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I respect a manager which big brass balls and a deep, deep voice who sees what is important and takes it. If you were to convince me you were the sort to do such a thing by, I don't know, committing to CT your TV games this season, that would go a long way toward securing my vote.

"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?"

Here is where I stand with this and it ultimately goes with my basis of changing things up. The NT has become predictable and a one trick pony ( this isn't bad but it does need changed). People continue to lose interest with it, which part of that could be from the declining amount of people on buzzerbeater, but I want to help make it more exciting.

We have, for several seasons, made it less possible for teams to train NT players unless they were willing to make their team a LI team. If you look at the growing amount of teams going to outside and neutral offenses, you will see that things will eventually have to change anyways. People want to create players that work for their own teams, which means as tactics change, LI players will be less common. This can be seen on the TL where LI guards(high OD, high PA, high DR) has gone down in value. Although the whole TL went down in value, these players are similar in overall value to even outside players.

I want to create excitement in the community so people know that anyone can create a NT, or help create one at the lower levels, that can be used in their own type of schemes. No longer must you create a player towards LI.

So excitement is the number one thing I will work on, to create the sense that anyone can help and bring back the drive in everyone to try to make a special player.

If we can improve the drive of teams to create players then we will also improve the overall contribution in decisions. If you look at the NT forum the amount of people in on discussions has declined and there's only 10 people, tops, that make suggestions. That's because 1) excitement isn't there 2) everyone already knows what's going on because its the same thing every season.


If I can make people excited during my tenure as NT coach then it will also help for future NT managers because they will have the attention of managers and participation. That's the main thing about a NT. However, if we continue to do what we are doing, we may or may not reach the other teams, but we will soon lose the excitement from everyone as well as their willingness to contribute.

I'm not a candidate, but let's talk about Aquino for a moment. This may help sharpen your question (also I'm drunk and can't fall asleep, but let's not digress :) ).

His primaries are behind the pace of an NTer (about a full season behind: these days if you want you can get a 21yo big man around triple 15---but even a triple 14 would be massively better in primaries). His secondaries are 5-2-7-2-4-2: these are hardly remarkable and *lots* of our 18yos are born with better secondaries.

This player was not trained all that well, but he can serve a role on the U21. What's the point of disrupting that role to try and make him serviceable to the NT, for which frankly he has *no* shot for?????

Ok, maybe I didn't give the best example, but the point I was making was that a lot of the time with a HoF/ATG potential player, you have to choose a NT path (secondaries as a youngster) vs a U21 path (primaries as a youngster). The U21 path yield salary-inefficient players that are hard to correct and can't compete at the highest level of NT competition.

To Eminence

In your speech, you said to address questions directly to you because you likely wouldn't have enough time to read through the entire NT debate thread. With those time constraints, explain how you will make enough time to be USA NT coach (a much bigger time commitment than reading through this thread)?

if I win this election, I will commit to CTing my TV games ;). You have my word on that.

2. I've been a scout for a lot of the 22+ guys for the past couple seasons. I seem to be the only candidate aware of what types of players we have, and what's in the pipeline. In fact, I seem to be the only candidate that realizes the types of players we're up against as well. Well, I bet the Dutch guy realizes that. He seems cool.

This makes me laugh. You act as if you are the only person that knows anything. I know d*** well who our players are and what their skills are as well as what our pipeline holds. I also know very d*** well of who we are up against.

I feel their is confusion as far as where I stand on this election. I am not saying "commit full fledged right now to go outside offense, or any other offense." Now, I will however look at the situation and if calls for something different then I will do my best to act on the situation and try something different.

What I am saying is build for the ability to play multiple offenses down the line in 3-6 seasons. Which this is where Im confused where you seem to not agree at all with me because you just said in a prior post that you want to create players that can play in multiple offenses. So now I have to ask, are we only different in the aspect of how we choose tactical decisions?

Im quite stunned that you would say that you are the only one that knows who our players are, though. That,to me, makes it seem as if you are putting yourself at a higher pedestal. I am always looking at our roster and analyzing it. I don't however suggest anything in the forums anymore though because things continue to be the same thing anyways.

