BuzzerBeater Forums

I did read quite a bit about the theory of elastic effect and starting with 1 on 1. What's your opinion about the level in which it is time to switch? ~11 or higher?

I will be very busy next two weeks but after that I am willing to help. got plenty of experience with the game as a former NT manager (second round in worlds while having only one player >130 TSP if I remember correctly) and with couple of championships under my belt.

Depends on how well rounded you want the player to be, potential, and handling's starting valuation in comparison to others.

There are two or three ways one can help.

1) Active in Discord/Forums
2) Developing Talent directly for the u21 and/or NT depending on the potential.
3) Being a Scout.

Note that when i refer to scouting a player, i don't really mean that you have to scout 40-50 people. Instead, my expectation would be that if you are very talented at developing good Small Forward and i have a newer owner who wants to learn how to do just that, you pass on your knowledge once i send you the owner's name. I feel like giving "scouts" the responsibility of helping out a group of active owners is far more rewarding, whereas i can get a skill update during each break between americas and worlds. Naturally, i will ask you to keep tabs on players under your mentorship wing once they hit 21 and help keep owners on track gameshape wise, but it eliminates redundant requests for skills updates every 4-6 weeks.

Updates!

1) Scouting was completed at about 2pm today. Enthusiasm reset hit about an hour ago, so at this point it's up to you to update me with skillsets going forward if you have a 21 year old that you think is close. I'll also be asking periodically, so just keep an eye on the mailbox as i'll be sending them out in bunches this week. Our first game is monday evening, i'll drop most of the roster sunday night or monday around noon. Feel from to hang out on the discord channel https://discord.gg/jWTVvu6 during the game or after the game and say hi. We already have 8 Canadian owners on the discord, would like to see some more folks drop in.

2) Speaking realistically for a moment, we don't have a particularly strong side for this americas cup. Our goal will always be to reach the finals of the Americas, as that guarantees a world's birth. But realistically, i think getting into the repechage is the most important minimal goal.

3) I plan on running for one term after this, but would prefer to limit any stint i have to at most two terms. If you think you might want to learn how to develop u21 talent and scout and understand talent, feel free to jump onto the discord and get into contact with me. The success that i like would like to produce would be one that secures a path towards future u21 teams, and not just for the few seasons that i have control over the u21.

As an extra incentive, i'll post my purchases and selling prices for the bigs and guards i produced for the u21 over the last 10 or so seasons.

Young Li - 1.4m purchase price (age 19 with training done in age 18 season), 1.8m exit price
Mark Richey - 300k purchase price (fresh at 18), 2.4m exit
Lon Mock - 5k purchase price (fresh at 18), 2.363m exit
Dennis Lester - 400k purchase price (fresh at 18), 3.121m exit
Patrick Meloni - 532k purchase price (fresh at 18), 2.512m exit
Tom Bernier - 1.3m purchase price (late in age 19 with mostly 1v1 @ FW development), 3.57m exit.

Players that were reserves or unused:
Eric Brennan - 1.3m purchase price during age 19, 1.9m exit
Don Jewell - 129k purchase price at 18, 1.29m exit

13.1m in straightline transfer profit, 9.0-9.5m in total profit after trainer cost and salary costs of the team are considered. This isn't me posting for the sake of gloating, there is serious money to be made developing some u21 talent, and that can fund your Naismith run to knock off some of the top players there!

Hope to see you all on discord or even on the in game chat Monday!

Canada 121 - Ecuador 81

Takeaways:

1) We did not play inside in this matchup, we called mostly bigs up Saturday night into Sunday Morning, with just 1 or 2 guards on the team, and they guessed that we would play inside based on that. 2-3 zone + inside guess when your opponent plays neutral or outside and has the players to do so is a recipe for disaster, difference of skill or not.

2) We did not really play a full squad of talent here, so to get away with a 9 man squad and not have the full compliment of our bigs or guards because of gameshape concerns didn't impact a ton here. However, not every matchup will be a gimme by talent disparity. We need everyone for some of the games we have coming up in a few weeks time.

Sorry to anyone who was on the discord for this game, i was stuck doing IRL things and had to resort to watching via phone for most of it. Let's try it again next week!

If anyone wants to train or sell u21 players, don't be a stranger and hit up the discord! We have plenty of friendly folks over there willing to help out with league matchups, training assistance, or even finding someone to buy some of the u21 talent and train it if you simply don't have the room. So feel free to stop on by, or even mail me if you would rather and i'll do what i can.

