Providing Developmental Recommendations

[Neato]

Here is a bit of a game if anyone is up for it. Let's examine what players need to improve or do better in the future. You will basically act as a developmental coach to the player of your choosing. I would like to standardize the feedback process if that's ok. Here are the rules.

1. Pick at least one player you wish to develop.

2. The task is to distribute 100 points across the 6 competencies below. The points represent the extent to which the player should focus on developing a certain area.

3. You cannot create new competencies, but you can "remove" a competency by assigning it a score of 0 (in which case you are telling the player not to bother developing that area right now).

4. To make point assignments easy to read across posts, the points given to each competency must be a multiple of 5.

5. Please feel free to include comments to justify your point distribution. You can also explain whether there should be a particular focus within a competency (e.g., assists, rebounds).

The six competencies to be evaluated are as follows. I have included examples of indicators of each competency. Of course, the indicators in parentheses are just examples.

Offensive Skills (e.g., points, assists, ball handling)
Defensive Skills (e.g., rebounds, blocks, man-to-man defense)
Leadership (e.g., taking charge, mentoring)
Teamwork (e.g., sharing the basketball, following the playbook, cooperation)
Activity (e.g., hustle, being aggressive, moving without the ball)
Decision-making (on court, off court)

I will start.

Mickael Pietrus:

Offensive Skills 10
Defensive Skills 0
Leadership 0
Teamwork 30
Activity 20
Decision-making 40

I would like Pietrus to work more on ball handling (to avoid traveling), sharing the rock, driving to the hoop, and cutting down on his boneheaded plays. Feel free to comment on my recommendation as well as recommendations posted by others. Keep it civil please.

[MitchellUK]

Is this for your NBA Live dynasty mode or something?

[Neato]

I take it NBA Live has a similar exercise? I guess you could approach this as a video game. I was just interested in seeing how fans view players using an analytical approach. Sort of.

[ponder276]

Andrea Bargnani:

Offensive Skills - 15 (post game, passing, generally reacting to the defense instead of mechanically going into a pre-decided move the moment he gets the ball)
Defensive Skills - 40 (REBOUNDS AND ROTATIONS!)
Leadership - 0 (never gonna be a leader anyways)
Teamwork - 10 (is a bit too shot happy)
Activity - 35 (REBOUNDS AND ROTATIONS!)
Decision-making - 0 (already covered by the other categories)

Really I just want this man to aggressively pursue boards, show some hustle, and make quick, decisive rotations. Basically mix a little Noah or Varejao in his game and I will stop thinking of him as a losing player who should only get no more than about 15-20 mpg off the bench.

[Neato]

This could become pretty educational for me. I didn't realize Bargnani is lacking in the areas of rotations and reacting to the defense. I was aware of the other areas.

[farzi]

Greg Oden - Health - 100

[Neato]

Greg Oden - Health - 100

I knew someone would work that in here.

Seriously though, I left health and fitness out because I wanted to focus on competencies. I understand the point that this excludes some players from discussion.

Anyway, I was trying to look at this through the perpective of an executive or manager. The manager creates developmental plans for his/her employees. No matter how strong an employee is, the manager must still provide developmental feedback to the employee. So how would you provide feedback to someone like Kobe or LeBron?

[Hon-essim]

Barg:

Offensive Skills - 50
Defensive Skills - 20
Leadership - 10
Teamwork - 5
Activity - 5
Decision-making - 5

Needs a huge dose of activity and decision making. Leadership if you want him to be your Dirk but Raptors don't seem to want that. Offense and Defense could just be regularly worked on regardless of Barg's bad D. Teamwork could be increased if Decision Making isn't working out so well.

Stephen Jackson:

Offensive Skills 40
Defensive Skills 30
Leadership 10
Teamwork 5
Activity 10
Decision-making 5

Decision making could be the primary focus. Leadership/Teamwork and Activity next. Offensive skills could be minimally improved but mostly let Jax work on that. D can be sacrificed for Teamwork and Decision Making.

Kwame Brown:

Offensive Skills 30
Defensive Skills 50
Leadership 0
Teamwork 5
Activity 5
Decision-making 10

Either Activity + Defense or Decision Making + Offense

Brandon Bass:

Offensive Skills 20
Defensive Skills 20
Leadership 20
Teamwork 20
Activity 20
Decision-making 0

Decision making, Offense and Defense. Activity and Teamwork is alright. Leadership might self-develop.

