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Just one point about your last tenure as coach - because as well as not liking your position as an EBBL manager, I have a lot of doubts about your ability and track record.

you were elected on a platform of wanting to run for six seasons and during your first campaign you made a lot of very good points and were a popular winner, I know I voted for you twice.

You didn't really deliver though. You flamed out after four seasons, often going missing towards the end of your tenure and not coping very well with our best players ageing. This is not a good track record given the current NT situation with bigs.

I'm not being mean here - your NT record is this:

Season 31. Ranking started at 37, finished at 40
Season 32. Ranking started at 41, finished 46
Season 33. Ranking started at 45, finished at 50
Season 34. Ranking started at 48, finished at 46

It went down three seasons in a row and marginally improved your last season.

Also, I saw the squad Woody inherited in season 35 and it was full of holes positions 1-3; I remember being pretty shocked at the state of the squad.

Here is my question to you: do you think a coach with such a record deserves another go at the NT?

FWIW, I hope you have a really good EBBL season and your NT players make a solid contribution to both club and country. But I sincerely hope a stronger candidate emerges to be NT coach.

Last edited by Elmacca at 6/22/2017 4:24:46 PM

I understand where you're coming from, i struggled towards the end of my first tenure for sure. I had conflicting ideas with whether to focus on the youth which meant playing slightly worse players for the sake of progression or continuing with the older guys and it ended up being a poor result. My worry is that no one else has really voiced an interest in this role and that's how it has always been. We normally never have an actual election as both the times i was elected my opponents were poor or non-existent. If a better candidate can rear his head in the day and a half they have to sign up for the election, i would consider bowing down and giving them a shot. Until then my name will remain in the ring for the sake of us having an actual active manager in charge going forward

Fair enough. If the candidate I want to stand doesn't, at least you're prepared to have a go and I can respect that.

I'm not a candidate by the way - I'm trying to promote my Utopia team out of II.3 this season and that will be challenge enough. I think this debate may have got a little out of hand and I apologise for the part I played in that.

Out of ignorance, currently the NT has +33 yo players and -28 yo.

Considering 31-32 as peak ages, is it there a long term strategy for those youngters?
And related to this, until what age are the guys training? Would you say it's rare to train over 30?
Is it also a training pattern? Eg offensive bigs, perimeter without JR, or viceversa. I'd find this interesting since it'd be the only way to decently face more potent squads.

It was very nice to see England in the last stage of the World Cup.

I can only talk for myself in that Osman still got training at 30 but not at 31 but that was because he'd capped out his HoF potential. He will get training next season at 35 to try and delay drops in key skills.

My thoughts are that if an NT player hasn't capped out he should be trained, whatever age he is.

And related to this, until what age are the guys training? Would you say it's rare to train over 30?

It depends on potential. I will train MacPorridge for another season (he's 29) although he's been capped for a while. I plan to try and hit 145 TSP on Marichal (HoF) through his 29yo season. That means 69 pops in 10 seasons, which may be too many for a guy who just turned 20.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 6/22/2017 8:15:47 PM

To add to what Elmacca said, I have a 34 yo (now 35) Argentinian NT G who I outside trained for 80% of last season mainly because he was starting at least one game at G (as I was trying to win) whilst I trained other guys.

Although he dropped in some inside categories, he didn't drop in any outside cats and actually popped in one.

Hi Zeus, since you're the only candidate at the moment, can you maybe share your ideas about designing the roster for inside-outside only? Do you think we can afford not to do it and perform better in the mid-long term?

I mentioned it before and frankly I consider this approach as the go-to strategy.
Are there alternatives, given we're not among the top squads?

Personally I enjoy training and designing players for particular strategies more than anything in the game, hence my point.
Any other candidate or manager, welcome to contribute.

Edit. To elaborate a bit more, just an example. If there're a couple of key perimeter players able to look 19-17-19-19-19-14, why not to suggest key centers to look 16-20-19 as a consequence, instead of 20-17-15. Or the opposite. I'm making it up as I have no data regarding the coming generations in England, although a quick look at excel documents would make it easy to choose where to row.

Edit 2. I do believe sticking to something like this is much more important for the candidate than guessing right the opponent, at least in the short term.

Last edited by m4nufactured at 6/24/2017 7:28:58 AM

Keep in mind you are competing against guys like this (and he dropped some skill as he dropped down from 284k salary):

Du Duncheng (28499684)
Starting Price: $ 11 111 111

Weekly salary: $ 270 759
Age: 34
Height: 6'1" / 185 cm
Potential: all-time great
Game Shape: respectable
Jump Shot: legendary Jump Range: sensational
Outside Def.: legendary (21) Handling: legendary (21)
Driving: legendary (21) Passing: marvelous
Inside Shot: legendary Inside Def.: prominent
Rebounding: respectable Shot Blocking: respectable
Stamina: average Free Throw: average

Experience: sensational TSP: 154 (110 + 44)

There's not really many like Du Duncheng, Hakinnen, Tomanski, Farnsworth or Hurda, top TSP of the game.
I have my own database with most NT squads, and China is other level for anyone else.

But for the record, in season 34 Spain made it to the WC final against Serbia (37454) with only 3 players above 140TSP (Chaperon, Llull and just Colmenares), and the key is always skill distribution aligned to a tactic choice (mostly LI) as far as I can see. But this doesn't mean a perimeter option is less successful than inside ones, in any case.