Updates heading into monday.

We had a relatively good gameshape week this week, with all but one of our players in 8 or better gameshape. Our sole non-strong gameshape is one of our backup/reserve rotation players at the moment, so I do not anticipate heading into monday with any drastic changes to the team.

Owners of 20 year olds will start to see some mail come their way over the next week or so. There are a lot of potential spots for our worlds/repechage/consolation tournament run, so if you have a player in the 7-8 potential range and you develop them in primary skills, there is a reasonable chance that they could make it (especially the bigs given their are only 4 skills to boost directly).

We're starting to see some really good development on a handful of 18 and 19 year olds. I can't stress again how important it is to get players off to a good start in skills that can help you win games long term with the changes a handful of seasons back to the financial structure of the game. You've seen a success story from me about the financial benefits of talent development for just the u21, but developing any player for any purpose really is beneficial, even if you are only developing them during the cup and scrimmages during the season and playing to win in the remaining games. So if anyone wants help with that we are perfectly willing to help, u21, nt, or personal, feel free to talk to anyone in the discord at this point or even shoot me a pm.

I am hopeful to be around for part or all of tomorrow's u21 game, feel free to stop on by.

Quick reactions from our game today!

1) We are too troublesome for teams to be competitive without a talent advantage to get around the defense we can put up right now. Our defense is not good enough to win against the top 10 teams in the world, but against teams 50th and below i suspect we'll see more of the same.

2) Motion is an interesting offense, but i don't know that we gave it a fair chance to show much today. Maybe we will use it again in a future game with more players that fit the playstyle.

3) Our rebounding this game was poor in comparison to everything else this game. Part of that was to be expected based on the bigs we have called up, but watching us play Paraguay like this after getting destroyed by Peru makes me wonder how well we can play at full strength in comparison. Won't know until we make all of the moves.

We have a bye week this week, see you in two.

A quick hitter this time, since i'm not sure there is a ton to talk about

1) We've changed it up a few times now with the offense, but this week's performance in terms of ratings was the best (even though we stopped running it up due to minutes from our bench eclipsing that of our starters in some cases, while our opponent kept throwing the starters out there). Our starting bigs were just too much for the talent that our opponent could put out against us, although i am a little disappointed with Mario Brunori and Daryl Tracy's performance off of the bench. While not massively talented offensively and known more for their defensive skills, i had expected something more than i saw out of them.

2) We sit at 3-0 going into the Argentina game. 4 of the 7 teams in our pool are now at 1-3 or 0-3. With a win in any of the next 3 games, we stand a reasonable chance of finishing 2nd or 3rd in our group. This means very little enthusiasm has to be used in the next 3 games.

While this likely means a 4-2 outcome to the groups, i remain confident that we can catch Peru and Argentina in terms of talent should we eventually get into the semi-finals near the end of the Americas seasons. More importantly, the presence of several 20 year olds this season puts us in great shape to fight for a repechage birth and/or take care of business should we get relegated to the consolation tournament.

As we get closer to the halfway mark, a lot of you will get a few messages on your 18-19 year olds as i would like to know more about what i can expect from those trainees going forward. Hopefully you are all as excited as i am about the future of the canadian u21 tournament, or at the very least are very hopeful to have your players perform at a level capable of boosting your team to the next division or keeping you at the top.

FurYak

We took a calculated gamble in our game this week against Argentina, given we are a bit behind peru in terms of overall 21 year old talent. Unfortunately, Argentina even with protection against their dominant strategy and additional effort was not enough for us to overcome the skill gap that we had. This in turn also likely will eliminate our ability slide into the semi-finals without some outside help.

We are looking at a 3rd place finish in our group at this point, baring some sort of crazy point differential, so whether we go 4-2 or 3-3 will not matter too terribly much.

My current goal is to still attempt to get into the repechage so that our 20 year olds this season can come back next season and potentially give some of the european teams a run for their money. We also have several good 19 year olds that i have yet to reach out to, but i promise i will get around to it :)

So we are destined for the consolation tournament. Not that i am entirely surprised, outside of probably not making the best call in our match versus Chile (we could've and should've won that had i used enthusiasm there in my estimation, but gameshape on our secondary Patient options left me feeling like it wouldn't work), but it is disappointing that we could not turn the talent corner quick enough this season. We did CT this last game (so did argentina). we likely had a 1 enthusiasm advantage, but talent gap did not do us much of any favors.

