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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.

The benefit of that kind of versatility really comes down to having a cohesive team, which seems like it would be hard to do at the U21 level. One of my young guards has proficient inside defense just from a secondary effect of pressure training. Sometimes he covers the small forward and completely frees up that responsibility of having inside defense from my SF, who can defend the point instead. If I didn't have training limitations and could develop a small forward and point guard independently, where am I better served spending the training time; developing a small forward who can both score inside and defend inside, or just scoring and letting the point guard spend a few extra weeks to get near prolific inside defense? There are other issues of course, rebounding/etc, with that defensive switch, but that's the kind of thing you can do with a club team and really benefit from.

As far as the U21, in a year's crop of players there are situations like that where the players can benefit by playing off each other but trying to coordinate it between all the different owners and all the possible issues that can develop (transfers, etc) would be pretty daunting, especially as far as not having certain players be unusable when his partner has bad game shape. Having someone in charge of coordinating that for each year, or who just watches each group of 20 year olds, could solve some of the small forward issues. If the 1 or 2 (pg or sg) had started with good secondaries of inside defense and rebounding they could mitigate one of the main limitations on developing a small forward by age 21 without much, if any, direct focus. Coordinating it and getting support for it though seems like it might be a tall order.

How do you justify having one or two offensive oriented players on the court when it could be easy to matchup against them?

Personally I've tried to build my team around defense and passing. I want each player to be able to have multiple options in their decision tree. If my big man is faced with a bad inside shot he should have a better pass or jump shot option in the engine. If he has enough Experience (supposedly) he should make the right decision; while having the defense to punish any opposing players with holes in their game.

I imagine I'd have no shot at major upsets nor benefit from any high risk tactical ploys, but should do comparatively well in close games and when I use less effort than the other team.

So, in answer to that question, basically I can't answer it. If I had one great jump shooter I could bounce him around the guard positions and the like but its kind of a high risk maneuver or mind games with the opponent, and to get that rating by 21 you'd have to sacrifice something else, each of which would be against the balance I like. That said it is probably necessary for you to have that high risk play when it comes time to compete with the Spains and Italys of the U21 world. Whether the benefit of that strength is worth the weakness somewhere else is one of the tough questions, and one I'm very happy I can leave to you, or to whoever the U21 manager ends up being.

I just don't understand why the U21 needs to be used to groom players for the NT. Being on the U21 is not a prerequisite for being on the NT. You can explain the benefits to managers of training PF/C in the fashion you suggest, sure. Some may choose to do that on their own anyway, and it seems as though some already have.

There's probably three reasons I've been having cold feet about running for this and reconsidering whether I even think my own plan is the right one, and this is one of them. Why isn't it enough to just explain how I think one sort of training is both better for a manager's own club AND also creates a potentially better NT player, and then let people decide if they think it's a good plan or if they'd rather train the more traditional way? And I don't have a good answer for that.

I think what got me into this was that idea that the sort of bigs U21 requires are both:

-not sustainable for the majority of the managers training them and not particularly salary efficient for their clubs either

-not easily trained in secondaries later on, and therefore not really providing the NT with the best return on our high potential players.

So, it felt like U21 priorities were costing us a precious resource (good trainees and the managers who put in the work to train them) and I wanted to see a plan to re-align what U21 was about to something that didn't cause those conflicts. But I know it's not a perfect solution.

Maybe a better solution is something closer to what Jelme has already suggested: simply more communication to managers about the financial implications, and the possible benefits of choosing to train their player in a balanced way with a focus more on making the NT vs the U21 team.

If every initial U21 email to a potential trainee included "here's the potential draw backs to training your player this way and here are some other training possibilities" maybe that is enough to get some people to consider training for the NT instead, while still leaving U21 free to play whatever players happen to be best suited for winning any given season?

I butted in on your discussion.

Your right they don't have to be groomed and a lot happens when they go from 21 to 23, 24, 25,26. One guy who comes to mind is Buck Santos from SBCT. He didn't make the U21 team, but made the NT at a late age. U21 players are the ones who are clearly visible to the NT manager without scouring the database. I would imagine Wozz knows most of them who he would consider by name. The U21 manager in most cases needs to manage that transition.

I am hoping he is not saying that he is going to play the players who train the way he wants them. I would consider the talent level these managers have seen. I am sure I have said I would bought the 12/12/12 guy just because he fits what I want somewhere and have done something like that. The NT's are such a unique situation because you pick players other people are training and hope they are in good shape when you use them or the manager stays active.

1) jfriske: I read your speech. It seems to me that there is a natural objection you don't address in it. Your 12-12-12 guy with 9-10 secondaries is going to be smoked by the standard triple 15 guy (let alone the triple 15 guy "born" with decent secondaries). There are no two ways about this: if you know the game, you'll realize it's true. 

So, I get the impression that the U21 for you would not be a team designed to win. Now, I don't want to spin this in a negative way, so I'll be constructive: suppose I changed your idea to something like this:

instead of keeping players cheap but losers, let's make them the best they can be BUT allow the owners to make the maximum possible profit on their training investment: what would you recommend?

I think the post I was working on just before your's posted addresses the 12's vs 15's question, but basically yeah there's no getting around the disadvantage we'd be putting our U21 team at competitively. We would have to decide as a community that it's more valuable for us to go all out encouraging the training of players this way than it is to win U21 games.

