. Mind sharing some more thoughts? How do you justify having one or two offensive oriented players on the court when it could be easy to matchup against them? I know I use something similar with my club team, but with versatile players that I try to switch around to avoid matchup problems.

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?

The small forward position is the toughest position to fill. There has been countless theories as to how attack the position by using guards and follow up with a strong rebounding presence as a backup to the 3 Center attack to maximize rebounding and get to the line.

I tactically try to stay away from zones as they tend to give opponents advantages that you don't find out about until after the game. The defensive positioning portion of BB is designed to cover some of those tracks and when used properly, can create advantages and mismatches. BMG has used this tactic effectively (although the Center is a freak) as has DFC (before she imploded).

Last I checked, height only played a factor in training and not performance.

Who ever is the manager is going to put Guards and forwards on the team and decide which group is better suited to play SF.

bottom line - GS plus tactics versus the team we are playing divided by enthusiasm should dictate the SF. enthusiasm must be managed to maximize any tactic and unfortunately so much GS. My team failed this year in it's guards because GS was not managed as well as it could of been.

5) Explain to the US community that this is the new way you get a player on U21. U21 will be about rewarding managers who are on track and helping create these players. Monoskill monsters won't be getting on the U21 team much anymore, because the U21 team's focus is no longer on winning games for its own sake, it's about developing NT talent.

How excited are people going to be to get one of their players onto a u21 team that isn't very competitive, doesn't make worlds, and which is known to be nothing more than an honorary reward?

I'm all for the u21 team helping the NT, of course, but I'm not sure why that has to be mutually exclusive to fielding the best team possible and trying to win. I mean, in a best case scenario, any u21 team is going to have at most 2-3 future NTers on it. (Assuming the NT carries 18 players, say, ages 23-35, that's <1.5 per draft class). I think it should be possible to find the few u21'ers that really have a shot and help them, while still fielding a full team that can win.

Here's a question I'd pose to everyone though: in the last cycle, we had some fantastic success in qualifying, followed by some disappointment at worlds (not really surprising given the different talent levels). One option to balance this out would be to try to get some 20yo's more playing time during qualifying, so they have a higher enthusiasm come time for worlds. Which of these would best match your view on the issue:

(A) We should use primarily 20yo's during qualifying, since we don't know which ones are going to be most important for worlds, so we want to get increased enthusiasm for as many options as possible.
(B) We should include the X most promising 20yo's during qualifying and get them as much playing time as possible. (What would X be?)
(C) We should add only exceptional 20yo's that are sure-things for the world's roster, but get them as much playing time as possible.
(D) We should add only exceptional 20yo's that are sure-things for the world's roster, but only play them in easy games, or after we've clinched.
(E) Enthusiasm isn't worth sacrificing performance for. Using 20yo's at all will reduce (by whatever small amount) the chances of making worlds, and the payoff isn't worth that.
(F) Something else.

To be clear, I'm not just talking about having them on the roster (as that doesn't help enthusiasm), but actually playing (and probably starting) them.

It's very hard to encourage a manager to do anything. I know I have been pissed off when I get the BB-Mail saying keep the game shape up, or can I see his stats, or don't play him in your next game even though you may need that game, the nation needs your player more.

I think it's great other countries can get organized well enough to scout. I also know there are some teams out there who draft players with the expectation to play on the NT teams. Our biggest problem is we have been too successful. We always have finished in the top groups. Yes there was hard work put in, but unless people are involved, people don't know. And then what do you do if your not the manager? Call and say hi how is it going? Boy that Rainey is killing it. It's really hard and as you said earlier - SEVEN months.

At the highest level, every country has 8 studs to put out on the court and will use them. I guess that's what makes the U21 team fun - it's a race to see which country developed the studs first.

My thought is consistency. I would like to present a level of consistency that the US community can evolve with. It's saying - I know you "manager" have tough decisions you have to make because I had to make them and I hope the US U21 NT goals fall in line with yours. Please continue to grow "player" in the hopes your "player" can help us win one game. Then repeating that to the 3000 managers.

I also think the game has to come to the BB and not off-site forums. Most of the Managers are not supporters and yes, some tactical elements may not be able to be talked about, but everyone knows who is playing so we might as well bring the game to the managers instead of the other way around. The more that happens, easier it is to grow.

@jfriske:
The major flaw in your NT plan is the dearth of players capable of making the NT. You NEED to have at least superstar potential, and that may be low now a days. If you are training for a well-rounded player, you will also need to make sure they don't have too many holes in those side skills. You'll never make the NT with your well rounded PF if you train him for 4 seasons to get to proficient OD and sensational JS. There simply aren't a lot of players capable of becoming an all-arounder.

You are basically making all the guys like Chuck Rainey useless. Great starting skills, but not enough potential to make the NT.

I think that's a great point and something to consider: if the goal is to develop NT players, what do we do about well trained all-star potential players, or players with gaping holes in their skillset?

For big men, which is where I think a lot of the U21/manager best interest conflicts occur and also where this strategy would be most different from what we're doing currently, I don't think it's that big of an issue because you more or less need superstar or better potential anyways if you're going for mono-skilled monsters, so we wouldn't really be making things more restrictive on them. On the contrary maybe, really balanced/unique perennial-allstar PF's might be able to make the NT whereas mono-skilled perennial-allstars probably can't.

If you know your players has holes that preclude him from making the team, you're also under no obligation to attempt training him as such. Big men will holes would have to do the best they can with the 1-2 seasons of guard-training they have time for, and you're right that some players won't ultimately have the right skills, but at least these guys are trained in a way that is more sustainable for their managers. An affordable, mostly balanced player with a few holes is still probably preferable to a salary behemoth, even if neither can make the NT.

For guards it's a tougher question, but if I had to pick 3 out of 4 guards, all well trained, but one had potential that would clearly exclude him from the NT, I would take the three with the better potential. I think that something past managers would have done too, assuming GS and things are equal. If it's a situation where it's:

13/11 JS/JR
14/12 OD/Ha
12/12 Dr/Pa
9/7 IS/ID
superstar or better potential

vs

15/11 JS/JR
16/12 OD/Ha
12/12 Dr/Pa
4/6 IS/ID
all-star potential

I think I still choose the 1st player with better potential. I think you can make a (weak) case that in some instances the 1st player can be equal or better in game, but even if you can't, I still fall on the side of saying that the 1st player is more likely to add value to the US talent pool overall by virtue of his possibly being NT material someday. If it came down to a tough decision like that between them, I would choose to recognize and reward the hard work of building a foundation for a unique NT player. It's no fault of the 2nd player's manager and I recognize that, but the team can only carry so many players.

If they have grossly different talent levels it's obviously a different situation. Frankly though if we have so many quality trainees that we have to make those decisions, that's at least a good problem to have. If there were not a bunch of amazingly trained high potential players clamoring for spots on the team to the point where we have tough decisions to make, then I'd have no problem finding a spot for an amazingly trained traditional, lower potential player. I'm just laying out my thought process for if push comes to shove.

So in conclusion: there probably is a spot for guys like Chuck Rainey any given year, unless we get an amazing crop of trainees.