POINT/COUNTERPOINT: 4th Edition

Welcome to the fourth edition of POINT/COUNTERPOINT, a weekly segment where Erik Bohn and Jason Briggs discuss and debate the most talked-about topics in Minnesota Rec Ultimate Hoops.

Last week, Erik and Jason welcomed a guest appearance by UH Las Vegas coordinator Joe Neuenfeldt where they held a draft of the MN Rec Division to see who could build the best team. In case you missed it, here is the link

Have a question you would like Erik and Jason to debate? Feel free to place it in the comments below or send it here and your topic could be up next.

Without further ado...

ERIK
As much as I enjoyed drafting the best MN Rec team last week, I think we need to get back to our roots Briggsy. It's time to dust off your old high school debate team blazer and step back into the ring of hard-hitting UH topics.

JASON
I think you're right Erik, since after drafting the best team I better give you a shot at redemption. We're into week 4 of this segment, so what's on the docket for this week? Anyway we could discuss the idea of adding cheerleaders to rec basketball?

ERIK
Based on Hot Tub's Facebook profile, your boy might be the best guy to talk to about the cheerleaders issue. Can we broker a meeting between Mr. Arlt and Hot Tub? I'd like to be there for the cheerleader tryouts.

We're going to switch it up this week and have shorter debates on three issues instead of our traditional one topic format. Think you can handle public humiliation on three UH points in a row?

JASON
After my last three UH games, I've got no shame left and don't think it is possible to be humiliated any further. So to answer your question, I could certainly handle an email beatdown if you were at all capable of giving one. What are these three topics?

ERIK
We're going to kick it off with a topic that GM's from all the mid-level and lower teams have nightmares about every season:

If a position was offered to you, would you join a superteam such as the Celtics at the expense of leaving a team you've played with for several seasons?

Any GM trying to build their franchise into a perennial contender has to deal with other teams presenting a more attractive offer to their star players in order to get them to jump ship and join their squad - a sort of UH free agency period if you will. No team has done a better job of consistently attracting premier free agents than the Celtics of Fridley, but several other teams take part in the free agent frenzies every offseason as well.

I stand firmly in the corner of the "homegrown" team, of which Bloomington South's legendary St. Baul franchise is the prime example. Instead of scouring the waiver wires every week and trying to add more star power to their team every season, St. Baul has been a model of consistency, with very little roster turnover season to season.

Look at their roster from the Spring 2010 season and the current Fall 2011 season - there's virtually no difference. Keeping the same guys together every season allows those franchises to do what the newer squads and "superteams" often have trouble doing, which is playing like an actual team. Look at the loaded roster of the Celtics last season. Granted, they had enough talent to get to the title game, but if Klobe hadn't been knocked out of the semifinal game the Celtics played against St. Baul, I doubt they would have even made it to the final where they ended up getting killed by the Rebels (another team with roster consistency).

Don't get me wrong, I understand even the homegrown teams, so to speak, will have some degree of roster turnover from season to season because people have other commitments, inevitable injuries occur, etc, but there is still something to be said for playing with a group of guys you actually like, rather than being a mercenary looking for the best team every season. You also have a much stronger sense of loyalty to the guys you play with season in and season out. If somebody kicks one of my guys while he's on the ground (like Andy Steingas did to Romaro Nelson in a playoff game a couple seasons ago between the Riddlers and Blue Chips), I have a much more forceful reaction because I actually care about the guys I'm playing with.

You can have your superteam, I'll stick with the homegrown franchises that play like teams, don't care about who is putting up the individual stats, and actually like playing with each other.

JASON
While I'm obviously not the first guy that potential super teams would look to add, I think I would jump ship. I've loved playing with the Blue Chips and have enjoyed every season so far, but I really think an offer to join a team like St Baul or the Rebels might be too tough to turn down. That may or may not make me a little bit of a sellout, but I'd love to have my hands on a Gold Cup before I'm completely useless on a basketball court.

To me Erik, this whole question really depends on 3 things.

First, why are you playing Ultimate Hoops? Some people may find UH as a suitable outlet for the "hoop dreams" that never actually got off the ground. Other people play in these leagues to get a little exercise and hang out with their friends. While those two categories make up a large percentage of the participants, I think there are also a fair number of people that play every season for a chance at the Gold Cup. I know people like Nick Roell and Ryan Jansen love playing competitive basketball, but it is also easy to tell that winning is what drives these players and their teams.

