BuzzerBeater Forums

To Everyone but specifically Shot City:

What do you think is the most disappointing thing about Team USA basketball over the last 8 seasons and what specific instance/game/decision was the most disappointing and why?

You have been unable to get out of D.4 since season 6. Why can't you? If you can't coach your team out of the dumps, why should you be allowed to coach our national team?

TJ your only one league higher. Shouldn't by your logic we eliminate you and choose one of the D I or II managers?

yes, but you start in division 4 and I was able to promote in my first full season. My second season I needed an upgrade of talent, which I am still in the process of doing. I plan to be a force this season. My point was he has been inefficient. We have both only been in the league for a few season, but I promoted the first, while he has stayed put both. He has also never been out of the first round of the playoffs, and only made them once.

Thanks for the interesting speech Shot--much more thoughtfully written than some of the others. I have two questions based on your speech, but I'd really be interested in what any of the candidates have to say about these.

#1. Several of you have mentioned scouting. Having worked with Juice on this aspect of the team some, I can tell you that he tracks literally hundreds of players, playing in all leagues around the world. This includes an extensive list of 18yo guys each year to get in touch with managers as early as possible to suggest training strategies that benefit both the NT and their club team. Given the extent of this, how do you think you can improve on the scouting that is currently being done?

#2. Every election there's noise about how to get more involvement, and yet we're always left with the same basic problem: if we rely on an offsite forum, many users just won't visit, and if we rely on these boards, we can't post any real detail, leaving users unable to make informed contributions. Specifically, the things you mention, "taking the input of every USA Manager, by listening to your voice, you can contact me" are passive and certainly already true, so how do you think you can improve involvement given the constraints we face?

TJ your only one league higher. Shouldn't by your logic we eliminate you and choose one of the D I or II managers?

I was going to make this recommendation, also. I will say that I will only vote for a manager who had D I or D II experience, and who has had some success in those leagues.

Posing these questions to managers opposing Juice, and to Juice also

1a- how many USA NT and U21 games have you watched COMPLETELY this past season? ( both LIVE and replay)
1a- what USA NT coach's errors have you seen in those games?
1c- in USA NT games, what tactics would you have changed?
2- how many non-USA NT and U21 games have you watched COMPLETELY this past season (estimate if not sure).
3a- are you a member of the off-site forum? if so, how long have you been a member?
3b- if you are a member, how many posts have you made
3c- if you are NOT a member, why?

EDIT - add bold (both LIVE and replay)



Last edited by dennis54 at 6/7/2009 1:18:35 AM

dennis: 0 games....

i have watched the first or 2nd half of maybe 4-5 games. knowng the players skills gives me a 2nd opinion on figuring out the game engine. i almost am never around for the 2nd half of any game in real time, so keep that in mind as wel. all watching is based from the replay.

as far as juice's errors, generally speaking too much offensive focus one way or another. for example our last 5 games with an outside focus we are 44-136 on threes. this is less than 33% (the generally acecpted mark for "not sucking" from the outside)

While the outside game overall gets punished a little too harshly in bb for my liking (See a suggestions thread from a while back where i tabulated ALOT of data on this), going R&G with a loaded team (doing what the GE screws you the most on) is at least partially defensible because you do tend to get fouled going for 3 more than you would in real basketball. still 32% is not such a hot number

the rules hint at the game engine punishing you very harshly if you have to switch away from your original focus, too often teams knew we were R&G or look inside, and could look at form etc and make the call from there.

1c) hard to say on any given game. normally i might PTB instead of R&G for example, but maybe Juice saw the opponent refuse to go 3-2 no matter what, and R&G was the right call in his head. or alternately, Look INside is the best play, but JP had done that 3 prior games and figured his opponent would look for it a 4th straight game. I really dont like our semi final loss the season before where we played a point guard and 4 big men. I know the Game Engine loads towards big guys but not quite to that extreme.

2) watched the finals of each. So that makes 2

3a) been a member/lurker long time. Posted a few times, never got a reply, the site blew up and re invented itself. I didnt check in there much at all this season, and won't post at all if i lose. If i do lose Juice deserves the chance to defend his ideas. The one thing no one can accuse Juice of is incompetence, which is why its an uphill battle. I know I personally and a few others feel that there were mistakes, but hes not a f-up at the level of say... rpeters in hattrick (for those who play that game). Whoever wins deserves the chance to put their philosophy in without people sniping at them over every decision they would make differently.





Last edited by TheUnrepentantGunner at 6/5/2009 7:42:03 AM

Now you are being petty. In spite of my disagreements with you over alot of things, i always thought you were at least a decent guy in hattrick and here.

in some ways you have answered my questions for me
5 people discussing tactics is not so good of course. if you do launch a chatroom it would be both welcome and overdue.

