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National Team Debate Thread (thread closed)

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From: Azariah

To: Coco
This Post:
00
122310.91 in reply to 122310.84
Date: 12/16/2009 8:58:04 AM
Overall Posts Rated:
103103
Okay, I suggest that we leave the (civil but at this point tired) flame war behind.

I asked the candidates: how you plan to solve our PG situation (we have good but not star caliber options)?

What I want is not the name of a player, but an ideal (e.g. skill weights: how would you distribute points percentagewise among the 10 skills before the last line on a PG).



I'd be looking for a PG with OD, JS, and PA roughly equal -- JS maybe slightly behind. Enough JR to have some range, but not a huge amount (say 7-10ish). HN and DV should be similar and within a couple levels of the OD/JS/PA skills. For an Ideal Point Guard, RB and ID would need to be better than zippo ... say at least 5 for each, preferably more. IS and SB would be low priority.

I know your question was excluding the last line, but I'd also say that FT of at least 7+ would be strongly preferred on my Ideal Point Guard (and most of my players) as well.

This Post:
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122310.92 in reply to 122310.84
Date: 12/16/2009 10:47:05 AM
Overall Posts Rated:
1212
Okay, I suggest that we leave the (civil but at this point tired) flame war behind.

I asked the candidates: how you plan to solve our PG situation (we have good but not star caliber options)?

What I want is not the name of a player, but an ideal (e.g. skill weights: how would you distribute points percentagewise among the 10 skills before the last line on a PG).




well a few things.

one as mentioned by burlington, the defensive options are changing.

i think this can specialize us somewhat. One of the interesting options is that someone like a whittington, who was almost more of a combo-guard really but used more as a sg by the national team (and either a pg or sf on his club team), could really be deployed anywhere. thad's probably a good defensive player but not our very best but offensively does so many thing so well.

so you are looking for more numbers

maybe js: 15, jr: 11
od: 11 (low i know) handling: 16
driving: 17 passing: 13
is: 5 id: 8 (or even 9)



this player would in the old days be considered blackmarked as being defensively weak.

(incidentally spain has a fairly similar player up right now)

but you could sort of hide that guy somewhere, maybe small forward against most teams (unless were playing canada of course), and let him do his thing offensively

thats one option.

the other thing is if we are looking to run a look inside offense often, the offensive flow requirements have to be much higher than before for meaningful success. so i think you answer the pg question two ways, you play whittington or someone of his ilk at sg, and a pass first point guard, and your small forward has to be able to handle and pass on top of his big man skills.

i realize thats a round about answer, but its important to understand what kind of pg we are looking for in the context of the team.


From: Toonces
This Post:
00
122310.94 in reply to 122310.1
Date: 12/16/2009 2:06:01 PM
Overall Posts Rated:
4343
From the outside, it seems as though wozzvt and Azariah come from the lineage of juicepats, so my questions are:

Do you consider the past few seasons of the NT a success?

How would any of you define success for the NT moving forward? Is it just incrementally moving along laying down a foundation for hopeful future success, or are you a win equates to success, and everything else is unacceptable?

Also, I'm active on the team level (my team), but not NT. It seems as though you have to be in the good ol' boy network to get some respect when it comes to contrary viewpoints. Granted, I'm only going from the experience that I've read from in this thread that contains much vitriol towards URG for not agreeing and challenging Juicepats. Is it mandatory to be on the offsite forum or participate in chats during games in order to have a valid opinion when it comes to the NT? If any of you got challenged or criticized for decisions made, how would you handle it? With venom, or diplomacy? I'd like to help with the NT in some way, but I don't feel that having to be a yes man would work for me, and I certainly wouldn't want to be dealt with like URG if I disagreed with anyone from the current power structure.

Take care!

This Post:
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122310.95 in reply to 122310.93
Date: 12/16/2009 2:31:40 PM
Overall Posts Rated:
1212
For those of us who haven't followed the NT a lot (and new USA users), we have heard a lot about your disagreements with JP, but we have not seen you articulate on how you would construct the team differently or use different in game tactics. For us new folks, could you use this forum to elaborate on your different philosophy? Thanks.



well here's a simple philsophy i have and alot of others share.

in games where you are the heavy favorite (and thus the better team, or at home with better enthusiasm etc etc), you want to increase the total number of possessions. If you are expected to score... say 1.1 points per possesion (with a huge variance of course) and your opponent is expected to score only .90 points per posession you have a material edge. This is fairly similar to the report you see with bargraphs after the match report, but of course the report is per shot, and doesn't factor in turnovers. for the sake of argument let's also say that if you get 2 offensive rebounds and thus 3 shots, its still effectively one possession.


With me so far?

Great.

So lets take two extreme cases to prove what should be obvious.(leaving out free throws for now)

Case one:

Each team gets one possesion per game. The team that scores 1.1 points per possession has a 40% chance of making 2 points, a 10% chance of making a 3, and a 50% chance of missing altogether.

The weaker team has a 10% chance of making a 3, a 30% chance of making a 2, and a 60% chance of missing altogether.

