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I see that you have national team experience which is a great thing to have in this election, but I feel like you missed a lot on your speech. You failed to mention your love of fast food, love for American football, you didn't call football soccer, you didn't say that you're really stupid, and you didn't make fun of Canada. As someone with experience running in foreign elections, let me tell you that you need to make the country's users feel like you're one of them. That's how you really get their attention.

Right they have many guys for the offense, but they also have those bigs with big salaries that many people do not want to hold. If nobody wants to hold them then how do we do that?

What? This isn't true at all. In fact, we had a couple guys that have a higher salary than anyone on Poland's team. Are you even aware of the types of players we're up against? I'm not worried about the guys with a ton of primaries and no subs. What I am worried about is that Poland has 7 of these guys:

14/8/10/13/15/11 - 17/17/16/10

CR has this guy: 15/10/15/18/19/15 - 16/16/14/9. That's 147 skill points. These are the types of players it takes to win worlds trophies. These guys aren't cheap on the TL, and they are absolutely useful and sustainable for a D1 team.

I have said it in previous elections and will say it again....we will never be a Golds team if we continue to be like everyone else. So you are saying " there are team that are constant gold contenders who use LI"

I seriously don't know how many times I can make this point. They aren't winning because they are using LI. They aren't tactically superior to us. They are winning because all of their players are better than ours. And until we change that, we're not going to win anything.

And here's the biggest point: It's not like the two guys I've mentioned couldn't play in an outside offense. The top guy is one hell of a PF or C in any offense. We need more skilled players before we can really threaten other teams with running outside offenses or zones.

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.

I don't think this is true either. I don't think we have 1 guard that is good in both inside and outside tactics, and really only 1 or 2 bigs that are good at both.

Also, what you mean by "used appropriately?" Do you mean we've been using some players incorrectly? I might agree with you there. That could be an interesting discussion.

Our NT is no doubt a better LI team than it was the last time we made the semis, but I’d argue that our player growth as a whole hasn’t kept with the rest of the world, and in some areas we’ve regressed.

I don't think you understand where we were at in jfarb's term (S15-S16). You realize we almost didn't make worlds right? We beat Uruguay by 4 and Peru by 5 to miraculously avoid Chile in the semi finals. We then got demolished by Chile in the final, but at least we made worlds. We lost to Poland by 45 in the worlds semi final. This guy played 22 minutes in that game: 6/2/6/1/3/2 - 16/17/16/8 (or something very close). We had a ton of work to do.

Poland, by contrast, had Rakus and Gurak suit up for that 45 point loss in season 16. Those guys also were on the team last season for their world's win. Did Poland improve? No doubt. But they were way ahead of us in season 16, and I don't think they're as far ahead of us now.

In what ways do you think we regressed?

Can we expect to be a contender for gold in season 26, and if not, what should our goal be? When could we expect our talent to develop to a point that we can be a perennial favorite on the world stage? Today’s 27 year olds were 18 the last time we made the semis.

No. Our goal should be to have better players than this season. I don't know if I can answer that question. I hope to be able to compete in season 28 and 30, but I think we're a ways away from a "perennial favorite."

These are the very players that we have yet to create too. But what I am arguing is that when we get to that point of having a player like that, who's to say that isn't an outdated build? If we had players like that I wouldn't be arguing about this at all and we wouldnt have this conversation about different player types right now. What we are arguing about is the fact that we continue to be like CR and Poland but lack to have players even like them. So if we can't train those types of players why do we try? Like I said, I would love to have those players and Im not against those builds at all because they could work in multiple offenses, which gets back to being able to run something other than LI.

I seriously don't know how many times I can make this point. They aren't winning because they are using LI. They aren't tactically superior to us. They are winning because all of their players are better than ours. And until we change that, we're not going to win anything.

When did I say they were tactically superior than us? I have said from the get go that their players are better than ours and we need to create better ones. So I dont understand why you said that to my quote? My whole running is based on new players instead of the types we continue to have. The thing I have argued about though is creating similar players to these teams. We need to be different and better builds to set us apart.