Second, is the team you play for incapable of winning a championship and are you unable to add new pieces to the team? Some players get sick of routine elite 8 losses and want a chance at something better. If the team that these great players are playing on simply do not have the talent to compete or can't recruit enough good players to help, then I think jumping ship is a rational and acceptable option.

Lastly, where are you in your UH career? While this is only my 5th season, I'm basically a dinosaur in this league. Sure there are players older than I am, but my window to compete with athletic 23 year olds is closing more and more every day. If I was 22 and in great shape, I'd be much more tempted to stay on my current team and continue to get better as a unit. Unfortunately, I'm no spring chicken anymore and have only a few seasons left before the only thing I'm able to do is offer up occasional flagrant fouls. I think players like myself and even great players like Joe Epple know that the time is now for us. Lucky for you Bohn, none of the aforementioned teams want me on their rosters...so you are stuck with me for many seasons to come.

ERIK
For our next topic, let's hit on something that goes hand-in-hand with the superteam v. homegrown team debate:

Would you rather play 15 min/game on a true Gold Cup contender or 35 min/game on a fringe contender?

I'll let you lead off on this one big guy, whattya got?

JASON
Topic #1 certainly does lead nicely in Topic #2, so I'll try to refrain from waffling for Joey N and stick with the "Super Team."

My rationale for taking 15 minutes on a team like the Celtics vs 35 minutes on a team like the Thunder is pretty similar to my reasons above. Physically, my body is no longer built for extended playing time and is probably maxed out at about 22.7 minutes/game. I feel that my diminishing skills could be extended and maximized with a more limited role, which would certainly increase my value to a team as the 2nd or 3rd guy off the bench. Next, I want to win a Gold Cup before I retire. While I don't want to simply sit on the Celtics bench next to J-Moore in matching warm-ups, I have no problem sacrificing personal glory for the team success. Even if I was simply a solid rotation guy that came in for defense and rebounding, I'd be satisfied as long as I'm given the opportunity to contribute in achieving the team's ultimate goal.

Lastly, playing with other dominant players is a great way to improve your skills on the court. By being a team's lone superstar, you're expected to carry the team. By being on the court with great players, the pressure to score is reduced and you can focus more energy on passing, rebounding, defense, and moving without the basketball. It is those small nuances that turn good players into great players, and I don't think you get them by being a one-man wrecking crew.

Also, as you mentioned before, it is clearly not an easy task to simply take 6 to 8 great players and win the title. The Celtics from last season had how many great individual players but yet were beaten by a well-constructed team? That might also be something that is affecting the Avengers this season, evident after their loss last night to Respect The Game. If you look at the roster that Derek has put together, it is an unbelievable collection of scoring talent. The problem is, they have some redundancies in skill level and positions that it makes it difficult to maximize their players. Derek, Ben, Chris, Zhao, and Sam are all great scorers, but none of them are used to facilitating or having to defer to a team full of great players. With two minutes left in the second half, they had Sam, Ben and Chris all on the bench in a close game. While that would be insanity on any other team, the Avengers have so much individual talent that they still had great players on the court even without those three.

So why do those two examples help me in my argument? Well simply put, they demonstrate that even with all that talent it is still a challenge to win the title. It takes tweaking rotations, figuring out roles, and deferring to others in situations where you've never had to before. While the Celtics didn't quite do it enough to win the title last season, the Avengers still have some time to get their house in order and take home that Gold Cup. I'm on board for a challenge, but I certainly love the idea of having 7 great players wearing the same uniform that are in the battle with me. I don't want to have a Gold Cup handed to me on a silver platter, but I'm more than happy to put in only 15 hard minutes on the Avengers if it gets me the opportunity to drink some PBR out of that trophy.

ERIK
I'm going to ask all the UH players who have played with or against me to take a leap a faith and just assume for the purposes of this argument that I am actually a talented player who could carry a team. Alright, let's continue...

