BuzzerBeater Forums

You've said a little about a "disconnect" between the NT and the U21 team, and it seems like you are implying there are 2 distinct training paths for U21 players and NT players.

I need to clarify what i meant by this, and also say that I never mentioned or thought you were a part of this. What I am talking about in this sense is that if you go on the off-site or even on the threads here on the main site every training strategy posted says, and I'm paraphrasing here, to pump primaries and then secondaries second. This is why we don't have the bigs (and to be honest guards as well) with the secondaries to make up for our lack in primary skills and have the ability to be diverse in our offense. My goal is to coordinate with the U21 manager, so we still have the means to be dominant on the U21 level, but also be up front with managers in telling them how fast the salaries can escalate and what they would be looking at doing after they got their primaries trained up (which would be playing a massive salaried player out of position to train secondaries while trying to stay competitive).

The only real difference between what's essential for U21, and what might help a NT player development is a 10pot big (~5% of our prospects, only 1 last season). I assure you that this is not missed by me or our great scouting staff.

I agree with this. I never said this was being missed or feel that i implied as much.

While training may be two different things (for a very very select few prospects), I always have the NT interests first. I promise I am not solely concerned with U21 for potential NT players. I think we have a few things we need to improve before we win worlds gold, but I don't think the training of 10pot U21 players is a major issue.

First off to explain why i bolded what i did.... I don't think the NT interests need to be put first... we need to have it be a simultaneous process where managers that aren't already aware of what the process entails are brought up to speed and prepared and know exactly what their options are and the ramifications of which option they choose. That way they won't get discouraged when they hit the tough spots i.e the lull between their prospect being on the U21 team and getting the finishing touches for the NT.

The italicized part is exactly the synergy we need on both levels to get our team to that worlds gold. I will be able to provide this from the NT end.

So, my question is, will you try to encourage the creation of players that are more efficient relative to their salary, and if so, how? Additionally, do you feel that there is a difference in how an NT player should be developed early on as opposed to a U21 player?

Great question. We have had some great suggestions on the offsite for creating salary efficient players as Coco said. My feeling on this though is no matter how many of these salary efficient players we have, we are still going to need 1 or 2 of these monster players that dont have an efficient salary. However, if we start working on getting these salary efficient players trained it may or may not even be better for our team. I can see one positive out of it though and that's that more D.II teams could sustain these players leading to more of our players staying on USA teams. And then we could rely on a few NBBA teams to hold the high salary players. But will these NBBA teams welcome these players on their teams? That Im not sure about. Would you hold a Bronson or Maples on your team if they were the only big salary players on the team?

As far as development goes, yes the future NT prospects should definitely be trained differently than the U21 prospects. By that I mean basically the HOF players and ATG players if we have any. Those players need to be on a training regiment thats helps them become great all-around players with good secondaries so when the time comes to pick out the NT players every year we dont have to worry about these centers with 1s in all secondaries. Because quite frankly those guys with all 1s should not even be on the team. As for the MVP potential players I believe these are the guys we need to try the special training techniques on like the ones that have been discussed on the offsite. Reason I say the MVP players should be the players to have the special training is because 1) we havent really done some of these techniques so we dont know if they will work 2) why waste a HOF caliber player on something that may not work 3) the salaries wont be as high with these players so they could still sustain the salary as an MVP potential player 4) There is a wider selection of MVPs than there are HOF players so we can pick out the right guys to start the training regimen on.

But will these NBBA teams welcome these players on their teams? That Im not sure about. Would you hold a Bronson or Maples on your team if they were the only big salary players on the team?

Some probably will considering that the merchandise you gain from holding a star on the NT allows you to sustain a higher team salary, and that's the sort of edge that can make a big difference in the NBBA.

However, personally, I require a minimum of strong ID for any guard, preferably proficient or higher, so I wouldn't consider owning most of our top guards. As for bigs, I view inside defense in the same way most view shot blocking, which rules out owning virtually any monster big.

1) even factoring in slowdown due to age, training is order-invariant : given a final build every path to that build will Take the same time.

I don't believe this... If taller people train slower in guard skills and as they get older all training slows... Then getting to secondaries last won't even out getting to them first. I especially believe this to be true now with the cross training effect. I have no proof of this but I'm attempting it with my prospect.

This is where my program that we need to go beyond just telling a manager how to train his prospect comes into play. We need to mentor the manager on how to build his team around the player to advance so when they sell off their player they are in the upper leagues and can go about building their team how they wish.

I just want to emphasize: what's a little annoying about these kinds of comments is the pretense that these are new or difference/making ideas. Let me ask you: how many teams have you mentored in your twelve seasons in this game?
Have you got a sense of how many users have been mentored by the users you aim to "improve upon"---people like me, brian, jfarb?
You don't need tell me the specific teams you've mentored---just how many there are and how you've helped them be successful.

I could see where that would be annoying... However I don't know at all where i mentioned it was a new idea. My wrinkle on it was to get the NT coach himself to deliver the training plans.

As far as mentoring goes I've never had a startup team contact me and say help me, but I have helped people with tactical choices and what enthusiasm to use etc on multiple occassions.

I know that all the top managers have mentored a ton of teams... What I'm saying I would do (and what you said you wouldn't do) is go out as the coach and make it more personal which I believe is the way to grow interest in the NT.