What are the odds of team 1 winning or team 2 winning?


well the teams will tie (and thus overtime) 43% of the time.

of the remaining 57%, the stronger team will win 33 of 57 cases.

the weaker team will win 24 out of 57 cases (90% of the time when they hit the 3 ball, + 50% of the time when they hit the two ball), .9 + .15 = .24

So despite having a material edge, the stronger team in this case will only win 57.24% of the time, assuming that if the game goes to overtime the same scenario plays out.


Thats clearly unacceptable.

Now in the other extreme. Lets say each team, same percentages gets 1000 possessions a game. What are the odds that the weaker team wins? The answer is very near 0 %

So if you have a sliding scale, you can see a clear correlation between the stronger team wanting to increase the number of posessions and their odds of winning the game.

Even at a sacrifice of .03 points per posession or so, it's still well worth it to increase the number of possessions.

This doesn't even factor in one major factor: Point differential, which is mighty handy to have if there is a 3 way tie with 4-1 records or whatnot. Clearly increased pace = more possessions = more points in blowout wins

So what do we do in the America's tournament?

That's right, not push the pace. We played base offense 4 times, and push teh ball only once. You could say we played base only against strong teams, but there were cupcakes in there, teams we beat by 30 with base offense and we would have beaten by 40 points pushing the ball. Why not full court press a diabolically bad team, run up the score and really have that huge advantage in point differential? (note i dont advocate FCP against good teams).

This isnt high school football, where it's considered bad form to win by more than 4 touchdowns. Blowout wins help here, and help dramatically.

That is one major area, and would keep us with a better margin for error in some situations both in continental play, and in worlds, though in worlds the effect is probaby limited to some of the weakest african opponents etc.

From: wozzvt

This Post:
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122310.96 in reply to 122310.94
Date: 12/16/2009 2:38:42 PM
Overall Posts Rated:
228228
Good questions Toonces..

Do you consider the past few seasons of the NT a success?

This is a tough one... I don't think we ended last year where we wanted to. I think the USNT should be to make it to the world's semifinals. The goal is obviously to win once there, but given the talent that a few other countries have, I don't think we can assume we'll be able to pull that off.

This past season was a bit crazy with the way the schedule, effort and enthusiasm worked out (we ended up CTing a LOT of games in a row). Given all of that, I was actually surprised we got as close to the semi's as we did.

It's a lot easier to just say "Yes! We must win everything or it's a failure! Don't settle for less!", but I think it's important to be rational in our evaluations of both our own team and others, to know when we should win, and when we're the underdog. If you can't make this evaluation accurately, there's no way you can make good tactical choices.

But, don't for a minute think this implies I would do anything short of trying to win a championship.

Is it mandatory to be on the offsite forum or participate in chats during games in order to have a valid opinion when it comes to the NT?

No, but those are the easiest way. Obviously, the NT manager can't tip their hand in the public forums before a game. I guess there's no harm in other people posting suggestions there (since opposing managers won't know if the advice is taken), but it's not going to be a 2-way conversation that way. That's the value of the off-site forums, and I think if you talked to people who had posted there in past seasons, they'd agree that all feedback was taken seriously. It certainly would be by me. For those that don't like the offsite forum, I'd always be open to BBMail and IM discussions as well, but I think that actually encourages the "good ol' boy" network that you're concerned about more than offsite forum/chat communication does.


This Post:
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122310.99 in reply to 122310.98
Date: 12/16/2009 3:43:37 PM
Overall Posts Rated:
1212
coco, in spite of your numerous insults of me, i am going to do you a huge favor. seriously

you can look at something that no one else has seen, something that i feel gives me a material advantage.

do you have excel?

can you vow that you will not disseminate it?
can you vow that you will be objective about the tool? (i can also send it to a 2nd nbba member in your conference of your choosing if they also vow to not disseminate it and be objective)

i think i can answer alot of your questions pragmatically if so.

let me know. this is by the way what i would have sent you had you reached out.

bb me your email address if you are interested.




This Post:
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122310.100 in reply to 122310.99
Date: 12/16/2009 4:14:51 PM
Overall Posts Rated:
1212
coco has respectfully declined my offer.

which is his right.

that said, if someone from the outside won the election, and wanted my tool, i would give it to them

if i won the election, i would have to consider making it available, although that could well mean international dissemenation, and might instead making it available to a few hard core users who were extremely proficient in math and could help me fine tune a few things (right now the one thing my match predictor does poorly is handle and-1's... until recently this was just about irrelevant as they *almost never* happened)


This Post:
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122310.101 in reply to 122310.100
Date: 12/16/2009 4:53:46 PM
Overall Posts Rated:
576576
I can't say one way or another if its a great, average, or terrible tool since it's hasn't been available for use. There's a few good tools out there, including the formula's devised by Josef Ka which seem to be the most cutting edge BB match and team planners. But, IMO, those are just tools to help formulate and outline a plan, not to use to decide the plan.

If this is a good tool, why hasn't this tool helped your club team to more success?

"Well, no ones gonna top that." - http://tinyurl.com/noigttt
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