As far as how to get owners maximum value on their training investment: I don't know. It's my opinion that training U21 bigs is probably not the way to get maximum value from training, so I'm not sure how you fix that.

If I train just primaries and get my center to 150k by 21yrs, then train primaries all season long and sell at the end of the year when his salary jumps to 200k+, in todays market I might not even get 1.5 mil for him.

If I train a balanced 50k center, he costs me more than $1 million less in salary over the season and he also probably sells for twice at much as the first guy. So I just don't see a way to make training the first player an equal value for the owner.

The other point I think is important to raise is that we are still training these players to be 'the best that they can be', we're just focused on making them the best they can be at point when their training is finished, instead of at the arbitrary age of 21.9 yrs.

Ultimately I just think we need to have more public discussion about the fact that a race to 21 is not always the best use of a good trainee, for either the owner or the US community.

Last edited by J-Slo at 10/7/2010 10:17:28 PM

I am personally more inclined toward the center/power forward positions; because offensive rebounds lead to second chance scoring. last years team did not have much depth at the post which led to foul trouble and lack of rebounding. we should lean toward more of a 2-3 defense unless our opposition is guard oriented.

P.S. VOTE FOR ME, Bzak

Ultimately I just think we need to have more public discussion about the fact that a race to 21 is not always the best use of a good trainee, for either the owner or the US community.

The race to 21 is by default simply because there is a defined ceiling the players can reach. Change the age, you change the race. Creating a strong player by 21 then filling out the rest of his skills as he gets older seems like a solid foundation for growth. The problem comes in with the successes or failures the teams can have.

It's ok to have a different philosophy. You can make the "jack of all trades" players and they will master at nothing. The more experienced players have tried those balanced theories and have wasted money because of various reasons. I am saying more experienced because I am sure 5-6 seasons ago, I had the same conversation with other managers in the game.

He who gets to the finish line with the most toy's wins! It's the difference between a top 10 team winning with regularity versus a top 50 team that wins when it's able to manage every aspect of the game perfectly and hope for some help by the top 10 team stumbling.

I gotta be honest I didn't read all of the debate thread but I did read the speeches.

I like some of the things jfriske is saying about developing for the NT. I don't however think it has to be one or the other. Have we thought about how potentials play into things? At this point like everyone knows you basically have to be MVP or hall of fame potential to make the NT. But what about all of those lower level guys? They can still be useful and finding the dynamic between being a useful NT and useful U21 player will be interesting. Basically why not focus the training of the higher potential players on NT goals and the lower potential players on U21 goals?

I am fully confident in Jelme returning as coach. I think he is doing a fine job and agree with atabakin (I think?) about needing probably two terms to judge him.

I haven't heard much from Bobo's regarding the NT in the past but he certainly has the pedigree and has proven to be successful time and time again.

And in response to all candidates you'll have my support as a trainer/mentor/advisor whatever you want to call it. I'll try to get more involved in the tactical discussions going forward but no promises there.

Hey guys so I slept on it last night and I've decided to withdraw myself from this election and end my polarizing campaign. It basically came down to two things:

1) It seems like forum posts and discussions, mentoring, outreach, etc could be just as effective in getting new managers to consider some of the training changes we've been talking about without causing all the strife involved in changing the U21 team. And at the very least, those things should be given a chance to work before doing anything drastic.

2) I think the tradition of giving a manager two terms is a good one, especially for the U21 team. I know I would be trying to get a second term myself if I'd been elected. Besides that, I think Jelme has done a good job running the team so far. He also clearly understands the traps young managers can run into when training U21 players and I think, given the conflicting mandates of winning vs. helping managers build something sustainable, he's worked hard to do a pretty admirable job of balancing both.

I want to thank everybody for taking the time to read my posts and debate though, it was fun (and a little stressful!) and it helped me clarify some ideas and begin to form some new ones. Hopefully it made the election a bit more interesting at least for a day or two. Also like everyone else, I am excited to see what Rainey and Trickle can do this season!

@Jelme - how would you grade your performance - honestly from Game 1 to season 13 end. Do you really think Season 15 will be any different than season 13? The names may change but how are you going to get more out of the community?
Why should you be given another chance?

@Bobo - How fast can you get up to speed? 7 months is a long time, but the U21 schedule is already out, you have no scrimmage next week and little idea who the players are (based on what you said)

@both - what about your own teams? how are you going to pull double duty?

I am trying to take you seriously but have a hard time when say you are not pleased with the performance, you play the game to win, but feel the tenure is incomplete and deserves another chance.

Are we endorsing or are we condemning?

Season 12: A+
The tournament went almost exactly as I expected. We had good turnout at the games. I got a lot of BB-mails out and got responses from tons of owners. No tactical mistakes.

Season 13: C
I still got a ton of BB-mails out and got a response from a lot of them. The timing of the games made me miss a good portion of them, but the ones I got to were not well attended. The offsite dragged a bit. Tactically I made a few errors. The team still ended up about where they should have in terms of talent. Honestly, we were 8th best in terms of talent. Especially with Anglin being a GS disaster. Passing grade, but not a successful season.

Honestly, I'm as good or better than anyone until we get the charismatic cheerleader of a man into the position that can get involvement sky high. Team management is not a problem. I pulled an Edju and lost in the first round of the playoffs despite having HCA throughout. So this season should be pretty smooth. If I make it to D2 for next season, I'll be much more prepared than I was in Season 12.

BTW, I love Buck Santos.

Last edited by Dawson at 10/8/2010 2:06:40 PM