BuzzerBeater Forums

I appreciate the candid responses.

My ideology is that without jfarb, our community involvement would take a big hit and thus the interest level as a hole would as well. Would it cripple us, no, but it wouldn't allow us to achieve our goal either. Player development is a huge part of reaching our goal and player development is driven by community involvement and the will to invest in the training of World Champion level US players by US managers. I am excited that you are taking this step and looking to help out with the cause. I was not implying that you were just discarding your club team, but I also know that the salaries you are willing to take on can make it challenging to field a roster that will continue the winning tradition of the LMA. However, I do feel like we need a coach that is willing to go out in the community and help the interest in the NT grow. To continue the upward trend of involvement and to encourage those capable of training NT players to do so....and being successful at it. Basically, we need someone with jfarb's skill set in this manner. Is that person out there? I dont know. I appreciate your honesty with this topic. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to draw Joel out of retirement, but I do see what can be accomplished with a bit of luck and lot of work in the community. Was a semi-final appearance mediocrity? I wouldn't think so. Heck being top 8 in the world is pretty darn good, but to get over the hump we have got to reach out proactively to those in the US. If I had the complete answers I would run, but I don't. That's why I'm hoping someone else with this skill set will eventually come to the forefront in future elections.

The above is not me saying, "Coco shouldn't be the NT coach." Also, I am not discounting your experience or track record, conversely I think that makes you a safe choice (whether safe is right or not). I am just expressing what I think is imperative to eventually getting to the next level. If you are elected and do not win worlds in 2 seasons am I going to think your tenure was a failure? Absolutely not. However, the groundwork laid by this coach will definitely affect the ability for the US to win the S22 WC. That's why I am not as worried about the coach making the final call after facilitating tactical discussions as I am about the coach being able to solve long term personnel issues by increasing involvement.

Anyway, that's why I asked the questions. I enjoyed your responses and respect the answers. Very thorough.

I think nother thing everyone needs to think about is that we all have interest in the NT but how come Joel seems to be the one that is "supposed" to get more members on the offsite and work with the community aspect? This should be a team effort ran by both the NT and U21 coaches as well as the group of members already on the offsite. I think that seems to be one of our problems is we come up with ideas to try to get more people to the offsite but we never follow through. I think we need to be more successful as an offsite community promoting player building and involvment on the forums.

I am willing to do whatever is asked of me and I am confident that whoever is elected coach will be a leader in the US BB community. I will assist the new NT coach as necessary in PR, domestic scouting, etc. We will be involving others in the PR aspect this upcoming season, since SpF left we have not really had a real PR program, but we will. I feel there is enough leadership in the offsite community that certain aspects of the NT such as PR, mentoring, etc can be handled by that leadership and by the many great volunteers from the community that we have been lucky to have.

No need to worry about me as far as this debate is concerned.


Last edited by jfarb at 2/9/2012 2:23:06 AM

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.

How comfortable are you with using the different zones? Do you view them only as emergency options, not an option at all, or a reasonable tactical choice in normal situations?

As i stated in my speech I think when it comes down to this kind of thing the whole community has a great idea on how these work (although if we could get more data on the box defenses to see if they are or aren't a viable option that would be great). So I agree with what has been said by the other candidates.

Last edited by southpaw17 at 2/9/2012 4:22:40 AM

Which reminds me, the only relevant question to the candidates here is: who has the most super duper BuzzerBeater best friends?

I probably have the least in number, but you mentored me as i was coming up with my team and so I think our connection is special.

How do you feel about Inside Iso? Is it a viable option at some point in the next few seasons, and is there a way we can build a team to play II?

I've actually played around with this a little bit and i honestly believe that if the right team were built for it,( guards with normal outside skills, high driving and handling, and "strong" or better inside shot. Bigs that had high driving and inside shooting, but also good enough outside skills very good offensive flow) this offense could be very dynamic. The reason being that when i played this offense the goal was to go inside however when that was cut off this offense took a very large number of threes.

I don't think right now we have the players for it, but it is definitely a viable option down the road as we develop more well rounded players.

Since percentage wise very few US players care about the National Team, what is your plan for making them give a flying squirrel about it?

As i outlined in my speech I think direct contact from the NT Coach is the best way to accomplish this. Lets be honest, most of the users in the top leagues have already been contacted about it or at least know of it. We would need to get users as they were new or in the lower leagues while they were learning the game. I think as a new user if someone messaged you and gave advice and had the title of NT Coach it would make them more receptive and foster a greater relationship/interest in the NT for that user going forward.

Inevitably as they trained players for the U21 or National Team they would rise through the ranks and tha'ts how we could eventually get to the majority of our upper leagues being at least interested in the NT and once that is accomplished we can perpetuate the cycle.

The guy that answers this question better gets my vote

The adjective that best describes Edju is___________________

I want at least 2 sentences with at least 3 reasons why you like that adjective.

Sorry as a newer member to the upper leagues and NT front my knowledge of him is limited to knowing that people swear a lot when discussing him.

1. Why are you running?

I love running my club team, but the challenge of one day winning the worlds gold cup is something that strikes at my competitive nerve. I want to see us win at some point in the future very badly.

2. Why are you the best candidate?

Because I believe that being the NT Coach is about so much more than picking the tactics for the games and being involved on the off-site. I believe that more personal interaction with the community is the best way to get newer users interested in the NT and from there we get more users interested in helping develop players for the NT which is what winning the worlds gold comes down to. I also believe that we need to make some minor adjustments to our scouting program to help newer users that we are recruiting to the NT's aide better develop their players and teams. I have the time and desire to make this happen.

3. What do you think went wrong with this season?

To be honest I think because once the allegations against Jason started the community as a whole became disinterested and killed the hype surround the NT. There was way less discussion in the tactics forums and I think thats why people think this past season went terribly wrong. As far as where we finished, yeah we might have been able to win 1-2 more games than we did as we didn't win any with some minor adjustments, also our GS sucked relatively the entire worlds tournament.... but we were never a threat to seriously contend for the title.

4. How could you, as NT manager, help fix the problem(s)?

Again i think it just goes back to being personally involved in the community, having people excited about helping with the NT by training players, keeping GS up for existing players, etc. If you want a more in depth answer go look at my speech.

Last edited by southpaw17 at 2/9/2012 4:44:11 AM