1- Is it your opinion that there is no counter we as managers/a community can implement against LI, and only BB intervention can change this dynamic?
It would take a massive community undertaking to be able to legitimately challenge LI. We would need players developed that were insanely loaded in outside skills PG-C. In order to challenge some of the top LI offenses in the world we would need a power forward and center, that could defend and rebound with the monster bigs in the world, but also be able to torch them from the outside.
2- If the BB answer your question with something politely along the lines of "It's not our job to continually adjust the game to counter what's currently in vogue, the tools are there and we believe they are in fact balanced, the community will eventually adapt and find its own counter to this, just like it did to OD, etc", then: what next?
Do you have theories on what the counters to LI might be, and how we might implement them as a county? Do we just politely disagree with the BB's and join the LI arms race?
Presumably even if we think we know how to defend a LI it may be a long process to get the right skills and players up to a NT level, just like it took a while for Ps to catch up to OD, but I think there is an important distinction between a NT manager who is playing the big man arms race while biding his time until we're ready to counter inside tactics, and a manager who truly believes there is no counter and only a change in the GE will solve the problem. So I think it'd be informative to hear where each of the candidates comes down on the LI issue.
With what we have right now as far as skills on our players we have a few options
1. We can get our bigs a couple of pops in primary skills to start to contend better with the other monsters in the world.
2. Get a batch of bigs coming that can defend and rebound with the turbatos and tapias of the world and exploit them in R&G type offense (think Alton Johnson on steroids)
3. Get a mix of normal NT guys and some trinket/specialty players that we can deploy against some of the more common matchup problems we face.
I think number 3 is the way to go, however its going to take some time to where we can get there. I know a few managers have talked about taking on the project of developing some of the specialty players which is awesome because as proved by poland, specialty players can pose problems but when push comes to shove the only way to make it successful is to still have the meat and potatoes type guards and big guys as a base and then mix in those specialty players to create the advantage they were designed for.
One other side note on this, if this 10% reduction thing is right we may be looking at a complete different playing field on the NT level in 6-8 seasons. The monster bigs may no longer be possible if having the secondary skills so low affects primary training the way it has been rumored to. Same could be said for the guards. If that is the case the first countries to realize this could dominate for awhile. We need to continue to gather data on the affects this is having on training and then exploit our findings as quickly as we can.