Tema: US Senior National Team

Tough loss against Romania. But, it looks like we may get into the next round anyway. Romania plays Portugal. Latvia plays Greece. Based on the rest of the season, I expect Romania and Latvia to win. And, depending on the point differential, the USA could advance.

I am not happy with the way the season has gone. Too often tactical alignments that should have worked did not. There are 3 friendlies on the books at the moment. If we advance to Round 2, there will be more games, and tougher competition. So, right now, we are cheering on Romania and Latvia. I hate relying on opponents for our future.

Portugal needs to lose by 40+ points in order to have worse point differential than ours. Wouldn't count on that, since Romania probably wants to preserve energy and rest the starters.

I know. But...hey...it never hurts to hope.

Next season you'll have some good players promoting to the senior team that are close to replacing some of the veterans and have promising futures like Metevia, Hogan, and Foote.

It might finally be possible to consider starting to replace more of the second and third string veterans with younger players that have similar OR and higher ceilings.

Frustrating not to advance. It sucks that Romania threw their game against Portugal, but that probably happens a lot on the last round. It was up to us to sweep Portugal and we didn't do it.

Time to focus on next season. Steiner is another who is a candidate for the national team. We really an infusion of talent at the wing positions and long-term we desperately need some inside guys with significant size.

Well, this was not the season ending I was hoping for. Portugal was our un-doing, although I did expect to take one game from Romania.

USA is in desperate need of players for the taller positions. We are also in serious need of players with stronger skill levels. There are a lot of teams that have built players up better than the USA has done. Contrary to what that sounds like, it is not an excuse for not making it out of the first round. It is, however, still a reality. I firmly believe we need to create a training standard for each position for the USA NT.

That said, while I had not planned to lead for another season, I may run and offer to take up the reigns again. This was a bit more stressful than I expected. But, it was still enjoyable.

Thank you for the votes of confidence this last season.

2 times a charm. I would like it if you came back and continued on your path.

OK. Here is a draft of what I have in mind for minimum NT player standards. Most of the good NT teams seem to have many of their players at this level or higher. I want us to compete at their level.

So give me your thoughts, positive or negative, on this:

Center
Jump and Agr: min 130
Tech at least 60% of primaries (70% preferred).
Speed and passing 30-40% of primaries
Blocking 80% of primaries

Power Forward:
Jump and Agr: min 130
Tech 70%+ of primaries
Speed 50% of primaries
Passing 40% of primaries
Block 80% of primaries

Small Forward:
All skills at least 85

Shooting Guard
Passing and Tech at least 125
Speed 70% of primaries
Shoot equal to tech
Block 50% of primaries
Agr and Jump 30-40% of primaries

Point Guard
Pass 125
Tech and Speed 70% of primaries
Block, AGR and Jump 30-40% of primaries
Shoot is variable, higher is better when possible

I train PF's more as backwards SG's with bonus technique. I give them 75% speed. That's the only percentage I use that is more than 10 away from the above suggestions. Otherwise, while I don't use these exact ratios, I like ratios that are close enough. I'll mention that I have speed at 75% for SG's and 80% for PG's since I had a lot of PG's and SG's among the league leaders for steals (though I might still add the same point that I make later for blocking and shooting about opportunity costs).

I'm not really sold on the effectiveness of blocking and shooting in place of other attributes, so I train them relatively less, but an argument can probably be made for training them as suggested. While they may be effective, the opportunity cost in other areas might be greater than the added benefit of too much shooting+blocking.

Something to consider is that the U.S. might need to sacrifice in one area to match the best teams in other areas (if it were possible to organize such a strategy). This might mean training shooting and/or blocking less than a team like the Czech Republic does to have closer passing/jumping, depending on the player (or instead focusing on matching their shooting and blocking while neglecting other attributes depending on preference).

The only (former) player from my team that comes close (for now) would be Franco (after considering his experience), and I know that there are enough better options now and in the future at the PG position.

Great points, Capsaicin! Thanks for all that input.

Let's talk about the sacrifice rational you mentioned. There are times to make a skill point/ratio trade off. Blocking and shooting are two great examples. Blocking is nearly pure defense, according to the guide. Shooting is mostly just shooting. I might trade some shooting for better rebounding (Agr and Jump per the guide) if the Q's, position, and player were right for it. By the same token, I might also trade some shooting for blocking (i.e. better defense).

We have some good players on the NT. Some of those good players are heavily abused. Some defensively and some offensively, because of bad ratios and skill levels. We need more and better players to be competitive in the international arena. And, for the record, I do not expect every player to meet those ratios perfectly. Heck, even my own players don't for various reasons, such as skill Qs and opportunity costs.

I've played a couple of other sport sims where the equivalent to our NT managers set skill level minimums for the group/country/division/etc. Basketball is still new enough to PPM that I don't think this has been explored, and certainly not by the USA. So, what I want to create is an aiming point for managers that want to supply players to the NT. I believe we will definitively get better players if there is some sort of guiding standard. Now, I admit my numbers and ratios are bit arbitrary. I did that on purpose to generate discussion.

So, please, everyone chime in here. This is important to the future of USA NT Basketball.

I use the 10-7-5-3-1 ratio. With basketball I feel like PPM went for a system that rewards the overall training of a team. Or in other words a team with an equal training ratio. Training more than the guide suggests is IMHO a waste of potential EOR. Which is why I never train my PF or C with more than a 5 ratio compared to the 7 7 and 10 10 respectively for power forwards and Centers.

The fact that your players lead the league in statistics may not necessarily mean that they are trained correctly. Most of the league leaders are from the losing teams, probably since their teammates are weaker and those players get more frequent usage. Besidesm those are all players who play heavier minutes. Also, the tempo plays a big role, playing with slow pace reduces the score by about 10-15 %, I assume the same happens with other stats, so no teams playing slow pace have league leaders stats.

I am also not big fan of shooting, I was trying to see my last and this season averages on 3PTs, and see the difference between my players. My shooting skills of player vary between 35 to 90, while the 3PT percentage is between 33-40%. There seems to be very little correlation between them, the player with the lowest skill has the second highest percentage. I assume that shooting skill might also influence the frequency of shooting, but in general so far I don't see too much reasons to overtrain shooting.

Carrying on our discussion of training levels for players, this is what our scouting revealed about opposing players last season. And, this is only looking at the teams we scouted who advanced to round 2.

Center
Jump and Agr: min 135-40

Power Forward:
Jump and Agr: min 120-150

Small Forward:
All skills at least 80-90

Shooting Guard
Passing and Tech 130-60

Point Guard
Pass 130-70

Player OR was in the range of 600 or higher.

Ratios were kind of all over the map, but there were some training consistencies. Higher blocking for players under the net, of course. High shooting for SG.

The Short Version: If we want to be really competitive internationally, these are some of the minimums we will need. And, obviously, those numbers will be higher this season.

New season is upcoming. The first round Qualification games are already on the schedule. We face:

Argentina
Estonia
Hungary
Bulgaria

None of these have been scouted. So, anyone willing to help with that, pick a team and get started!

I'll work on Argentina.