BuzzerBeater Forums

Hello, I am running for the U.S. of A. NT coach. I have been on the U.S. offsite for about 4 seasons now. I started doing domestic scouting for the 18yos 3 seasons ago and just this last season help gathering statistic for the U21 coach, Magiker( whether it was useful or not you will have to ask him :P).

The unfortunate thing here is since I am from the offsite I have a lot of the same things to say as Coco does. The offsite is a great place to go and learn more about the NT and U21 teams as we have many conversations on their about the future of America's teams.

I'm not going to give any promises to you guys because, well quite frankly, I am here to just provide another person to join in the debate so we can actually get the community more involved. However, if elected I will continue working on the program that is already in place for future NT players to make sure our future is bright and successful.

I unfortunately have not been able to work on having NT players on my team and training them since I am only in D.III however I have had and U21 player on my team , the famous Jonathan Yi, and I hope to continue building to one day provide more support for the NT.

As for the community we need to get more involvement from the top teams. We have a great group of users on the offsite already from the top leagues but we don't have enough of them fully on board with us to provide the best group of players that we can to compete against the top level teams.

Those top managers I just talked about arent the only people that help though. Every team has the chance to train a player and make an impact on the NT. Guys in D.V can train MVP/HOF players as much as they can and then sell them. What will that do you might ask....well that will not only help your team by having that player getting better thus your team getting better, but you will also be able to sell those players to future American owners for good money. With that money you can more than likely improve your teams and continue your goal of making it to the NBBA. After you sell that player that had been trained too, then that player will continue to get trained and will be one step closer to helping out the NT.

We need everybody on board with the NT program not just the big wigs like Coco, Jfarb, Rambo, wozzvt, and many others. So join the offsite guys at http://s3.zetaboards.com/BuzzerBeater_USA_NT/index/ and then send Jfarb (28800) an email so he can accept you. You will not regret it. It is not just about the NT or U21 either. Everyone is there to help each other so if you are in need of help with your own team or even want to help with the NT come join us!

Last edited by Isaiah at 02/08/2012 01:49:19

Well, with The Coco running, we all know this NT election is a formality and there's not any room for other serious candidates, so it's time for the joke and token candidates to come out of the woodwork, I suppose.

But before you dismiss me as a joke or token candidate, I'd like you to consider the following:
- Top level US managers have a minimal amount of desire and/or ability (largely, I think, ability) to sustain very high salary monsters on their club roster. As evidence, I put forth the transfer histories of: Joe Bronson (7929116), transferred 5 times in the last two seasons; Ade Maples (10593870), transferred 5 times in the last two seasons; Lorenzo Bland (11777035) transferred twice last season after his USA owner had to sell him...

- Chile's top 4 big man salaries: $375k, $331k, $322k, $320k
- USA's top 4 big man salaries: $334k, $303k, $271k, $267k
- Estimated impact of 1 primary (IS, ID, or RB) pop for a big man in the USA top 4: $35k

- Coco's recipe to close the gap with Chile: more monster bigs

I don't have a problem with having monster bigs. I think having high primaries at any position is great. I think having high primaries and good secondaries is even better. But our bigs are all within 1-2 primary pops (based on salaries) of their corresponding Chile counterpart already, and yet they're apparently a lost cause.

Obviously we do need to make sure the next generation meets or exceeds the performance levels of Bronson and Maples and Renteria. But if the communication coming from the top of the NT program is 350k big or bust, then we leave a good number of potential trainers standing on the sidelines, as they look at their club team's revenues in division 3 or 4 and say "well, I can't fit a 350k big into this roster, so what's the point training something like that and wrecking my club team?"

Some of the training problem is a communication/mentoring problem, which can be solved by helping interested trainers develop a plan that will help their club team promote to a level that can sustain the salaries. However, I feel it's equally important to change the rhetoric surrounding our NT, to shift the focus away from the monster big we're missing and shine some light on other pieces that would help too. I think the "Building Specialized NT Talent" thread in the Training Strategies section of the offsite is a step in the right direction. But I think that we need to encourage a club taking ownership of a player with the desire to see him all the way through, because the owner knows it will help his/her club team. Planning for a pipeline of "lower division team gets prospect, trains first three years, sells to higher division team, trains next three years, sells to NBBA team for finishing/GS maintenance" sounds great... but will have limited success in practice, because a majority of BB managers have no interest in training in that manner, and you'll be just as likely to lose the prospects.

The tl;dr version:
- NT training should be something a club team wants to do because they recognize the merchandise and team performance benefits of a strong training program centered around American trainees.
- The magnitude of the current focus on "the BIG big problem" is crippling our ability to recruit and retain managers into the NT training community.
- Encouraging a training program of train-to-keep and helping teams promote along the way will result in owners with more "ownership" of the NT prospects, which will in turn increase enthusiasm for the NT and will improve our future training results. Train to sell is a great second option; but should not be the primary focus of our training development program.

I agree with Azariah that with Coco running it seems as though any other person interested is at a huge disadvantage....

However I too would like to throw my hat in the ring as I have been on the fringes of the NT so to speak watching, listening, and trying to learn. I have some ideas and opinions on the the NT coach position that differ from what the title indicates.

First, I honestly don't believe that gameplanning, and or making the decision when it comes to tactics is critical for the coach. Every time we had a game we had great discussion on tactics and had discussion and debate as to what we were going to do so come time to choose the tactics and lineups some of the best U.S. minds (Brian, Coco, Jfarb, Wozz, etc) had already more or less broken down what needed to be done.

Second, I think with this game the most crucial part of our NT Coach is personal community outreach. Regardless of whether or not players want to join the offsite or not (and I do think they should and I would pitch them on it) we have to communicate with our community members. We have a scouting team set up which I think is great, but if a team is just starting up and someone contacts them saying they are a scout they may or may not want to engage with them. However if the message they get is from someone with the NT Coach title I sincerely believe they would be more receptive as far as advice on training young players, mentoring, building their teams etc. The trick IMO is to set up a program where the NT Coach is the contact, but to make it not so impossible to keep up with, set up a program on the offsite where certain things like, prospect training programs, club building advice to move up in divisions to sustain trainees, etc. (like we already do now) and then the NT Coach himself bb-mails the manager to create that personal connection with the NT. This would take quite a bit of personal time. I have that and would be willing to put it into this program.

Third, I for one believe that when you take over a position that eventually will be left to someone else you should leave it better than when you assumed it. The here and now with our national team is very important, but we must also plan for where our NT will be in the future seasons. I feel that there is too much of a disconnect between the U21 and NT's as far as what we have coming up through the pipeline and ways that we may want to steer some of our trainees/prospects. The NT Coach should be able to, through the program that i talked about above, create a synergy between the 2 clubs so we can be dominant on the U21 level but also not have that be the end goal for the managers of the trainees which i feel is the case now. I personally am trying to train a PF for the NT and I knew going in that there was little chance for him to get on the U21 team and still when it hit me that he wouldn't be on that team it frustrated me to the point that i almost gave up on it and started over. I feel this is where we lose some of our brightest prospects and as NT Coach I would try to soften the blow and bridge the gap to keep managers going with their training.

I would honestly say based on normal standards that I am the least qualified person running for the NT Coach position. I also feel that because of the design of this game what I would bring to the table.... Time committed to growing our NT, personal contact with the community to grow interest in the NT, etc. is exactly what we need as our NT Coach at this moment. Vote for me and we'll win the world gold cup, whether in my tenure, or for a future manager in the seasons to come.