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That's why I'm hoping someone else with this skill set will eventually come to the forefront in future elections.

I believe i have this skillset and have the time and desire to get out in the community and help us grow.

I think nother thing everyone needs to think about is that we all have interest in the NT but how come Joel seems to be the one that is "supposed" to get more members on the offsite and work with the community aspect? This should be a team effort ran by both the NT and U21 coaches as well as the group of members already on the offsite. I think that seems to be one of our problems is we come up with ideas to try to get more people to the offsite but we never follow through. I think we need to be more successful as an offsite community promoting player building and involvment on the forums.

I agree with this and I am the man for the job. This should be the #1 priority for the NT coach.

Because from what I've read and been told its almost like you either pump primaries ans try to get them on the U21 team or you make a more rounded player and go for the NT. It honestly looks from the outside like its 2 different things and I think we need to have the coach get out there and bridge that gap so we don't lose prospects as soon as they are done with the U21 team and lose that merchandise.

I'm going to jump in here. First off, I'm really glad you're running. While you may not be the favorite to win, the people we need to be more involved are intelligent people who have a slightly different vision about what it will take to win gold. It's easy to talk about training specialized players, but when you train an 18 year old PF in secondaries for two seasons, before hitting the inside skills (to make him useful to your club team, at least as a SF), that shows something. I consider this just as important as buying 300k bigs if you're in the NBBA to help the NT. I sincerely hope you do well.

You've said a little about a "disconnect" between the NT and the U21 team, and it seems like you are implying there are 2 distinct training paths for U21 players and NT players. I'd like to clarify a few things, and try to share a different point of view. I don't believe the training plans for U21 and the NT are mutually exclusive, for most players.

Unless you make Bill Weeks, 7-8pot (~70% of U21 prospects) won't be enough for the NT. I also can't envision a training plan for NT guards that isn't useful for U21. U21 guards (especially combo guards) have a salary under 40k, which is completely reasonable for D4 and up. The salary is usually affordable, and people are able to train secondaries at age 22-23.

The only real difference between what's essential for U21, and what might help a NT player development is a 10pot big (~5% of our prospects, only 1 last season). I assure you that this is not missed by me or our great scouting staff. You, for example, have an exciting player in Cottrell. As you know, I have not once suggested you train primaries to make him useful for U21. The way he is being trained keeps his salary down, and gives him a chance to be a stud for the NT in 5-6 seasons. I have very different conversations with managers of 10pot bigs than 8pot bigs.

While training may be two different things (for a very very select few prospects), I always have the NT interests first. I promise I am not solely concerned with U21 for potential NT players. I think we have a few things we need to improve before we win worlds gold, but I don't think the training of 10pot U21 players is a major issue.

Good luck in the election.

If we are going to expect NBBA teams is going to "carry" a major big man, then we should expect that they actually make use of the fact that they're going to throw 1 game a week any way in order to acquire a high potential trainee and get him trained. It's unreasonable to expect and demand that a lower division team is going to spend millions of dollars on an 18yo trainee (or forgo those dollars to keep their own draftee), spend four seasons training him up to the point where he breaks their payroll, and then sell him on to an NBBA team who will now finish out his training. There's a lot of long term proof that it doesn't pencil out financially unless your team is developing and promoting because of the trainee(s), and teams are going to be much more interested in participating if they're presented with a viable way to have a piece of the NT, instead of just going down as "that guy who trained XXX before he became Coco's player".

This is where my program that we need to go beyond just telling a manager how to train his prospect comes into play. We need to mentor the manager on how to build his team around the player to advance so when they sell off their player they are in the upper leagues and can go about building their team how they wish.

This also is where IMO the disconnect between the U21 and the NT becomes so glaring. Once the merch stops rolling in from the U21 it seems they lose a lot of money because their players salary skyrockets and therefore they have no motivation to keep them. If we have them get them to the U21 and prepare their teams for the sell of their players it works out great.