You sound like a former Cavaliers player I remember, who after deciding he didn't want the pressure and responsibility of being "The Man" in Cleveland, jumped ship to join some other all-stars in an attempt to win a title. Why don't you just call up ESPN, set up an hour long special at the Fridley Lifetime Fitness, and announce in front of a bunch of kids that you're taking your talents to Hot Tub's team of stars?

Whatever happened to taking some pride in leading your own team to the title, like Dirk Nowitzki and the 2011 Mavs? It takes some balls to be the leader of your own team and know that the Gold Cup dreams of your franchise live and die based on your performance when it really matters. While other people are riding the pine on championship teams trying to convince themselves that they actually matter and contributed to the outcome of the game, I would be out on the court busting my ass truly making a difference. Do I have as good a chance as a loaded Celtics roster of winning a Gold Cup? Probably not, but that's what makes it all the sweeter when I finally do lead my underdog squad to the promised land.

This isn't an argument about getting more playing time in order to accumulate more stats (although there are too many examples to even count of players in UH only concerned with their stat line versus their win-loss record). It's about not giving up, and selling out to join a team you view as a more viable championship contender as a mercenary that barely even gets to play. You can be the Juwan Howard of your UH equivalent of the Miami Heat Briggs, I'll take being the leader of my own Mavs-like team every day of the week. And while you might win a few more Gold Cups before I get to hoist my own trophy, the PBR I end up drinking out my Gold Cup will be sweeter than anything you'll ever taste in your lifetime.

(OK, you can all stop trying to imagine me as an impact player now....I know that was tough for everybody)

Alright Briggsy, how about you pick the next topic. Whattya got for me?

JASON
For the last topic, I want to discuss something that has been brought up by about a dozen people over the last four weeks and that is the uneven schedule. In Fridley, the "assumed" top 7 teams all wound up on each other's schedules, while the "assumed" bottom feeders all ended up playing each other as well.

So Mr Bohn, is this scheduling style something you favor, something you're against, or somewhere in between?

ERIK
I like this topic Briggsy, especially since it's a very relevant issue in Fridley right now.

I wish I could passionately argue one way or the other, but the truth is, I think I fall somewhere in between. In my mind, there are a couple issues at the core of this argument, the first of which is whether or not an unbalanced schedule, in which someone is manually picking specific match-ups, is "fair" or not. I think the answer you would get from most people however, entirely depends on the quality of that person's team, as well as what their main motivation is for playing UH basketball in the first place.

For example, if I'm a decent player on a below-average team and all I'm worried about it is how my stats look so I can pretend I'm a better player than I am, then I wouldn't really care about whether it's fair the best teams have to play each other because I will end up playing more lower tier teams I can put up better stats against. On the flip side, if I play on one of the better squads and my main motivation is winning games and making deep playoff runs, then I might view an unbalanced schedule as very unfair due to the brutal schedule my team is forced to play, which could have a significant impact on my playoff seeding, which in turn, could cause a much more difficult path to a Gold Cup. Personally, I understand the latter of the two scenarios much more than the former, mainly because I hate playing with people who are purely interested in their stats and how good they look.

I'd be willing to bet however, there is a third group of players in UH that view this from a different perspective, and love the fact there is unbalanced scheduling in Fridley. If you play on a top tier team, it's not much fun to show up for a game that is non-competitive from the start, and you end up winning by 50 without even putting forth much effort. I would much rather play in an incredibly competitive and intense game and lose by 3, than blow out a terrible team by 50. In this sense, having the large majority of your schedule against quality teams is great, because you are guaranteed to play against the best competition and you know you'll be involved in phenomenal games almost every week. If you end up with a 3-5 record after playing a tough schedule, you probably weren't as good as you thought you were in the first place, and you're still almost guaranteed a playoff spot anyway, based on the records of teams making the playoffs the last four seasons. And as far as complaining about having a worse seed because of your tough schedule and getting matched up against the best overall teams sooner in the playoffs, I always have the same answer: You were going to have to beat the Rebels or the Celtics at some point to win the Gold Cup, so whether it's in the second round or the final four isn't THAT big of a deal.

I understand that one person hand-picking certain match-ups throughout the season reeks of subjectivity (and brings a large amount of favoritism into the equation) and can definitely be viewed as a somewhat shady practice, and I'm not saying if I ran a league I would conduct my scheduling in that manner. My main point is that even though I'm somewhere in between on this debate and understand both sides of the argument, as a player I would want to be involved in the most competitive games possible week to week, and an unbalanced schedule - although far from perfect - is one way to ensure that happens.