Reddick:

Offensive Skills 15
Defensive Skills 30
Leadership 25
Teamwork 5
Activity 30
Decision-making 5

Depends on where he wants to go. Offensive skills + Decision making if he wants to stay as he is now. Pure defense if he wants to be more respected. Offense + Decision making if he wants to show everyone who JJ Reddick was in College.

Darko:

Offensive Skills 40
Defensive Skills 45
Leadership 5
Teamwork 5
Activity 5
Decision-making 5

Increase Teamwork and Decision Making. Pick your poison with Activity or Offense. Defense is alright.

Marc Gasol:

Offensive Skills 30
Defensive Skills 30
Leadership 15
Teamwork 15
Activity - 5
Decision-making - 5

If he wants to be a more physical Pau, his Defense and Offense needs to increase as his Leadership sours. Seriously though this is just to show how flawed 100 pts. requirement is.

Marc is more active than Barg but because of the 100 pts. req and the difference in training, Marc and Barg seems like they need to train equally at something like actiivity.

Imagine if you judged Jordan as a gm with this:

Offensive Skills 40 (needs to inspire his team more and not lose at horse)
Defensive Skills 5 (team is already pretty good)
Leadership 5 (let Larry handle this)
Teamwork 10 (participate more in practice rather than banging chicks)
Activity -10 (less golf more recovery)
Decision-making - 50 (good decisions but all it takes is one Kwame and you still haven't acquired a superstar)

You'd have to give Morey the same rating:

Offensive Skills 40 (needs to be more aggressive and use his sports analytics to acquire at least 1 superstar)

Defensive Skills 5 (team is already pretty good)
Leadership 5 (let Adelman handle this)
Teamwork 10 (participate more in team loyalty and not so much in trying to replace Battier for Ariza)
Activity -10 (less acquisition more generating a core that will make superstars want to play with Houston)
Decision-making - 50 (good decisions but some of the decisions are still too close to call. Not quite sure team is heading up the right way but certainly promising if Morey can chain a string of perfect moves and avoid the KP curse)

In the end it's the words and not the numbers that tell the story. Even in taking development seriously, it has to come to the specific exercise and even some slight background to give fans with no NBA training insight on what the rate players develop at.

For example even if I think a player needs to work on his D, how do I know whether Steve Hess' training of Birdman in the NBA Fit video is also what led Big Ben to be such a defensive monster in his prime or maybe Big Ben trained smarter than Birdman and Anderson just happened to picked himself up and the training is just regular big man training.

(This is the video I'm referring to btw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lyich0KpSkU)

[Neato]

Thanks for taking the time to think this through. I think I understand what you are saying. I wanted to keep it simplistic for what I was trying to accomplish. The assumption was that creating a developmental plan can be tricky because you only have a limited amount of time and resources to develop yourself in the short term. It was just a quick way to prioritize developmental needs. Now, creating a plan for developmental activities is a completely different step. So I agree with you that it can get a lot more complicated. So, sorry to take shortcuts here. I wasn't planning to get too technical and detailed. I am in fact published in the area of employee development so I'm pretty familiar with the literature. If the other posts are like yours, I may get more comfortable going into the details and addressing that. I'll keep it basic and at a fun level for now. Also, not sure if you were flipping your values (objective was to assign higher values to areas most in developmental need).

[Neato]

Also, by no means am I advocating that a GM presents point values to the player. I never addressed the feedback meeting. That is different.

[Hon-essim]

Also, not sure if you were flipping your values (objective was to assign higher values to areas most in developmental need).

Well, if I understood you correctly, the initial value was a combination on how I felt the player was focusing on their training based on their attitude and ability in games. The recommendation was based on what you think I would recommend them changing.

Seriously though, don't sweat it. I was half-joking.

I just have one thing to add. Yeah this is fun but it's not exactly a shortcut. I don't really know the shortcut terms because I've never seen an NBA training vid but I'm guessing it would include such words as aerobic, anaerobic, lactic, alactic, plyometrics vs. weight lifting and high impact vs. low impact.

[Neato]

Also, not sure if you were flipping your values (objective was to assign higher values to areas most in developmental need).

Well, if I understood you correctly, the initial value was a combination on how I felt the player was focusing on their training based on their attitude and ability in games. The recommendation was based on what you think I would recommend them changing.

Well, I think there is a misunderstanding about that. I'll take the blame for it. I looked at my original post and probably could've explained the objective better.