Major League Table Tennis (MLTT)

[ritersofly]

Anyone know why Adam Bobrow wasn’t around for this first weekend of MLTT?

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Anyone know why Adam Bobrow wasn’t around for this first weekend of MLTT?

WTT duties

 

[Janet's Ex]

Triumphant First Weekend of Season 2 Dominated by Hometown Portland and Resurgent Florida — MajorPonghead - THE Major League Table Tennis Blog

There are so many hot takes coming on the heels of the first weekend of play in season 2 that we almost don’t know where to start…but let’s go with this one: Liam Pitchford is already worth every farthing the Florida Crocs paid to draft him first overall

www.majorponghead.com

 

[ritersofly]

Triumphant First Weekend of Season 2 Dominated by Hometown Portland and Resurgent Florida — MajorPonghead - THE Major League Table Tennis Blog

There are so many hot takes coming on the heels of the first weekend of play in season 2 that we almost don’t know where to start…but let’s go with this one: Liam Pitchford is already worth every farthing the Florida Crocs paid to draft him first overall

www.majorponghead.com

Good report out, I was definitely pleasantly surprised with Portland’s fortitude now with the 2 Swedes and Nikhil Kumar. Also Haocheng Wang is a beast waiting to be unleashed.

 

[ritersofly]

Random but I like the new season 2 team jersey except Texas Smash, the sleeves are horrible the stripes remind me of the circus lmao

Also I noticed Florida Crocs have the most unique jerseys, and I think season 1 they also had the most unique jersey, is that a coincidence or what lol

 

[pongfugrasshopper]

Just a reminder that today starts another MLTT weekend. Check MLTT's Youtube channel for live streams:

Major League Table Tennis

The first pro table tennis league in the US. Think you're good?

www.youtube.com

 

[ThePongCommenter]

The coaches being mic'd up during timeouts really makes it even more obvious who the legitimate coaches in the league are, and who don't belong.

Embarrassing to see Lillieroos often force timeouts upon his players even when they want to play through it, only for him to repeatedly have the player get to his corner and he asks "who is serving". How can you not know that as a coach when calling a timeout? In tonight's golden game, with one point left in the set of 4, and the opposing player having the final serve, Lilleroos first asks who's serving, apparently misunderstands the Chinese translation, and then proceeds to give service advice when his player is not serving again in either that set or for the rest of the Golden game... not to mention the exact same simplistic advice he gave the same player during the earlier singles match.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

The coaches being mic'd up during timeouts really makes it even more obvious who the legitimate coaches in the league are, and who don't belong.

Embarrassing to see Lillieroos often force timeouts upon his players even when they want to play through it, only for him to repeatedly have the player get to his corner and he asks "who is serving". How can you not know that as a coach when calling a timeout? In tonight's golden game, with one point left in the set of 4, and the opposing player having the final serve, Lilleroos first asks who's serving, apparently misunderstands the Chinese translation, and then proceeds to give service advice when his player is not serving again in either that set or for the rest of the Golden game... not to mention the exact same simplistic advice he gave the same player during the earlier singles match.

this is funny

 

[ThePongCommenter]

Carolina will be the team to beat with a core of Angles, Eugene, Aida and a very strong 4th option in Ly/S. Naresh/Lorentz/Kai.

Seattle should be expected to enter the playoff conversation this season with Kou Lei and Pistej in the picture.

Bay Area and Texas Smash should return as well but no guarantees. Kim Taehyun and Pereira can be up and down for the Blasters but strong when they're on their game. Teams will regret passing on Hodaei.

Less convinced on the Crocs and Revolution... outside of Pitchford, Florida's roster strength on paper is a little questionable. Big question marks in Yuanyu Wu and Seunghwan Lee, and Kaden Xu had been retired for years prior to this. Ekholm seems a bit washed.

A lot will need to go right for Portland and Chicago to be in the playoff picture but I expect them to finish at or towards the bottom. If a lot doesn't go right, Portland's draft could end up looking like an abomination.

So far looking very wrong on Portland. Nordberg is way better than I expected. 3-0 Lebesson this weekend, who had been dominating the league in the early goings.

Seattle has a good roster but their draft pick spent on Vivarelli hasn't yielded any better results than Fabiola could've given, and their coach is outmatched in terms of setting matchups as well as in game strategy. Maybe they can still turn it around.

Looking right so far on Carolina/Texas/Revolution though. Olah might not be able to save the lack of depth on the Princeton roster and they probably won't be returning to the finals or even the playoffs at all.

If people figure out Lebesson, Chicago will probably come back down to earth but we will see.

 

[pongfugrasshopper]

So far looking very wrong on Portland. Nordberg is way better than I expected. 3-0 Lebesson this weekend, who had been dominating the league in the early goings.

Seattle has a good roster but their draft pick spent on Vivarelli hasn't yielded any better results than Fabiola could've given, and their coach is outmatched in terms of setting matchups as well as in game strategy. Maybe they can still turn it around.

Looking right so far on Carolina/Texas/Revolution though. Olah might not be able to save the lack of depth on the Princeton roster and they probably won't be returning to the finals or even the playoffs at all.

If people figure out Lebesson, Chicago will probably come back down to earth but we will see.

Portland drafted really well. Nordberg has arguably been 1st half MVP for the men, and his teammate, Kotomi Okada, has arguably been 1st half MVP for the women. Nordberg beat Lebesson 2-1 and has just been on fire.

Deborah has had a tough start to MLTT, and yeah, hindsight says Seattle should have drafted Kotomi. But I don't think you can compare the value of Deborah vs. Fabiola because the league has just gotten so much stronger. Plus, MLTT takes some time to get used to for some players. Wensheng Wei also had a tough start, but now she beat both Amy Wang and Mo Zhang 2-1.

