Lebanon NT and transition period ?

[daniab]

When i first spoke to Coach Baldwin , he was always focusing on the part of building a team which can last to London Olympics 2012.When i heard him planning for this , i really found it hard specially that we as Lebanese NT were always relying on few names which is Fahed - Vogel/Vroman - khatib - Beshara but i was totally surprised that Coach Baldwin has almost succeeded to put a new mentality into the team and let's here talk about that :

Today's starting lineup against Iran was :

PG : Ali Mahmoud
SG : Ghaleb Reda
SF : Elie Rustom (shouldve been logically Jean Abdelnour)
PF : Ali Fakhreddine (shouldve been Matt Freije or William Pharis)
C : Jackson Vroman

This roster ended the first Q leading 22-18 over Iran.

Anyway what im trying to say is the following , if we look at the pos 2-3 , we can find that this is the first time we play without our traditional names Khatib , Beshara , Turk and Mneimneh , and we still managed to perform very with players coming in like Elie Rustom (23 years ) , Ahmad Ibrahim (18 years) , Elie Estephan (23 years) , Ghaleb Reda (28 years) and Jean Abdelnour (27 years).

Anw let's open a thread to talk about that , is it the right time for transition period for our team ? is it time to forget khatib who is injured and focus on new substitution?
Your opinions are really useful , thank you!

[Khalid80]

When i first spoke to Coach Baldwin , he was always focusing on the part of building a team which can last to London Olympics 2012.When i heard him planning for this , i really found it hard specially that we as Lebanese NT were always relying on few names which is Fahed - Vogel/Vroman - khatib - Beshara but i was totally surprised that Coach Baldwin has almost succeeded to put a new mentality into the team and let's here talk about that :

Today's starting lineup against Iran was :

PG : Ali Mahmoud
SG : Ghaleb Reda
SF : Elie Rustom (shouldve been logically Jean Abdelnour)
PF : Ali Fakhreddine (shouldve been Matt Freije or William Pharis)
C : Jackson Vroman

This roster ended the first Q leading 22-18 over Iran.

Anyway what im trying to say is the following , if we look at the pos 2-3 , we can find that this is the first time we play without our traditional names Khatib , Beshara , Turk and Mneimneh , and we still managed to perform very with players coming in like Elie Rustom (23 years ) , Ahmad Ibrahim (18 years) , Elie Estephan (23 years) , Ghaleb Reda (28 years) and Jean Abdelnour (27 years).

Anw let's open a thread to talk about that , is it the right time for transition period for our team ? is it time to forget khatib who is injured and focus on new substitution?
Your opinions are really useful , thank you!

Great thread Dani
Sooner or later we need to have a transition period for our team. And even though now might not seem as the best time for a transition period when u have a professional coach such as Tab u can depend and trust him to do the right thing based on his many years of experience in coaching (I honestly hope we don't replace him even if we don't get the best results in this World Championships cause our main target should be to be really prepared for the 2011 Asian championship on our home court and do something which has never happened in Lebanese history and that is qualifying to the Olympics)

back on topic :
Imagine if we just relied on Khatib and he decided that he has had enough with basketball and suddenly retired or like what just happened he got seriously injury. What do we do? We always should have other options available and that is what makes a team ready for challenges. Iran and China have their "B" NT team always playing games and ready so that just in case someone from their first "A" NT is unavailable there can be someone who can replace them.
Since we don't have that big of a selection of very good players to choose from I think we should have a pool of around 20 players who should always be ready to join our NT. Or we need to also work on continuously developing our "B" team to be prepared as well.
Right now we have great talented guards in Ali and Rony but in another 3 years time there needs to be excellent candidates who could eventually take their place and even though Rodrigue had previously shown a great talent unfortunately he has not lived up to those expectations even though he's still in his early 20's and can still imo get back and be able to be a great guard.
I am honestly not very worried about the 2-3 position because I believe Ahmad Ibrahim can be able to fill in that position in the very near future along with the 2 Elie's.
The 4 and 5 positions are tough to replace but i'm happy to see Pharis quickly adapting to the team and imo showing more than what Daniel Faris was able to do in a short time frame.
I just hope we can have a great pure big center that Lebanon can really rely on for a long time (We need to find a very young Elie Haber at like 12-13 years old and invest in him like there's no tomorrow )

[leb-basket]

great thread dani

as you guys said even if we lost we should not give up. We should work harder for the asian championship. We really do have a great coach. He gained fan's trust immediately. We have the best squad in Lebanon's history.

Tab is doing a great job. He is giving opportunities to bench players. Giving them more confidence. He is deleting preferences and that's what is helping and making the transition works faster and better. What players lack is confident. With all the past coaches players lost confidence. It was always the same players. We had some talented players that we lost because of that such as : rodrigue akl, hussein tawbe, ghaleb rida (yes remember how he used to play with riyadi) even ali fakhreddine.

Baldwin is boosting there confidence, working on each player and if u realize for him winning isn't relying on gd elements in the team as much as relying on a gd offensive and defensive system and the best example is our game vs iran today though we lost it during last 4 min. Vroman only played for 25 min and we were always managing to lead the game but unfortunately at the end few mistakes cost us the game.

Anyhow we shall wait few weeks and see Baldwin's fruits.(translated from arabic :P)
I am pretty sure no matter who was on court we are able to perform with the same level. I repeat : For Baldwin what matters is the system not the element. I am pretty sure of that and that was the key of his success!

[daniab]

Keeping Baldwin is one of the needs to start preparing for next year's Asian Championship and i'm happy that new players were involved like Ahmad Ibrahim , Elie Rustom , Ghaleb Reda and William Pharis.

