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Good to see Klebanowski on there, I trained him to 11 or 12 SB when I had him, really should have picked up a tall guy to train instead that season...
How should these two (from Utopia) be trained to help the team next season:

Neil Banker (42676140)
Age: 20
Height: 6'7" / 201 cm
Potential: perennial allstar

Jump Shot: proficient Jump Range: inept
Outside Def.: strong ↑ Handling: proficient
Driving: prominent Passing: inept
Inside Shot: proficient Inside Def.: strong
Rebounding: strong Shot Blocking: respectable
Stamina: mediocre Free Throw: inept
Experience: atrocious TSP: 76 (44 + 32)

Mathew Tossell (42676213)
Age: 20
Height: 6'6" / 198 cm
Potential: perennial allstar

Jump Shot: strong Jump Range: strong
Outside Def.: respectable ↑ Handling: prominent
Driving: strong Passing: average
Inside Shot: strong Inside Def.: average
Rebounding: inept Shot Blocking: respectable
Stamina: average Free Throw: respectable
Experience: pitiful TSP: 72 (47 + 25)

Just the 5 match reports to do – good work Bergkamp (sorry all. It was something I said I was going to do...it turns out there still aren't enough hours in the day)

Game 2: Netherlands 80-71 England
I thought we had a chance in this one, but so went with a “normal” effort, but after seeing that I'd walked into a 3-2 zone playing patient (and they matched the effort too) my hope had gone. However the game engine decided to tease me first...
We were 1 point down after Q1, 5 down at half time, but we turned it around to take a 46-41 lead at some point in the 3rd quarter, finishing the Q one point up.
Then we started the 4th quarter on a great 10-2 run (meaning a 9 point lead), but from there they gradually clawed it back. Still had a 2 point lead with 3 minutes to go but barely scored from that point in :(

It was a closer game than the final score appears, and overall we did well I think. Defensively we did well at least. Having 99 shots (16 more than them) and scoring 71 points, not so much...

The starting 5 salaries were 104.5 – 92.7 in our favour, but that's majorly skewed by Lauricella and his exorbitant cost. All of their players were higher than our 2nd highest (Mahoney), DMI was 1133-904 in their favour and you can see in the PP100s we were the underdog.

Lake our top scorer was actually a +4 while on the court, but I'm not rewarding offence in this game, soz (23 points on 36 shots and 3 assists to 3 TO s isn't exactly scorching scoring anyway).
MVPs: 1: Lauricella, 2: Hall. 3: O'Sullivan

Good job dude, looking forward to seeing how the next few seasons pan out under your lead

Just under 40 minutes to go until our last competitive game of this season if anyone wants to tune in?

I've thought about this lineup and tactics way too much, if they're wrong it's probably not due to a lack of scouting, just wrong thinking about it. I only just made my final decisions actually - cutting it way finer than the rest of the season
(but a luxury afforded to me this week as I'm ill, still...been off work since Thursday. I guess I won't complain too much though)

We're playing Slovenia who've beaten the two teams we've beaten and lost to the same 4 so it should be a competitive one to decide who finishes 5th/6th in the group.

A rare opportunity for some in the open insight into my thinking seeing as I'm not giving anything away to the opponent now, and most of these players will be gone if anyone is spying next season...

Their danger man looks to be their 25k PF Barinec (he can score outside and inside and is in 9GS), I'm not sure they have an SF as such, and all of their guards seemed pretty evenly matched - I wanted to use 3-2 zone.

In a way having an easy pick in Lauricella every week has been nice (especially since his improved game shape), but choosing who to play as the 2nd big has been a nightmare at times XD
In a zone they'll just target the 2nd guy as he won't have enough ID/SB so I don't think I can trust it.

Didn't think I could start Mahoney this week due to 7 gs which limits our passing / offensive options a bit. Due to the lack of passing in the backcourt I've gone for as much as I can get up front, also added a bit more shooting than usual with Lake into the lineup. Gone for the inside attack due to lack of passing/Mahoney and also the previously mentioned potential that they have 3 guards and maybe I can exploit their lack of ID. It is quite possible they'll zone us though...

Jody 2 pops today, ID and RB , he's getting there slowly:) I was shocked when you call him up.
Surely we must have better players than him ?;/

Super late rest of season review (it's largely too far from the games to do any proper analysis now so I'm just gonna post some game MVPs from the boxscores and then add them up for the season):

Game 3: England 91-93 Finland

Pretty rough loss – I used more effort as we were 0-2 at this point and knew I was going to TIE the next few games either way. Had a 4 point lead going into the 4th quarter and lost it from there (again)
We played pretty well offensively but based on how easily they scored our zone was the wrong option.
MVPs: 1: Big Phil (18-18-6-2-3 is pretty great), 2: Athelstan (bit of a basic top scorer effort, but can't argue with our +8 while he was on the court). 3: Marichal.

