Reconciling: Money-Maker and Total Frisbee

how would you reconcile this with your money maker post?
- gaga

Gaga, I am going to answer this question in three distinct ways:

Answer 1.

What is Michael Jordan’s money maker?  MJ had phenomenal ball control, an explosive first step, and elite body control.  Jordan’s money maker is his ability to get to the rack.  However, according to Jordan it was mastering the mid-range jumper that made him a truly elite basketball player.

How about LeBron?  If LeBron decides to go to the hole who is going to stop him?  After LeBron’s rookie season he was hitting 29% of his three point attempts, in 2013 he was hitting 40.6% of his three’s. 

Why is Beau Kittredge a nightmare to guard?  Because he can run so super fast and jump so super high.  It used to be common knowledge that Beau couldn’t throw.  Then in 2013 Revolver used him as a handler in their endzone sets and Beau tallied 10 assists next to his 11 goals. 

Why did Walden make Machine?  He is a special handler defender that can also play great reset offense.  What is he doing at Wash Park early in the morning before a Machine practice?  He is practicing his hucks.  What happens when Waldinho throws a huck in a game?  Machine throws it on slow mo and mobs him afterward, yet he’s probably thrown over 10,000 practice hucks.

I think that a money maker is what gets you on the team, on the field, through steep competition, and through mounting pressure.  I think that once you’re on the team or getting play time it is good to shore up the deficiencies of your game.  I think it is important to be working on bringing something new, while constantly keeping your money maker sharp.

Answer 2.

Take a new freshman who can’t do anything with the disc.  He catches it on the sideline, “Tuttles” until stall 9, and then rolls a hammer down the back of the mark.  He does this a few more times before the end of practice.  You go up to him to tell him that he needs to work on his throws.  What do you do?  Do you tell him to work on his high/wide/low flick, high/wide/low backhand, hammer, scoober, offhand lefty, and offhand scoober?  Or do you tell him to work on one throw?  I think this young player needs a single throwing skill to hang his hat on.  Walking out in a field and trying to get better at everything at once is an immensely daunting and unfocused way of improving.

Here’s a chart of our boy.  I’ve simplified the universe of throwing down to just 6 throws: Forehand invert, Forehand around, Forehand huck, Backhand invert, Backhand around, and Backhand huck.  Note that this is going to be a madden ranking, so his best skill, the forehand invert, at 6/99 is quite unimpressive even though the chart makes it look impressive.

If he decides that the forehand invert will be his money maker he can weight his effort points into this category.  In theory it is possible to conceive that we can put 100% of our effort points into a single area, but in practice I don’t see this as realistic.  He will get bored of throwing hundreds of forehand inverts.  He will naturally play with other throws during the warm-up time of his workout, or take a work-out off to work on a different throw.

Some time passes and now he is at the chart below:

The forehand invert is showing great signs of improvement, but the other throws are also getting better.  His backhand and forehand huck are twice as good as they used to be.  Unfortunately this pattern will not be sustainable.  He will begin to approach a new problem.  Below is a rough chart of effort points v. Madden rating:

The return on effort points is very high when your madden rating is low enough, but it becomes incrementally more and more difficult to push further up the madden scale.  So as our boy continues to pour the bulk of his effort points into the forehand invert his rate of improvement will slow down, but since his other attributes require less effort points to improve they will naturally “catch up” to his money maker.  I believe he will slowly start to look like this:

 

For the purpose of this illustration let me define the threshold of an elite moneymaker as breaching a madden rating of 85, and the threshold of being able to competently play total Frisbee as 60.  Our boy has gotten a money maker, and is near the level of a total Frisbee player.

Now, for a purely theoretical exercise let’s compare our boy to a pure money-maker player and pure “total Frisbee” player:

 

Looking through these charts who would you want to be on the field?  The pure money-maker has massive deficiencies in his game, what happens if the other team goes backhand?  The pure total-frisbee player has no deficiencies, but he isn’t really giving the coach a reason to put him in the game.  Our boy has a great invert flick, it isn’t as good as the money-makers but he lacks the glaring deficiencies of the money-maker.  Our boy isn’t as good as the total-Frisbee player in 5/6 skills but our boy is so much better at the 6^th skill.  I think that our boy has accomplished two things, with the money-maker he has given the coach a reason to put him in and with the “total-frisbee” he has not given the coach a reason to bench him.

In summary this is how I reconcile the two ideas:

I don’t think there is anything holding you back from getting all your stats to the Total Frisbee threshold.  I also don’t think there is anything holding you back from getting one of your stats to the money-maker threshold.

Answer 3.

The first pokemon game I played was pokemon yellow.  I only used Pikachu.  By the time I got to the final four Pikachu was a pretty powerful level 83.  He had an attack called Thunder.  Thunder was definitely his money-maker.  It was a one hit KO even on non-water types.  The problem with Thunder was that it had a PP of 10 and the final four had 25 pokemon to take down.  (I know what you’re thinking, “Bruns just use an Elixir in between battles!”  That’s all fine and dandy but I am vehemently opposed to PEDs, except for a brief time before my senior year of college where I pretty seriously thought about it).

I needed the quick attack to get through those pesky rock pokemon and I need thunderbolt to help me conserve my Thunder PP for the champion.  Without Pikachu’s fantastic Thunder I would never have taken down the champion, but without quick attack and thunderbolt I don’t even get to play the champion.