BuzzerBeater Forums

To all eventual candidates:

1. If you were me, what questions would you be asking?

2. If you could get a Sharpie tattoo on your back, what would it be?

3. Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

4. If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

5. Will your answer to this question be no?

6. Why is there Braille on drive-through ATM machines?

And yes, my vote will be based on the answers to these questions. :)

Last edited by adchester at 9/17/2013 6:13:45 PM

1. I would ask, " Why do you feel you can bring us closer to a worlds gold trophy than we have been in the past?"

2. Joe Bronson

3. what do you mean by adultery? ;).

4. I have failed for even trying to fail in the first place. So even though I succeeded at failing it would be a complete failure overall.

5. yes

6. You didn't know the blind could drive???

The US NT has been on a cycle for sometime. Do okay in Americas, completely sick at worlds. Rinse wash and repeat(what ever that means)
I'm voting for the guy who is most likely to change that cycle, outside factors be damned.

This is very understandable.

One thing to remember about the Worlds is that we go up against the best National Teams. We have had bad luck in the past though as well as GS problems, injuries, free throw shooting problems, and stamina issues. BUT, we can not make excuses for these issues.

The problem we are having is seperating ourselves from the competition. We have continuously trained players to be "like" the other teams but what good is it if our players are only equal to or a little worse than that of our competition?

We have began the process of creating different types of players and have a thread of the offsite devoted to this, but my fear is that we continue to create players that other countries began doing before us.

I was the Luxembourg NT manager a few seasons back and there is one thing that stuck out to me while doing that...many european trainers train bigs with lots of guard skills and don't worry about some of the things that we do for the USA team. Now, some of our worries are legitament worries that need addressed, but why do you suppose Czech Republic can go in and beat us with the Princeton offense? Its because before any of us even thought about training guard skills on bigs, they were already doing it. Other teams have done the same as well and that has gradually put us at a disadvantage.

Now, there are different ways we can approach this. We can continue doing what we are doing and hope to eventually catch up to them, or we can think outside the box just a LITTLE, not a whole bunch, and begin to build our team differently than anyone else.

We have to have a plan in place for the NT because currently our plan is to create many players with the same skills (albiet we do have some different players). We need to have a plan for 2 seasons, 4 seasons, 10 seasons down the line so that we know where we are going with our team. By doing these types of things we can break ourselves out of this cycle and find ourselves competing during Americas, as well as Worlds.

The US NT has been on a cycle for sometime. Do okay in Americas, completely sick at worlds. Rinse wash and repeat(what ever that means)
I'm voting for the guy who is most likely to change that cycle, outside factors be damned.

I'm not sure there's a question in here, but I'll give it a go. First, I think we've done better than "okay" at America's.
S19 - America's gold
S21 - America's gold
S23 - America's silver (lost by 1 point to Chile, who had HCA)
Canada has HCA this season, so they'll be a bit more difficult this season. And Chile is always a contender.

You're right, however, that we've pretty much sucked at Worlds. While I would have done some things differently than Sleet, I think better players will make a much larger difference than any tactical changes we can make.

1. I wouldn't ask anything.

2. Tim Tebow.

3. Probably not.

4. Succeeded.

5. No.

6. So blind people can use an ATM. They just get a friend to drive them, and then use the ATM. Also, ATM's are now prepared for when Google makes their self-driving car.

Both of you (Isaiah and magiker) have admitted that we do not currently have the players we need to win in Worlds and that the focus of your term will be player development.

With the term being only 2 seasons, how much of an effect, if any, will that translate into for the mid-twenties guys that are almost NT ready?

If you propose any long term changes to our training plans how can you be confident you can convince USA managers to stick with your plans well past your term? (As an example, SB. If you believe the SB changes were effective and would like a SB beast you will likely not have one to play during your term. How do you plan to get managers to buy into your idea and follow new training practices when by the time their guy is NT ready there will be a different manager and their player may never get a callup and opportunity to prove or disprove the effectiveness of the build?)

Neither of you are claiming to bring home gold immediately and with some USA managers dead set on a "trophy-or-we-failed" attitude, how will you gage the success of your term?

Great questions Hunterz.

I'm first going to answer your last question. While our team may not be ready for a gold trophy,I feel we could definitely make strides towards a silver at least. Here's the problem we face. We have consistently been a LI team and rarely run anything else. The unwillingness to try anything else could be what has kept us from these possibilities. I'm one to take chances and you can see that with my own teams history. It is never good to be one dimenshional and that may mean you switch it up some games to keep the competition on their toes. This also means having the guts to maybe run an outside offense during big games if we think the opponent might run a 2-3 defense. This is how we at least stand a chance at winning a potential gold. I'm not going to sit there and know we are outmatched using LI but still use it. Same goes for defenses. If I know our M2M is outmatched I will do whatever it takes to compete.

For development, that is a tricky question but I think one thing we need to do is allow for some flexibility in training. The first thing to do is see the path am owner wants to take and then keep continuous contact with those managers. I will specifically be the one to contact these owners over the course of two seasons and continue beyond too. Many special builds are beneficial to the teams they are on as well so it's important to not just tell them they are useful builds but show them why they are useful. With the potential change in the salary formulas that just happened, this makes these types of builds we may need even more possible.

For SBing, that will be completely up to the manager. I'm creating a SB build right now with the hopes to show people the importance, so we will see how that goes. However, I'm confident that more people will be willing to train it as time goes on.

In regards to building a team with multiple tactic options, do you mean forming a team that in one season can run multiple tactics? What I mean is, with a limited amount of allowed call ups, do you see a challenge with our current player builds to have one roster that can an inside offense one week, and then an outside offense the next week? Is this something we can accomplish during this term, or is this a longer term plan?

Also, if we form players who can each run multiple tactics, is it a danger to potentially create a bunch of tweeners who have no weaknesses, but no real strengths on the national stage either?

With running multiple tactics, many of our guys are already built to be able to run inside and outside tactics, as long as they are used appropriately. So, this would not necessarily require call ups all the time. Also, I understand what our strength is and I'm not saying we constantly change tactics, what I'm saying is that I will have my mind on the matchups and if the situation calls for different tactics to be able to compete then I will do it. I will answer more specific questions to this if you have them, but in general, different tactics won't require call ups all the time.

For the second part, the goal isn't to make a whole bunch tweeners but I can see where you might think that. Players would have an identity to them specifically made for a purpose. Example: Defensive SFs, Outside bigs, inside guards, pure SGs, offensive oriented bigs, etc. They have an identity and will be different from each other. At the same time, we will still need types of player builds we have now. It'll be the combination of the two that will help us move forward.

Just a quick example of the past:

We knew we were outmatched and the opponent had gone 2-3 in the past, but instead of taking the chance going outside we would hear everyone say "stick to our bread and butter," ala go LI and M2M despite being outmatched an low chance of winning. Then, what do you know, the opposition would go 2-3 and we lose. The losing isn't necessarily avoidable, but we can take actions to raise our chances of winning.