BuzzerBeater Forums

Thanks for the quick response.

Couple more Questions:
I have recently noticed that you only have 3 american players on your team.

1.Do you still consider yourself AMERICA's team?
2. Do you plan on buying any good young americans to increase the number of americans on your team?

1. According to the majority of Americans, yes.

2. I am looking at two guys right now.

I disagree that "what is good for U21" is very different from what's good for clubs. U21 players do not cost much, and usually their value is at the maximum just after the end of their 21yo season.

I weigh what you have to say about the game as highly as anyone. But I don’t think you understand the financial burden of any of the teams that aren’t in the NBBA or DII. In fact, the best U21 bigs are very difficult to carry for DIII and lower. Let me try to draw a parallel with Ade Maples.

Why has no one in the NBBA purchased Ade Maples? His subs suck, and his salary it’s so damn high. Right? It’s not worth it for your club team. The economic value isn't there. DIII and lower division managers look at a player like Hammond the same way you look at Maples.

There isn’t enough time to train bigs with good subs to 16/16/16 for U21. And if most managers (DIII and lower) want good subs on their bigs, and what’s best for their team, they’ll stop at 14/14/14. That's plenty for DIII and practically unaffordable in DIV. Hammond destroyed Poland’s 16/14/14/17 big in the final. We can’t have 14’s in the world’s final and expect to win.

Last edited by magiker at 11/3/2011 1:44:47 AM

I kinda meant you might be underrating driving. (I don't mean this as a criticism, eh, just as a topic for discussion).

Yeah, I see what you mean. I only had 90 points to work with, so I was probably gonna be short on something. What I meant by saying the player wasn't realistic is that it's difficult to put some driving on a big, and then have his inside skills good enough to play U21. Azariah might have something for us though, so I'm hoping it's possible!

You have said that you want to see more primaries on centers, and you have used Terrence Hammond as an example. Although Hammond was possibly the best player on the team last season, Jimmie Brown, arguably our best guard, shot 0-20 from 3. Due to the fact that we ran a LI offense last season, the big men will get more touches of the ball, and they will have more opportunites to kick the ball out to a guard for 3. Do you think that the low passing on some of the bigs we had caused such poor shooting performances from Jimmie Brown?

Sure it contributed to his poor shooting. I'd say that's a logical explanation. I also think we've seen a pattern of good shooting guards shooting terribly in a LI offense. I'd say its more of a "feature" of the GE than the lack of passing on the bigs, but it's hard to tell and it's definitely both. If you have an hour, jfarb can tell you all about this. But, as vice president of the Ricky Logsdon Fan Club (I just found out...) you might be offended with what he has to say.

At the end of the day, you can't have perfect players. Hammond's atrocious passing was a flaw, and he would have been even better with 7 passing. But it's not like there are a lot of 100k U21 bigs with more than 4 passing. We had Merrill, but that's it. Hammond's dominance inside outweighed his inability to create open shots for the guards.

If we LI, and we have a shooting guard that is the teams best shooter, and his driving is up to par, but has a 1 in inside shot and nothing special in passing, does he start? What do you think of inside shot for guards on a li?

This really all depends on skill sets and GS. But let's take an example...

16/13/15/11/13/9 - 1/5/3/1 Is 9 passing "nothing special?" I'm not sure how to put a number on that...

14/9/15/11/13/12 - 7/5/3/1 Assuming 9GS, this guy probably starts over the SG if we're playing LI... The OD is just as important in choosing the starter.

Is that kind of what you're asking?

I'm not in love with IS on guards as much as everyone else is. I think 1 IS is usually something to be careful about, and there's usually enough depth on the team where you can start someone else. But is there a real difference between 4IS and 7IS? I wouldn't say there's much. If the guard has a lot of IS, like 10 or 11 then I think that needs to weighted in the decision. But I wouldn't start a guy just because he has 7IS. I'll weigh most of the guard skills, especially OD, PA, JS, and DR before IS.

I think everyone here may be overrating driving, I've never seen a huge value in it, along with rebounding.

Good question. I play push the ball a decent amount with my club team. I play it when the players I have in good GS don't really play either an inside or outside offense real well. This happens a lot.

Rambo got vilified for playing PTB in the America's semi against Argentina. I think we blanked a lot of it, and the GE went with a lineup of 8PA at PG, 4PA and 3PA at SF. I think that was more of the problem than the PTB choice. I don't know how many offenses you can effectively run against proficient OD ratings with that kind of passing.

In my view, inside/Outside oriented offenses work better against M2M than PTB does, and the U21 team will have enough depth to have enough players who are tailored to specific offenses. It'll really all depend on the players.

I like RNG better than motion for U21. I think that motion requires more passing, and can be more effective if we have the requisite passing. But we won't. It's U21, not the NT. Players can't train every thing, the best JS/JR players are going to be a little short in DR/PA.