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I took a sabbatical from following the national team for the last two seasons, for reasons I will explain if truly pressed..

-Gunners Speech

Gunner: Please elaborate

insanity: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

That about sums up our last two seasons.

insanity: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

Yeah, okay, you dont like Juice and/or agree with his choices. He's not running anymore so if you're to be a decent replacement for someone that had a really high approval rate, how about some details on what was insane and what you would have changed.

For all who are are running. The biggest drawback to the NT recently is the fact that our best players are rarely in top GS (from a pool of players that isn't in the top 5, maybe even top 10 in the world). What, if anything, might you do about this?

When did you pick up an impact NT player? *zing*

edit - Grubbs sucks, please sell him

Last edited by brian at 12/14/2009 9:15:49 PM

For all who are are running. The biggest drawback to the NT recently is the fact that our best players are rarely in top GS (from a pool of players that isn't in the top 5, maybe even top 10 in the world). What, if anything, might you do about this?

i consider game shape to have a multiplier effect.

so if your player's talent is say "X", and you look at game shape on a 2-10 scale (proficient being 10 and atrocious being 2, not 1), then the true talent for that game is x times gameshape)

(i use 2-10 and not 1-9 since that seems to correlate better in my experience and from my charting)

now then, heres the rub.

you have alot of mediocre teams training NT guys, those are just the facts. Take Arzapalo for example, his owner pretty much consumes all of his salary on him, yet plays him like he just rented a freaking mule, since his only chance of not getting blown the F out of the stadium is to ride him into the ground. In a related story, his game shape has a non-zero chance of sucking.

So you make it clear to your trainers, you run your guy out 80min + regularly, they don't play. I'd rather have weaker guys from owners who are training a diversified schmene and not entirely reliant on their one star player but seem to always have better game shape. At least I would in truly important games, id try to give the huge salary guys wage merchandise breaks once in a while, and kind of nudge them to stop renting the mule.

Anyway, that's probably more relevant to the big men than guards, as a top team can more comfortably swallow a nt caliber guard, and not play him huge minutes.

insanity: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

Yeah, okay, you dont like Juice and/or agree with his choices. He's not running anymore so if you're to be a decent replacement for someone that had a really high approval rate, how about some details on what was insane and what you would have changed.

I dont dislike juice outside of the game. It's true we havent seen eye-to-eye on a number of things. Last election i pointed to some specifics in actual game situations that i dislked, and some of those errors persist (for example playing a very slow pace on offense AND defense at home when you are at least as good as your opponent if not better seems to have continued)

I dont think its fair to rip someone while they are still in contention for the job, which i would have done repeatedly.

I also dont get the infatuation with playing big men that make shaq look like ray allen at free throws, id say if FT is not at least average if not respectable its hard to get any meaningful minutes. Now juice is better than alot of managers at this, but i would be a good bit tighter than him still, especially with centers.

(FT % means more in buzzer beater than actual basketball in my opinion due to the gneeral defensive nature of the games, though this effect is slightly less pronounced at really high levels of play)

Honestly, I dont know what juice shoulda done different this term because I wasnt paying attention. I wasn't paying attention because i knew any suggestions i had would go unheeded, and it looks as if his schedule was brutal.

Regardless, I would have differing criteria for players, take a different tactical approach to games, and communicate with people differently.

Thats pretty significant isnt it?

So you make it clear to your trainers, you run your guy out 80min + regularly, they don't play

Unfortunately, we know this doesn't work. This was the strategy we tried last year, and it failed miserably.

I think the answer to the question is two-fold:
(1) Emphasize to owners why poor game shape is hurting their team. You mentioned Inez, and he's a good example. For much of last season, he was in inept GS. That means that while his stats project him to have a 16-17 rating at center, he was consistently putting up 12's. I think we can have much more success getting owners to watch GS by showing them how much better their players can be, than punishing them by leaving them off the team (although to be fair, I wouldn't add Inez either in the shape he was in last season).

(2) Keep track of other options. There are very few irreplaceable players in the US. Even Inez and Grubbs are no longer clear first choices. If someone is in consistently in poor GS, we aren't as hamstrung as we have been in the past.