Despite getting outplayed by Nordberg, Lebesson was a good pick for Chicago as was Mo Zhang.

 

[ThePongCommenter]

Portland drafted really well. Nordberg has arguably been 1st half MVP for the men, and his teammate, Kotomi Okada, has arguably been 1st half MVP for the women. Nordberg beat Lebesson 2-1 and has just been on fire.

Deborah has had a tough start to MLTT, and yeah, hindsight says Seattle should have drafted Kotomi. But I don't think you can compare the value of Deborah vs. Fabiola because the league has just gotten so much stronger. Plus, MLTT takes some time to get used to for some players. Wensheng Wei also had a tough start, but now she beat both Amy Wang and Mo Zhang 2-1.

Despite getting outplayed by Nordberg, Lebesson was a good pick for Chicago as was Mo Zhang.

Nordberg beat Lebesson 3-0.

My point with Fabiola vs Vivarelli is that if you are going to have one of the weaker women in the league it doesn't make sense to use both an early draft pick and a foreigner spot on that player. It definitely takes some time though.

Mo has definitely surprised me so far as well.

 

[ritersofly]

Nordberg beat Lebesson 3-0.

My point with Fabiola vs Vivarelli is that if you are going to have one of the weaker women in the league it doesn't make sense to use both an early draft pick and a foreigner spot on that player. It definitely takes some time though.

Mo has definitely surprised me so far as well.

To be fair she’s only played twice against women, her loss against Cazzacu doesn’t count for her record imo, give her some time to warm up. Wengshen Wei didn’t do too well the first weekend and she did great this weekend!

Honestly they should force a women vs women singles for every match..

 

[ritersofly]

Anyone got any insight on why there was absolutely no crowd in Chicago this weekend? Wth? Isn’t Chicago a huge TT city? Like did the league really drop the ball on advertising or was there some other event that weekend or what? Can’t wrap my head around there only being like 2 dozen spectators at the event in the 3rd biggest city in the country..

 

[ritersofly]

The coaches being mic'd up during timeouts really makes it even more obvious who the legitimate coaches in the league are, and who don't belong.

Embarrassing to see Lillieroos often force timeouts upon his players even when they want to play through it, only for him to repeatedly have the player get to his corner and he asks "who is serving". How can you not know that as a coach when calling a timeout? In tonight's golden game, with one point left in the set of 4, and the opposing player having the final serve, Lilleroos first asks who's serving, apparently misunderstands the Chinese translation, and then proceeds to give service advice when his player is not serving again in either that set or for the rest of the Golden game... not to mention the exact same simplistic advice he gave the same player during the earlier singles match.

I’ll admit Lillieroos hasn’t been the greatest at GG lineups but he can probably claim the best draft between Nordberg, Lundqvist, and Omoda, they’ve all delivered superbly. Haochen Wang could also be a beast I think he just need to get used to the format.

 

[ThePongCommenter]

Anyone got any insight on why there was absolutely no crowd in Chicago this weekend? Wth? Isn’t Chicago a huge TT city? Like did the league really drop the ball on advertising or was there some other event that weekend or what? Can’t wrap my head around there only being like 2 dozen spectators at the event in the 3rd biggest city in the country..

It seems like they are still struggling with converting the marketing/advertising into spectators. The only sizeable crowd was the finals in the same city, Chicago, and the Bay Area, where clubs organized field trips to the matches.

 

[ThePongCommenter]

I’ll admit Lillieroos hasn’t been the greatest at GG lineups but he can probably claim the best draft between Nordberg, Lundqvist, and Omoda, they’ve all delivered superbly. Haochen Wang could also be a beast I think he just need to get used to the format.

I wonder if he picked them because they are Swedish or because he evaluated them to be the best picks, given that in one of his postgame interviews he said that he picked Omoda because she is from Japan which has a history of good table tennis players but he didn't actually know a single thing about her game

 

[ritersofly]

I wonder if he picked them because they are Swedish or because he evaluated them to be the best picks, given that in one of his postgame interviews he said that he picked Omoda because she is from Japan which has a history of good table tennis players but he didn't actually know a single thing about her game

I’m sure it’s both, I’m sure he knows they are good and probably feels like there would be good what’s the word, synchrony?

To be fair I don’t think anyone knows about Omoda but he wasn’t wrong in his calculated gamble with that one

 

[ThePongCommenter]

I’m sure it’s both, I’m sure he knows they are good and probably feels like there would be good what’s the word, synchrony?

To be fair I don’t think anyone knows about Omoda but he wasn’t wrong in his calculated gamble with that one

Yep, the draft definitely turned out well so far and Nordberg and Lundquist definitely proved my initial predictions wrong, so he definitely got that part right if he was responsible for the draft. Players have more input into that than you think. I just feel bad for hearing him mic'd up giving really simplistic and sometimes horrible advice (fast long serve seems to be a recurring theme) and seeing him botch the GG lineups time after time.

 

[Novarac23]

Random but I like the new season 2 team jersey except Texas Smash, the sleeves are horrible the stripes remind me of the circus lmao

Also I noticed Florida Crocs have the most unique jerseys, and I think season 1 they also had the most unique jersey, is that a coincidence or what lol

I would love to buy florida crocks jersey but can not find it anywhere on sale. :/

 

[Scarfed Garchomp]

I would love to buy florida crocks jersey but can not find it anywhere on sale. :/

New jerseys were on sale at the in-person kiosk, at least when they came to Portland. Maybe they are event-exclusive until S2 is over