Although i'm hoping and praying that our team reach the 2nd round in Fiba WC but our initial goal is to prepare this team for the Asian Championship.

About Fadi El khatib , although i'm a big fan of him but the years before has proved that we can't build or depend on khatib for a long term program , bcz he always complain and always declare his retirement and then comes back.

[Lebanon]

Keeping Baldwin is one of the needs to start preparing for next year's Asian Championship and i'm happy that new players were involved like Ahmad Ibrahim , Elie Rustom , Ghaleb Reda and William Pharis.

Although i'm hoping and praying that our team reach the 2nd round in Fiba WC but our initial goal is to prepare this team for the Asian Championship.

About Fadi El khatib , although i'm a big fan of him but the years before has proved that we can't build or depend on khatib for a long term program , bcz he always complain and always declare his retirement and then comes back.

Now IS the right time to start with the transition because next year we have the Asian Championship in Lebanon and we will be under Huge pressure to WIN it.

Ghaleb Reda and William Pharis are already 29 so it is too late for them to be considered as new generation or something.

Elie Stephan, Elie Rustom, Ahmad Brahim, Ali Kanaan must be in the WC final squad to gain international experience and be ready to take bigger responsibilities next year even if at the expense of players like Ghaleb Recda, Omar Turk...

I wish other promising players such as Bassel Bawgi, Costy Kudsy were part of the senior NT's preparations! (not necessarily the final roster but at least the preparations instead of Fakhreddine and Akl).

[leb-basket]

Now IS the right time to start with the transition because next year we have the Asian Championship in Lebanon and we will be under Huge pressure to WIN it.

Ghaleb Reda and William Pharis are already 29 so it is too late for them to be considered as new generation or something.

Elie Stephan, Elie Rustom, Ahmad Brahim, Ali Kanaan must be in the WC final squad to gain international experience and be ready to take bigger responsibilities next year even if at the expense of players like Ghaleb Recda, Omar Turk...

I wish other promising players such as Bassel Bawgi, Costy Kudsy were part of the senior NT's preparations! (not necessarily the final roster but at least the preparations instead of Fakhreddine and Akl).

Bassel bawji started training thaiboxing in my gym :P he told me last time that he was invited but didn't want to go (i guess this was his answer lol i forgot )

[rtk04]

I dont think we will have a complete transition phase simply because Fadi Elkhatib expressed his intentions to play at next asian championship to qualify to the olympics. i.e. Elkhatib wants to be part of lebanese NT 2012. but ofcourse as you all said we can now be relaxed that we have a bright future for our national team whether Khatib did or didnt join later, thx to coach TAB BALDWIN

[Lebanon]

I dont think we will have a complete transition phase simply because Fadi Elkhatib expressed his intentions to play at next asian championship to qualify to the olympics. i.e. Elkhatib wants to be part of lebanese NT 2012. but ofcourse as you all said we can now be relaxed that we have a bright future for our national team whether Khatib did or didnt join later, thx to coach TAB BALDWIN

No one talked about a complete transition but the idea is to start introducing like 5 new young players to the team.

[daniab]

Guys if you came back to 2003 , we almost had a young team merged with some experienced players such as Elie Mchantaf and Joe Vogel.

The team back then was formed by : Rony Fahed (22 years) , Ghaleb Rida (22 years) , Moe Ibrahim (18-19) , Ali Fakhreddine (18-19) , Hussein Tawbe (21 years) , Yervant Avakian (23 years) , Bassem Balaa (23 years) , Sabah khoury (21 years) + the experienced players Elie Mchantaf (33 years) , Badr Maki (33 years) , Yasr El Hajj ( 33 years) and Joe Vogel (30 years) and we got the 4th position in Asia although this team was missing Fadi El khatib , Charles Bardawil ...

and that was right after we participated in 2002 WC when we had guys like Ghazi Boustani , Walid Doumiati , Paul khoury ...

So in conclusion , even if we have now the WC , its a chance to integrate young players to start getting international experience if we want to secure our future.

[Bernard]

im with the team transition at this stage, specially if we add Ahmad Ibrahim, along with the 2 Elies' to the final Roster !!!

I hope the 3 of them will reach the Final Roster for the WC !

Long Live Lebanon !! (Except all the politicians !! )

[kerdito]

im with the team transition at this stage, specially if we add Ahmad Ibrahim, along with the 2 Elies' to the final Roster !!!

I hope the 3 of them will reach the Final Roster for the WC !

Long Live Lebanon !! (Except all the politicians !! )

It's kind of hard that the 3 would be in the final roster since Fadi will hopefully come back and we have Jean and Ghaleb also at the same position.

[ZIMATAR]

it seems that with this new American Coach. Lebanon willl be tough to beat this coming Asian Games and FIBA Asia 2011.

[wilo22]

it seems that with this new American Coach. Lebanon willl be tough to beat this coming Asian Games and FIBA Asia 2011.

fiba asia 2011 we will be champions with coach baldwin.

i don't think we will participate in asian games

[kerdito]

Obviously this is the best time for a transition period since next year we would be hosting Asia and we really have a chance to go the Olympics if we worked hard starting this year to prepare therefore taking a young talented roster to the world cup should be helpful of course with some old faces that can always be a plus.
The best thing we are noticing in our new NT is the Offense we were always so dependent on Fadi and sometimes Rony and earlier Elie Mchantaf, Vogel and Walid Doumyati sometimes but that's not the case currently where everyone is contributing we don't have a one player offense or a 1 "go to guy" the team is going more towards a everyone is a go to guy which Coach Tab stated clearly as Dany said : "A Star Team".