You've said a little about a "disconnect" between the NT and the U21 team, and it seems like you are implying there are 2 distinct training paths for U21 players and NT players.

I need to clarify what i meant by this, and also say that I never mentioned or thought you were a part of this. What I am talking about in this sense is that if you go on the off-site or even on the threads here on the main site every training strategy posted says, and I'm paraphrasing here, to pump primaries and then secondaries second. This is why we don't have the bigs (and to be honest guards as well) with the secondaries to make up for our lack in primary skills and have the ability to be diverse in our offense. My goal is to coordinate with the U21 manager, so we still have the means to be dominant on the U21 level, but also be up front with managers in telling them how fast the salaries can escalate and what they would be looking at doing after they got their primaries trained up (which would be playing a massive salaried player out of position to train secondaries while trying to stay competitive).

The only real difference between what's essential for U21, and what might help a NT player development is a 10pot big (~5% of our prospects, only 1 last season). I assure you that this is not missed by me or our great scouting staff.

I agree with this. I never said this was being missed or feel that i implied as much.

While training may be two different things (for a very very select few prospects), I always have the NT interests first. I promise I am not solely concerned with U21 for potential NT players. I think we have a few things we need to improve before we win worlds gold, but I don't think the training of 10pot U21 players is a major issue.

First off to explain why i bolded what i did.... I don't think the NT interests need to be put first... we need to have it be a simultaneous process where managers that aren't already aware of what the process entails are brought up to speed and prepared and know exactly what their options are and the ramifications of which option they choose. That way they won't get discouraged when they hit the tough spots i.e the lull between their prospect being on the U21 team and getting the finishing touches for the NT.

The italicized part is exactly the synergy we need on both levels to get our team to that worlds gold. I will be able to provide this from the NT end.

So, my question is, will you try to encourage the creation of players that are more efficient relative to their salary, and if so, how? Additionally, do you feel that there is a difference in how an NT player should be developed early on as opposed to a U21 player?

Great question. We have had some great suggestions on the offsite for creating salary efficient players as Coco said. My feeling on this though is no matter how many of these salary efficient players we have, we are still going to need 1 or 2 of these monster players that dont have an efficient salary. However, if we start working on getting these salary efficient players trained it may or may not even be better for our team. I can see one positive out of it though and that's that more D.II teams could sustain these players leading to more of our players staying on USA teams. And then we could rely on a few NBBA teams to hold the high salary players. But will these NBBA teams welcome these players on their teams? That Im not sure about. Would you hold a Bronson or Maples on your team if they were the only big salary players on the team?

As far as development goes, yes the future NT prospects should definitely be trained differently than the U21 prospects. By that I mean basically the HOF players and ATG players if we have any. Those players need to be on a training regiment thats helps them become great all-around players with good secondaries so when the time comes to pick out the NT players every year we dont have to worry about these centers with 1s in all secondaries. Because quite frankly those guys with all 1s should not even be on the team. As for the MVP potential players I believe these are the guys we need to try the special training techniques on like the ones that have been discussed on the offsite. Reason I say the MVP players should be the players to have the special training is because 1) we havent really done some of these techniques so we dont know if they will work 2) why waste a HOF caliber player on something that may not work 3) the salaries wont be as high with these players so they could still sustain the salary as an MVP potential player 4) There is a wider selection of MVPs than there are HOF players so we can pick out the right guys to start the training regimen on.

But will these NBBA teams welcome these players on their teams? That Im not sure about. Would you hold a Bronson or Maples on your team if they were the only big salary players on the team?

Some probably will considering that the merchandise you gain from holding a star on the NT allows you to sustain a higher team salary, and that's the sort of edge that can make a big difference in the NBBA.

However, personally, I require a minimum of strong ID for any guard, preferably proficient or higher, so I wouldn't consider owning most of our top guards. As for bigs, I view inside defense in the same way most view shot blocking, which rules out owning virtually any monster big.