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If you had to name one thing that Isaiah would do a better job at than you, if he were to be elected as the NT coach, what would it be?

He'd probably be better at convincing people to train shot blocking.

The USA NT has played Motion 3 of the last 4 scrimmages as well as the final Worlds game against Italy. Is this going to be a desired tactic in the future? Will there be a larger focus on trying to build guards that excel in Outside tactics rather than Normal/Inside tactics? (I do not follow the USA NT as well as I'd like to, so forgive me if you have answered this on the offsite already).

Yeah, we obviously need to be able to play multiple tactics, and just trying to get a better handle on motion at that level. We can't tell much from scrimmages, but I'm just trying to get a sense of shot distribution at the different positions. That's all. Motion doesn't share focus or pace with LI, so I think it's a reasonable second offense if we think we can run it effectively.

Will there be a larger focus on trying to build guards that excel in Outside tactics rather than Normal/Inside tactics? (I do not follow the USA NT as well as I'd like to, so forgive me if you have answered this on the offsite already).

I've answered it, but it's probably buried pretty deep in a few random threads out there. While I think there is a place on the team for specialized players, I think the large majority of our guards need to be able to play both offenses. We just don't have enough roster spots to have a lot of high DR/PA/IS guards or high JS/JR guards. We need guards that, while not perfectly suited for a specific tactic, can excel in both inside and outside offenses. We're working on that, and I think we'll be more versatile these next two seasons than the previous two.

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.

The larger problem is that no one in the entire game thinks it's a good idea to spend more than one million on our "valuable USA NT prospects." Clearly, our "valuable prospects" aren't very good. This is why the goal last term and this upcoming term is developing better players. We need players with a ton of secondary skills before we can think about competing for a world's gold. And, if we have players like that, then we don't need to worry about them being fired.

Follow-up for Isaiah,

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.

Can you give some specific examples?

Yep I can. I think the biggest example would have been against Czech Republic last season.

If was a very iffy game against a very good team. Our GS was bad that week and at first glance it didn't seem we could do anything else but LI (which at first I believed this too). However, we had been very predictable with LI every game leading up to that. That was definitely a concern for many because of the GDP. We talked about some possible motion offenses and we could have definitely pulled it off with some call ups at the last second to surprise then into guessing wrong. Magiker didn't believe they would guess LI on us though. I clearly showed that they had correctly guess on teams that had been predictable while not guessing against those that had tried different things. We were actually the most predictable of all their opponents leading up to that game too.

In the end, magiker believed that their guessing was due to the other teams not being a threat and clearly didn't believe they would guess inside on us because we could beat them. He(and many others) decided to stick with LI and, what do you know, they guessed inside on us. Keep in mind this was a must win for us too, so I don't want to say magiker did the wrong thing because it was a tough decision. I'm just pointing out a time I did not agree in his decision.

Now, could we have won with running a motion or RnG? Who knows? But I believe it could have given us a better chance at winning that must win game because they would have taken a hit on defense. Instead, stuck with what we have done for several seasons despite failing to win those big games even though we could have done something differently.

All of that is past us though and all subject to opinion. We never know until we try though, right?

This is actually a question to both Isaiah and magiker. How do you plan to get Americans involved in the NT other than just messaging people to keep players game shapes up? Do you plan on keeping the average player on BB informed on the team?

Last edited by Mitchdtimp at 4/2/2014 4:48:15 PM

What is your assessment of our U21 program? Are any changes needed in the way that our U21 feeds in our NT?

What would a successful term look like to you?

What are your thoughts on Utopia?

How do you plan to get Americans involved in the NT other than just messaging people to keep players game shapes up?

I very rarely message people about GS, and that doesn't seem like a good way to get sustained involvement with the NT.

Do you plan on keeping the average player on BB informed on the team?

There's a link to the offsite on the USA NT page, where anyone is welcome to join. If people want to be involved with the NT team, U21 team, or training a player for either, it's very easy to access. If people aren't really all that interested in the NT but want to see how others are training players, etc. there's information about that too. A lot of people are more concerned with their own team and that's fine, so I'm not going to go around and bother people about the NT. If anyone is interested, I'd encourage them to join the offsite. Everyone can be informed there. If people are interested in some PR/game recap stuff that we used to do, we can do that again, I just don't have time for it.

I regularly contact pretty much everyone who has a 22+ player that has a chance at the NT, which is about 150 players or so.

Of those running, who would you consider the ultimate renegade/outsider/anti-candidate?

A lot of people will think that while the World Cup is of course very hard to win any games, let alone the title, you had a terrible season (based on your record), and bringing you back again would likely result is something close to the same results.

Aw man, you missed the first season. I think we did a pretty good job navigating a tricky America's tournament. Canada had HCA and no one was going to beat them, and Chile is a perennial World's contender. Since only 2 teams make worlds, either us or Chile were going to miss it. We made a crucial decision to punt a game against Panama, and set up an earlier matchup with Chile when they had worse game shape. We were able to beat Chile and avoid Canada until after we had already qualified for worlds.

What is your response to voters who don't care about goals and plans, but rather look at your past results and think "we can't do much worse no matter who we give the job to"?

I honestly don't care. I'm not trying to win votes from these guys. I just wanna win worlds. That's it. I've been working towards that goal since season 16 when I was in D4 or something. I've trained a NT player, and I'm working on two more guys who should make the team either this season or next. I'm trying to save up money for a 4th NT guy. I think the game would be more exciting if we could compete with those top teams.

What is your assessment of our U21 program? Are any changes needed in the way that our U21 feeds in our NT?

Seems like they're doing ok, I haven't followed much. Undefeated in America's is pretty good. U21 isn't the powerhouse they once were, and I'm pretty convinced that's due to a decrease in scouting. We used to have like 15-18 managers helping out with scouting, now were down in the single digits. When we won everything when I was U21 manager, I kept saying it was because guys doing the scouting were really good, helping people build up good prospects. We don't have enough of that anymore, and that's why Fewmit and EBW have been left with worse players.

I don't know if we necessarily feed players from U21 to the NT. I don't have enough time to work with players 21 and under, since I have to worry about everyone 22+, so I can't really recommend any changes. Maybe we could separate out the top 3-5 HOF potential 18 year olds and work with them separately. That might help.

What would a successful term look like to you?

Have a better team at the end of season 28 than we have now. We're working on getting better players, and I think we're making really good progress.

What are your thoughts on Utopia?

Let's me train more NT players. Love it.

This is actually a question to both Isaiah and magiker. How do you plan to get Americans involved in the NT other than just messaging people to keep players game shapes up? Do you plan on keeping the average player on BB informed on the team?

Getting American involved means giving them a voice. I feel we have a great group of guys on the NT offsite so far. Guys from the NBBA all the way to D.V, but I feel we can get even more of those D.V and IV managers involved and giving them a voice with whats going on. This will not only help the NT, but it will also help the managers in those lower leagues learn. The more they learn and get involved, the better off the NT is long term.

Also, I want to do more competitions for managers so that there are goals to reach. Without goals, people wont strive to get involve and build NT players for us. U21 players are easy to build because it is short term, but NT training is long term and people need to be rewarded for that. So i want to set up some goal marks with small rewards to keep people involved.