Isaiah:
Who, in your opinion, are the most important to continue shaping in order to make the NT more successful? I realize it is a team effort, but there are a couple of different routes that the NT can go. Better/more diverse guards? More developed wings/forwards? More salary monster bigs?
If you were to give magiker a grade (A+, C-, B, B+ ect.) for managing the team last season in his 1-4 outing at Worlds, what would you grade him and why?
Question to both:
How do you plan on helping prevent foreign teams from purchasing valuable USA NT prospects and firing them? This has seemed like a big issue recently.
1) The most important players in my mind that we need to work on are the SG and PF positions. I used those same positions when we debated for the U21 and I am sticking with them. Those two positions are a big part in an offense, especially an outside oriented one. If built right,those two positions can be major contributors in an inside offense as well.
We have done a really good job in terms of defense for our team and the whole community believes defense is one of the most important skills, so now we need to be able to create players that can fit in with those defensive players, passers, and inside scorers that can give us the ability to run anything that the situation calls for. So SG/PF positions are the ones I feel we need to work on right now.
2) This is a tricky question to answer. Part of me wants to give him a good grade based on his pass history while another part of me wants to give him something lower based on the outcome of last season.
It's obvious that we didn't do well last season, but there were quite a few tough breaks that left my jaw wide open. We could have very easily done better. On the other side though, there was a time or two that had me questioning tactical calls that magiker made. They were tough decisions, I know, but ones that I feel we had enough evidence to pick differently. Would it have changed the outcome though? Well, possibly, but we will never know will we?
So for a grade, I would give a B- because I definitely feel some things could have been done differently but there was still things that he did well at.
3) I actually had a pretty lengthy conversation with that individual haha. His motives weren't to hurt the NTs, but more to get high salary players away from buzzerbeater since they are too costly. Which brings up the point of them being fired. Some of our players have been really good for us and have been on the team quite a bit, but why were they able to be bought for cheap? Great players should not be able to be bought for $12 - 100k on the market. Something is wrong with that. So even though they produced for the NT, they are not good enough to be a key contributer on teams.
We have done a good job recently creating players that are more economical for teams. This is one of the areas Magiker has done a great job with so far and one that I would continue if I'm elected. Plus, if we are able to do this, it will mean we will have players with great secondaries that can play multiple offenses. No more mono skilled players that we still see every now and then.