My question to the candidates is: should the U21 team take a (relative) back seat to the National Team when it comes to high-potential players in the hopes of creating world-class, salary efficient players (ie emphasizing training secondaries at a young age rather than waiting to do so once they hit 22 years old)? And if so, how would you work with the U21 coach to enact such a plan when your respective goals are at least partially conflicting?

This is something I have always believed in doing and in all honesty has actually been happening to a certain degree. While U21 trophies are nice, our NT should be our first priority. The past few seasons the NT and U21 has done a great job in cooperation of who is on NT track and who is U21 track. Obviously superstars and PA players and even MVPs should be the ones taken on the U21 track because they do not have the cap room to be on the NT. So those players should be trained towards the direction that the owner feels works for their own team, as well as the U21. Now, some of those MVPs, if trained to be a special type of player, could make the NT but very few make it this day and age.

For HOF and ATGs, that really does depend on their starting skills at 18yos. If they are a special player then they will be used on the NT track. If, however, they start out as a 7'5" big with all 1s in secondaries, then I almost argue they aren't worth the training and they should just be trained to the owner's liking, unless we want to try to make him a primaries beast, which isn't beneficial salary wise. But yes, in short, many of our HOF and ATG prospects should be on the NT track and MVPs and SS on the U21 track.

Well, I'm a tad bit lazy, and don't much care what the other candidates may or may not be saying. So why bother?

And just so everyone knows, I'm probably least aware of what our current pipelines hold of all the candidates, as I'm currently restricted on the offsite.

Other basic stances of mine:
-Being NT coach is not that tough, seriously, for me the toughest part was keeping community involvement up in a smaller country, fortunately not a huge problem here.
-I think we've had a bit too much of the "it's not anybody's fault" going on recently. We keep saying it's on the 'community', but really in my eyes the buck always stops at the manager and he/she needs to step up and take responsibility.

Well, I'm a tad bit lazy

So you are unlikely to in-depth research of our future opponents. How will you bring tactical superiority compared the other candidates, given that the buck stops with the NT coach? Would you plan on tactics other than LI/M2M?

Ahh, difference in being a tad bit lazy and not wanting to read through a thread with so many tangents and things not related to myself and successfully managing a NT. I have managed a NT for the past 4 seasons with basically no assistance (compared to the US support base at least) and have it within 10 spots of the US in the world rankings, I think I know what it takes to research an opponent.

With the way the US roster looked at last check, I would probably lean towards inside offense and MtM defense in most situations. Our guards especially were not built to go outside. The only thing I could promise for tactical superiority is to fairly evaluate all of our players, where as the current regime seems to... for lack of a better phrase pick their own. I'm all for the US owning it's players, it's simply more cost effective, but it's never going to be a factor in my roster picking. (I'm not saying past managers have favored their own players, but they have favored US owned players.)

Some general comments to all that I read in the posts.

- I believe a NT coach is an unity builder! A country needs it's top teams, league I and II to train it's best players. Transfers of NT players should be kept to a minimum. If the own folks don't build on their national team, who would do?

- U21 is a totally different business than the National team. The National team players build up, has to kept as long as possible, financial interesting for the training team. Keep in mind that nomally a NT player is only member for 4 to 6 seasons, while training him to become a NT player will keep for sure as long as 10 seasons. That is more than 2.5 years a lot can happen in such period.

- I don't know the current skills of most of team USA, but I have a lot of knowledge on the different tactics and what kind of players you need for it. I also have experienced with a NT team what difference it makes to have a high enthousiasm or low.

- My plan for team USA is to make a selection of 12 to 14 players, who are just the most skilled/best for their position players and 1 or 2 what I call jokers. This can be a player that has a strange skill set or an older player with very high experience, etc. I like to keep a couple of positions open at the beginning of the seasons to add some needs later on. You never know when an injury happen or an unexpected transfers comes which lowers the gameshape a lot.

- Secondly I like to work with assistants. A discussion between 3 to 5 good managers mostly gives the best result. The coach decides, but to reflect his ideas makes the decisions only better. If I become the USA coach, I would like to have some USA assistants.

- last but not least, I will make in all honesty decisions. I am somebody that communicate in a direct way. Good is good, bad is bad. And never forget, it is a game for fun and you have most fun when you win.


Last edited by Ruaidri at 9/20/2013 6:41:24 PM