As for the infamous patient offense game, i had no intention of winning the game. I set all 4 lineups in advance pre-wedding, and thought that 2 big wins and 2 narrow losses would see me through hopefully on point differential.

patient offense minimizes winning percentage but usually minimizes beatdowns as well. for what it's worth low post and possibly princeton and possibly motion mightve been bigger disasters.

as for tactics, beyond the game you mention (definitely absurd), i feel you are too smart for your own good too often. i think lsat season in non scrimmages you ran base offense once. Every time it was trying to catch teams guessing wrong.

lastly, the south americans being the incident where you got baited because they beat you with a foolish CT. we would have handled that differently. thats all

No offense to you juice, and nominally you do address the responsiveness, but its very much an inner cult of you and a maybe 1-2 other people making the gametime decisions. what good would my input do to sway the minds of you and kdb et al?

We had 5 users (including myself) in the tactics thread on the offsite forum discussing the game, and another 3-4 via other means of communication.

That's certainly not 1-2 people.

2) flatout better tactics. this partially surprises me since i thought you almost helped build the engine. i mean you live near harvard where charles et al created the game engine. I have had to try my best to reverse engineer it, and i havent gotten it 100% right. i will have to watch my games and not just the box scores to track the statistics i truly want to track this year as well. that is a huge disadvantage yet i still feel with equal teams and on a neutral court i could win 55 out of 100 against you. that seems minor but its really huge.

I disagree, of course.

My main question is, in a must win game, why would you use a Patient offense?

(10660337)

Most any other offense and you probably, IMO, win.

Can you point to a game in these past Worlds besides the Spain game where the tactics were completely ridiculous to use in the first place (and not simply a matter of they used something off the wall)?

3) iffy. from day 1: possibly. from your last 4 matches on, almost assuredly not. you were, as you pointed out, in something of a hole. you went into the germany game a 25-75 dog, and didn't do anything stupid to blow it. i really disliked your call in the semifinals 2 seasons ago with the all big lineup, but it's not my place to criticize given that while i saw almost everything i could (including forums), there may have been factors privy to you only.

That was a risk against a team we felt was superior to us on a talent level, and it still may have worked had we not used Let Coach Decide, and ran Strictly Follow Depth Chart instead. Against Germany in the semis I felt we had a shot if we played well. We had a shot and almost got there.

4) they deserve what they got. Those who know me know i can be feisty. I would certainly have handled the taunting you got from the south americans differently. I really despair a country that doesnt have any real turnout, just as last elections turnout for our senior NT SUCKED. YEt i think the tide is turning in the US. If nothing else it might be worthwhile to check into global. I will be more democratic in general, and more exciting.

The South Americans? Who are they? Does that particular nation still play at the NT or U21 level?

[

scouting is our strong suit already i argue. not alot more to be done. blunt and true. id have our trainers maybe shape players differently but thats not truly scouting

as for the activity, make it more exciting, be bolder in statements and trashtalk to the other teams. get all the managers involved. find translators to see what they are posting in the italian forums, etc etc

Thanks for the interesting speech Shot--much more thoughtfully written than some of the others. I have two questions based on your speech, but I'd really be interested in what any of the candidates have to say about these.

#1. Several of you have mentioned scouting. Having worked with Juice on this aspect of the team some, I can tell you that he tracks literally hundreds of players, playing in all leagues around the world. This includes an extensive list of 18yo guys each year to get in touch with managers as early as possible to suggest training strategies that benefit both the NT and their club team. Given the extent of this, how do you think you can improve on the scouting that is currently being done?

#2. Every election there's noise about how to get more involvement, and yet we're always left with the same basic problem: if we rely on an offsite forum, many users just won't visit, and if we rely on these boards, we can't post any real detail, leaving users unable to make informed contributions. Specifically, the things you mention, "taking the input of every USA Manager, by listening to your voice, you can contact me" are passive and certainly already true, so how do you think you can improve involvement given the constraints we face?

2) flatout better tactics. this partially surprises me since i thought you almost helped build the engine. i mean you live near harvard where charles et al created the game engine. I have had to try my best to reverse engineer it, and i havent gotten it 100% right. i will have to watch my games and not just the box scores to track the statistics i truly want to track this year as well. that is a huge disadvantage yet i still feel with equal teams and on a neutral court i could win 55 out of 100 against you. that seems minor but its really huge.

While the BBs do not typically intervene in elections or speeches, I want make sure that everyone understands that none of the GMs (except those who were BBs in the past, and GM-JuicePats was not one of these) has ever seen the code that goes into the site or the game engine, nor do they have an increased understanding of it through their interaction with the BBs.

Does knowledge of the game engine really help? The lack of success of some of the BB's teams....well, maybe I wouldn't go there. :-)

Anyway, moving to Chicago might help more. :-p


Steve
Bruins

FEEL THE BURN!