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I have attempted in the past to be a proponent of PTB and if possible, may want to use it in a U21 game if need be.

My vote was yes, and it stayed yes. Nothing Rambo did during his tenure even made me question my approval of him. Was he perfect? No. However, you can't argue with our country's first Worlds win of anything. He did a lot of things well and it worked out well for everyone involved in the end.

My vote for Rambo was yes from the beginning because I knew he had what it took to win akd he proved it. Had he messed up i would have changed it to no.

Wozz lately has opened a lot of us (at least me) to a lot of what driving can do. I now value it pretty highly depending on the player and the system. Driving isn't necessarily crucial for a 15/14 JS/JR player in Motion.

As to your first question, it'd go: OD/PA/JS/HA/DR/JR, with DR being basically tied with HA. JR is low on the list I guess because all those other skills are crucial, whereas depending on the system, JR isn't absolutely necessary. I have no prejudice against it.

As for a strategy, the game seems to be moving in a direction towards balanced players, and I would aim to build players that are versatile and can do everything well. Eventually, it'd give us tactical flexibility and would allow us to give our opponents absolutely no clue what we'd do.

I see a lot of talk, not from every candidate, but in general, about using these niche players, and even one went as far as to say he would not have 2 guys with the same skills on the team. I guess I am pretty much of the opinion, through watching and chatting with Jelme when he was coach, that niche players really serve a very small role on the u21 team. Sure, you might have the scenario where you need one, but generally speaking, they will contribute very little.

Convince me why we need niche players on the u21 team, and how a guy that has better 2ndaries but -3 on the primaries is going to compete with the guy across from him.

If you agree with my line of thinking, explain to me how you would build a team knowing that we would not be adding niche players (again, generally), and that likely we would not need to really hold a spot for such a player.

National teams are way different than club teams. Many people think "niche players" and good secondaries on players are important. I'm going to strongly disagree with that. The more primaries, the better. If you only have a few seasons training a player for U21, we need all that to be primary training. Sure the big with terrible subs is not good for anyone's club team, because you can have a big for the same price with much better subs. But the U21 and NT aren't paying salaries. We need as many primary pops as possible.

I don't really understand this notion of "niche" players. When we look through the pipeline, there are players that are clearly better than others. Merrill, Hammond, Moreland, Felder, Brown, Luther, and Carlson were all clearly better than the other players. That's why they were on the team. Not because they fit a certain offense or system, or had good subs. We'll go through the pipeline and look through the different players. Not that many will have the requisite OD for guards or ID/RB for bigs to play, regardless of subs. But I'll for sure weigh primary skills much more heavily than the others.

How do you plan to sacrifice success for your club team for the greater good of the U21 team?

I paid 1.3 mil for a HOF 6'0 18 year old two seasons ago. I have a level 6 trainer and a level 4 doctor just so the dbag doesn't get injured and I lose 2 weeks of training. I do my best to play him only 48 minutes a week, just to lower the chance of injury. I train him in the first game of the week, so in case he fouls out or has an injury, I can play him later in the week.

I obviously don't care all that much about my club team. I find the U21 and NT aspect of the games much more exciting.

Because the U21 coaching job is such a large responsibility, I would put a lot more time into that than my club team. Besides, my club team seems to be going nowhere again so I'd like to focus on things that actually make me happy. :)

So, do you think that Rambo made a mistake in having Battle, in addition to B-Rod?

I think the question was referring to an initial roster of 12 players, not the whole team. Rambo called up B-Rod at the start, and Battle later on. I don't mind SF's at all, it's just difficult for them to enough skill points to be effective in 3 seasons. Easier when they get that 4th season of training. But if there are a lot of options there, I'm all for it.

Are you speaking out of experience here or out of speculation?

Speculation.

This is the player (5766859) and he was with me in season 14.

In my experience the specific type of player is not particularly effective (brian tried with something similar too about at the same time and, as I recall, also ended up being skeptical of a certain kind of shooting PF). He will absolutely torch lowly teams, but wouldn't be much better than a regular big man in most other games. In particular see: (25966671)

I am pretty sure that there is a player similar to the player you have in mind that is terrific, but I don't think that player can be very effective with 4 driving...

It's possible you're absolutely right. My PF doesn't have that much JS/JR, so it is pure speculation. But there's a big difference between club teams and U21 teams. The best U21 bigs are usually over 7 feet so they train primaries really quickly for 3 seasons. Those guys usually have very low OD, and defend PF. In general, I'd guess that U21 bigs at PF have way less OD than the guys that defend PF in the NBBA, so I'd assume it'd work better for U21 than the NBBA. But that, is again, just speculation.

Also, this guy isn't realistic in 3 seasons of training, obviously.

I really want to revisit my first question.

I think only magiker really got the jist of what I was asking. Obviously, we all want the best players in the best game shape and to leave spots open on the roster. However, everyone has 7 GS and a fixed starting point for their skills in week 1. Our first competitive game is in ~10 days, then we have 13(?) weeks of games.

So how do you plan on making good decisions in week 1 that last the season? What are some things you are going to look for and how are you going to find the answers?

Again, Terrance Hammond arguably was the best player on the U21 by the end of the season. Here were his skills:

4/2/2/1/1/1 -17/16/17/8

In the end his secondaries didn't matter. I think magiker is right, the point he is making is that whats good for NT/U21 is different from whats good for your club team. U21 is an arms race.

Now obviously we went solely LI last season, making big guys with great primaries but terrible secondaries (Hammond, Ashville etc) more valuable. Every team and every season is different. In Season 16, until Harris Carson and some others came along, the team was somewhat based on outside offense (Suarez, Beverly, etc). In that situation, a big with less IS and more JS, and other subs is more useful. K now I'm being super obvious. Just saying that I understand the point magiker is trying to make differentiating club teams and national teams.

Last edited by jfarb at 11/2/2011 4:58:16 PM