So now that we're in the consolation, nothing much changes for me, it is still all about pushing the development of Canadian players for both my own (u21 run) personal gain and for your (team development) personal gain. I'll again kinda outline what we are looking at in terms of development.

u21 USA a season or two ago

5th best big at the end of americas: 52 BSP, 26 GSP

Canada's total number of 50+ BSP bigs this season: 0

Talent wise, we should be able to produce 1 or 2 50 BSP bigs for every 5 the USA produces, so the big thing that needs to be fixed here is how do we develop such talent? The answer is not as difficult as it might sound

1) Invest in bigs with 7+ potential

2) Invest in either a level 4 trainer and a youth development specialist, OR invest in a level 5 trainer

3) Utilize Elastic Growth to improve the overall time it takes for you to get skill pops early on in a players growth cycle.

Example growth paths:

5/5/5/5/5/5 4/4/5/4 (47 skill points total)

1v1 @ FW until DR/HA is substantially above OD (3-4 levels). Typically it's 3 pops in those skills per 6-7 weeks, in which you will net a JS and OD as well as maybe a cross pop aided pop at random.

6/5/5/8/9/5 5/4/5/4 (56 TSP)

From here, 1v1 will still train without falling off too awful much (takes 5 levels roughly from my own persective for it to do so), so you can either divert to OD now and train 1v1 @ FW in short weeks, or train 1v1 in full blast until the end of 18. Elastics on Od are best at this point, but sometimes it is easier to pick up secondary trainees for 1v1 training and get it done early, and it only costs

Path A: 6/5/7/9/9/5 5/4/5/4 into 6/5/7/10/10/5 5/4/5/4 into 6/5/8/10/9/5 5/5/5/4 (62 TSP)
Path B: 7/5/5/10/11/5 6/4/5/4 (62 TSP)

Thomas Blum on my team was 47 TSP to start, and has exceeded the 62 TSP on a path B route.

8/7/5/9/11/6 4/7/3/3 with 1 week left in this development cycle.

From either path, you can go a variety of routes. Passing trains last in most cases as it is elastic off of almost every skill in the game, you can get it to pop somewhere between 1.3 and 1.6 points per week if you get a build in either pay to say 11/6/12/14/14/5 8/6/5/4 (85) trained 4 weeks in PA would pop 3. if you train it early (say right off the bat) it trains regularly and would take 6-7 weeks to get those 3 pops. So there is always a reason to develop the ball movement skills (HA/DR) prior to PA in case you needed any motivation.

Secondaries are nice on guards and bigs alike, but that has to be the initial investment to some degree. Trying to get a player from 6/6/6/6/6/6 3/3/3/3 to the same secondaries as a 4/4/4/4/4/4 6/6/6/6 player with 6'4" or smaller height takes too long. The JR is the only aspect of the guard that will take some time to train. So you are much better off sacrificing a handful of primary skill points early.

The key rating for the bigs is IS, which elastically improves ID/REB/SB the higher it is. So taking a player to 10/6/6/6, and improving that player in ID, REB, SB, and IS in rotation will improve the rate of return by 2-3 pops.

Hopefully this insight improves your overall training plan for your players. Like i said, this isn't just for the u21, it's for the player, the club team, and the u21 all at once.

Will start evaluating talent shortly, see you next season!

Salut ! Va-t-il y avoir des matchs amicaux , merci , Sylvain

Not sure he speaks french ;) (sylvincent asks if there will be scrimmages)

Furyak, how is the training of 19-20yo going? This season you didn't have any say in developing your players so no worries about the result (and I think it's better to go to the consolation directly instead of fighting for a worlds spot, unless the 20yo are really good).

However don't forget that there's a perverse effect of not having the size of the US for example, it's that there are only ~10 players being seriously trained per generation. That means only those with MVP+ potential get training (with a few exceptions), and the priority for their owner is not the u21, but the nt (and their team on the long term, not 3 years ahead).
That's why you rarely (if ever) see u21 bigs with 50+ ISP. The only time we do is when a chinese farming team trains him and that happens once in a blue moon. Priority for a high potential player is secondaries at first for most trainers (as it should be), so you're only left with players with lower potential that could really get a pure U21 training, but most owners don't focus on these.

So in the end you have a u21 with really well balanced players, that can compete when used properly (see Cletus), but that can also have big discrepencies between seasons (again, see Cletus!). It's a hit or miss.
Looking forward for "your" generation though :) Good luck next season!