Game 4: England 72-98 Spain

Was always going to be a loss this, but we kept the score fairly respectable I think. Even drew two quarters!
MVPs: 1: Lauricella (loads of Rebs again, 1stl & blk), 2: Gibney (horrible shooting but 3 steals and 3 blocks, that defensive effort...), 3: Athelstan (nice little bench cameo to top score, 16 pts on 9 shots. Jamal Athelstan..)

Game 5: England 86-80 Scotland

Well they crunched and we TIE'd so I was happy coming out of this with any victory. Karthiyaswamy just wasn't meant to be this season - that's the 2nd time he got injured when I picked him to start. I picked our defensive assignments right though – their dangerman Doles was guarded by Phil and in the end none of their team scored efficiently enough to beat us, 15 assists to 15 TOs too.
MVPs: Mahoney (13pts on 8 shots, 6ass, 3stl, even 1blk), 2: Big Philly style. 3: Athelstan again (points are always gonna be useful)

Game 6: England 99-86 Ireland

Nuffin' to say really?
MVPs: 1: Phil (a 25-20 doesn't happen every week), 2: Marichal (12-6-6, 0 TOs, and his opp had the worst +- at -15, 11pts on 17 shots..). 3: Gibney (still not shooting well, but good defence again)

Game 7: England 88-74 Slovakia

Both teams at 2-4 going into this game, so we both wanted to win even though it was a dead rubber and our last competitive game of the season either way. I actually posted thoughts about this game before it started in the thread already.
Hall was guarding Zelen and did shockingly (I still managed to sell him for 1.4m, ha), but good team defence otherwise (and a lot of ORs) won this.
MVPs: 1: Oh it's Lauricella again (21-21 and 4 blocks). 2: Hall (ok despite the above comment Hall was our 2nd most effective offensive player, did get 3 steals and Zelen scored well but had 1 assist to 2 TOs – Hall was doing something to stop him in some way). 3: tough. Karthiyaswamy can have it for finally playing most of a game and playing pretty well too. 16-17-4 and 0 TOs.

Total MVP points:
Phil Lauricella: 17
Alan Mahoney: 5
Lucas Athelstan = Joshua Hall: 4
Phil Marichal = Frederick Gibney = Scott Stannard: 3
Dwight Osullivan: 2
Dineshguru Karthiyaswamy: 1

Starts and total minutes played:
Lauricella 7 272
Hall 6 203
Marichal 5 204
Mahoney 4 164
Gibney 3 157
Karthiyaswamy 3 82
Athelstan 2 176
Lake 2 110
Osullivan 2 97
Malfoy 1 82
Stannard 0 48
Murdoch 0 31
Yull 0 20
Bateman 0 16
Hirsh 0 12
Dupre 0 7

Notes:
- Karth was unlucky with the in-game injuries. OSullivan and Mahoney iirc the only players to have injuries that affected their playing time due to the actual injury / following poor game shape.
- Phil Lauricella was a beast but basketball is a team game and he's not the kind of offensive player who could win games himself (if anyone can)
- Marichal will be the best player long term in this group I'm sure, very good TSP, I just couldn't start him the first few games due to lacking 1 skill basically.
- Hall was my player but I wasn't picking him because of that - most of the guards (Lake and Yull included) were pretty evenly matched, it was just a case of Hall being in 9 GS most weeks meaning he played most.
- Mahoney, Gibney, Stannard, Murdoch and Dupre will all come back next year so we've got some good guard and SF depth/experience carrying over (and/or we struggled this year in those positions)
- Picking Hirsch in the squad was a mistake in the end. I think he was (almost) capped at the start of the season, lots of OD and passing and if he was in good GS he'd have been useful but apart from the first few weeks he just wasn't.

Overall season analysis:
We did ok. I think I did ok? (but not perfect at all). I dunno.

The game shape on the whole was good, so thanks for that :) It's the most important thing an NT manager wants (I did scout the previous season's games and if I doubted how it looked I didn't pick the player initially so half a pat on the back to myself but still..)

I'm off work until the 4th now, hopefully I can use the 2nd/3rd to scout the new seasons draftees and before that scout the 19s/20s again to see how they've progressed.

We've had so many scrimmages with the under 20s already (the format is rubbish) so you'll probably know if your player is in contention already, but it's a good time to message me if you want to discuss any training plans or where your player stands. I'll try my best to get back to you - I've probably missed a few through the season that I should've responded to but was just too busy / lazy.

I still want to make a proper project to make us good, focused training on players from the week they're drafted to make them a specific position/player type rather than the halfnhalf/nothingy players we mostly end up with. I'd need some help with messaging managers re: training / training properly / selling their young guys if we were going to do that though tbh, but I don't know who is interested in that. If we've not got the managers to train them then it's never gonna happen anyway.

Great write up. Motivates me to eventually get a player into an u21 squad....

Osullivan's injury was especially annoying as it was one of those short ones that managed to mess minutes over two weeks and therefore game shape for about two weeks after. Very disappointing when you pay that kind of money for a player, train him and then he's injured when he's 21. He also seemed to be doing ok before the injury which was another pain. Still, not a total disaster as he didn't miss a week's training.