JASON
You make some very valid points and the idea of an unbalanced schedule is one that is tough to argue against because it does hold some merit. The good teams will get a challenge each week and the inferior teams have more chances to win games, which means they may continue to play Ultimate Hoops. Where I think it hurts the league is in two specific areas.

The first area of concern is with middle of the road teams. Since you and I play for the Blue Chips, let’s use them as an example. We are not currently one of the top 5 teams in Bloomington South, but are probably in that argument for 6th or 7th position. If the unbalanced schedule was implemented in Bloomington, where would we fall? Are we going to be one of the teams that gets to play every quality team in Bloomington or will we fall short of that cut and be stuck playing the Panthers, Raptors, Blazers, Clem’s Kids and others to complete our 8 games? Tim Allen’s decision on this issue would greatly affect our ability to have competitive games and also our ability to get our money’s worth out of the season. You and I would much rather play the Rebels, Riddlers, and St Baul every week rather than smoke a team by 40 points, but we may be the exception. If Tim would have implemented that plan this season, he had us projected to finish in the bottom 6. Sure we would have been anywhere from 5-3 to 7-1 playing the worst teams in the league, but I would have been pissed at missing my shot to play the big boys. Yes we may lose, but games against the Rebels, T-Pups, and Bobcats are the games I look forward to the most and would feel cheated without the opportunity to play them. I’m just not comfortable with someone specifically taking good games away from me because I play for a team he doesn’t feel has a chance to win the league.

This is a very realistic problem right now with Respect the Game. They only get to play 2 good teams this season because Chad thought they wouldn’t be as good as they are. That means that 75% of their games are against teams they knowingly should beat, which takes away their chances of knocking off very many Fridley super powers.

The second problem with unbalanced is that it could leave the wrong team on the outside of the playoffs. Just because I love Dustin Dupont, let’s take a look at Cobra Kai in a “theoretical example.” They are currently 2-3 and have a few tough games left on the schedule, which means they have a realistic shot at going 3-5. DY Nasty is 3-1, yet is nowhere near as talented as Dustin, Don, Luke, Luke, and Nick from the Cobra Kai dojo. That team will most likely finish 5-3 or 6-2, while actually having a realistic shot at taking an automatic bid for Fridley. I’m not saying they are a bad team or don’t deserve to make the playoffs, I just feel they are not in the same class as Cobra Kai and yet will finish well above them in the standings. My problem with this situation is that the results and automatic bids are then not being rewarded based on basketball ability, but rather a coordinator who gave one team a much easier schedule than the other.

So maybe Cobra Kai isn’t as good as the Celtics, Turtles, or Avengers…that doesn’t mean they couldn’t wipe the floor with the opponents DY Nasty and the Unpredictables are playing every week. I am not a fan of any team getting a really easy schedule based on a coordinator’s preseason assumption of said team. A random schedule would help eliminate this type of situation, although even random is not perfect. Redemption went 6-2 a few seasons back because of a lucky schedule and got absolutely smoked in round 1 of the playoffs. It made Fridley look bad having a 6-2 team get slaughtered by a Bloomington squad, but it was really the schedule’s fault more than anything.

So to sum it up, while I love certain things about the unbalanced schedule, I feel the tournament is sacred. A random schedule does a better job of making sure the cream rises to the top and the shit sinks to the bottom, where an unbalanced schedule helps too many turds float.

ERIK
If UH was currently going through a lockout similar to the NBA, I think you would have just been fined $500K for those comments against league management like Heat owner Micky Arison was earlier this week. On top of that, the boys from D.Y. Nasty will be gunning for us now too. What are you more afraid of Briggsy, trying to finance a $500K fine from Alan Arlt or the D.Y. Nasty crew finally connecting on more than 30% of their three-pointers to take down one of your teams?

JASON
Remember, I used DY Nasty in the "theoretical example" Mr Bohn, so I'm sure they wouldn't hold a grudge for a "made up" example. That being said, I'm more afraid of the $500K fine because it is clearly the more realistic of the two options.