Last edited by Isaiah at 9/19/2013 8:06:54 PM

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.

I don't think this is true either. I don't think we have 1 guard that is good in both inside and outside tactics, and really only 1 or 2 bigs that are good at both.

Also, what you mean by "used appropriately?" Do you mean we've been using some players incorrectly? I might agree with you there. That could be an interesting discussion.

Actually you are right about this because our older players were better built to run multiple tactics than our players now. Now, we have continued to tell everyone to build towards the LI offense and that has left us with very few options. This is where we went wrong at the beginning, and I will admit that I was part of that at the beginning too, but we have failed in giving ourselves the opportunity of choices and now we are stuck.

Im saying appropriately because there are many combinations of ways to play players. Part of the problem has been kind of unavoidable with the LCD rosters that left us with no choice. Im mostly talking about if we use our current players for an outside offense appropriately then it still could be effective.

Eminence:

Give me one reason why I should vote for a person who has helped out what are arguably America's two biggest rivals. ;)


Magiker:

You were obviously very effective at the U21 level. What did you learn from that experience that you think you can carry over to the NT level?

First off, I’d like to say I love your mentality with regards to tactics and player development, it’s refreshing.

My question is twofold.

Short term:
Our results from worlds were disheartening to say the least, and we won’t see significant changes to our core group in two seasons. The quickest way to improve this team would be through a stamina training regime, but we’ll still be at a disadvantage.

Knowing that we don’t have the best talent to draw from, what can we do strategically to maximize our success?

Long Term:
Simply, how can we develop the best players in the world?

Strategically speaking, I believe we still need to use our LI attack for the next few seasons but have our mind on the ability to switch things up. It does not take a 20JR player to be effective in an outside offense, even at the NT level, so we need to keep an eye on the other teams and look for any mismatch or tactic switch that could give us a chance to win. If we expect a man to man defense then we need to analyze every player's stats from the opposition and see where some weak areas may be to attack. Obviously once the game starts we dont have much say as to what goes on, but we can change the roster to at least try to take advantage of mismatches. But really, these next two seasons would best be focused on doing the best we can, with what we have, and plan for the future.

For the second part of the question, developing the best players in the world would be up for opinion. I think in order to do this though, we need to have first a goal of where we want to go, a list of types of players we will need for where we are going, and then allow for owners of these players to have fun with the training yet still guide them along. It comes down to looking out for the owners and creating players that are in the best interest of them .

I’m confused by your stance.

In absolute terms, yes, we have better, more balanced players today - but so does virtually every other NT.

Speaking relatively though, I do think that we've regressed in some ways - or at least not kept pace with other top countries. We once had one of the greatest guards in the world in Joe Bronson. Today, we don’t have an elite player at any position.

Just scanning the TL, there are currently 33 players with at least 12 IS and 17 OD, I see a Slovenian guard with 18 OD and 20 IS, a Honk Kong guard with 19 OD and 17 IS, a Hungarian guard with 18 OD /15 IS /13 ID, a Polish guard with 18 OD /15 IS /16 ID, a Chinese guard with 20 OD / 15 IS / 14 ID. We don’t have a single guard that can defend these players, and very few that can score efficiently on them.

As for Poland, if I recall, they didn’t win gold with vastly superior talent. They had HCA and were able to TIE virtually every game they played, in the same position the USA would have been similarly dominant.

This is all tangential to the point though. Whether or not we were better off or worse off in the past, you said in your speech your goal is to make the semi-finals, and you don’t know that we’re good enough to get there.

I have two questions for you.

China made a commitment to conserving enthusiasm last season. At the risk of advancing with three losses, against a certain CT, they TIE’d, defeated us, and advanced to the semi finals, ultimately falling to Poland. If the US were in a similar position, would you handle things differently?

What will you do uniquely to make the NT more successful than it would be with another coach, both during this term and in the future?