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Hello everyone :)

I have decided to present some of my thoughts about training players for U21 teams. I have included sections on selecting trainees, weighting skills, running a training program (managing minutes, deciding what to train, etc.), and projected player development. Comments are welcome. The previous U21 manager, HPP, wrote a training guide as well, and I would recommend checking it out: (112743.1)

Section 1: Who to train

There are four main things to look at when evaluating a trainee: age, height, potential, and skills

Age
Newly drafted players are either 18 or 19 years old. Looking ahead to the U21 team, 18 year old players have a huge advantage, due to the possibility of being trained for one extra season (before turning 21). With this in mind, most U21 players are trained up from the age of 18.

Height
In general, inside skills train the fastest if a player is really tall, and outside skills train fastest if a player is really short. Extreme heights can help generate extremely skilled players in specialized areas. If you are planning to do significant training both for inside and outside skills, perhaps to make a SF, then an "in-between" height can be good. Here are some rough estimates of mine for height guidelines:
Pure C: 6'10"+ (the taller the better)
PF: 6'7" - 6'11"
SF: 6'3" - 6'8"
Guard: under 6'4" (the shorter the better)

Potential
The potential of a player doesn't affect training speed, until the player approaches the soft cap associated with their potential. When this cap is reached, training virtually stops, although it is possible to continue to train very slowly. In effect, a player's potential is a limit on how good they can become one day. Now, for a U21 player, the goal is to become as good as possible within the age limitations. That means that training, ideally, will occur at least through age 18, 19, 20, and 21; 4 seasons in total. For most positions on the U21 team, allstar potentail is often high enough to allow for a full 4 seasons of training. Perennial allstar+ potential gives some extra breathing room, and should almost always be enough. The one position where Superstar+ potential can come in handy, with regularity, is at center. An inside focused monster at C, by age 21, can have a much higher salary (and need higher potential) than any other position.

Starting Skills
In order to be worth training, a new trainee needs to have pretty good starting skills. A salary of $3500+ might be an ok guideline, but that's very rough, and each player is a different case. In general, one thing to consider heavily is skill level in main areas. It's really good if the key skills for a trainee are already at or near respectable to start. If the player has any major holes (say, atrocious passing for a guard), then you need to think about whether the hole(s) can be fixed (sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no). It's also really good if the player has secondaries that you like, since these are hard to work on. If you can start out with a PF trainee with respectable JS and OD, for example, then that can be a huge advantage.

Last edited by The Mogul at 4/22/2010 3:53:06 AM

Section 2: Weighting skills; what skills are needed at each position?

I really like well balanced players. In buzzer beater, every advantage counts. It is true that some advantages count more than others; the areas that are really key, for a position, are often called the primary skills for that position. Other skills are often called the secondary skills for a position. Here are some general categories:

Guard Skills: Outside Defense, Passing, Handling, Jump Shot, Jump Range, Driving
Big Man Skills: Inside Shot, Inside Defense, Rebounding, Shot Blocking
These are also skills! :P Stamina, Free Throws, Experience

Now let's break it down for each specific position (in rough order of importance).

Point Guard
Outside Defense, Passing, Handling, Jump Shot, Jump Range, Driving

Shooting Guard
Outside Defense, Jump Shot, Jump Range, Passing, Handling, Driving

Small Forward
Outside Defense, Jump Shot, Inside Defense, Inside Shot, Rebounding, Jump Range, Passing, Handling, Driving (basically everything is good, and the order of importance here is very rough; SFs can be built in many different ways)

Power Forward
Inside Defense, Inside Shot, Rebounding, Jump Shot

Center
Inside Defense, Inside Shot, Rebounding

For guards, some Inside Defense and Inside Shot is never bad (although not essential), and Rebounding also helps (although rebounding can cause much higher salaries, several seasons down the road).

For big men, especially PFs, Outside Defense, Passing, and Handling are all great to have. Jump Shot is very important to me at PF, and also helps at C.

I really like it if every player on the court can defend, move the ball, and score effectively.

As one final note, you might see that I don't have shot blocking anywhere. True! My opinion is that it is not much of an asset currently, given its relative impact on the game (as well as its cost in terms of salary).

Last edited by The Mogul at 4/22/2010 3:56:27 AM

Section 3: Setting Up a Training Program

When deciding on training, the most important questions are how many positions to train, who to train there, and what to train. To develop an U21 player, for future Canadian teams, it is likely that heavy single position training will be needed (for the skills that have this option).

I won't say much here about selecting trainees (although the above sections have some thoughts about trainees in general). One point I will make is that it is good to work with trainees that benefit from the same training programs. For example, you might select 3 players that all could use heavy IS training at C for a whole season, and then balanced IS, ID, RB training after that.

I also won't say much here about deciding what to train, other than that I think it is a good idea to strive for some balance. If a player is really low in a main skill, it is usually a good idea to work on that first. One reason for this is that players train faster in skills that are low (relative to their other skills), and train more slowly in a skill that is relatively high. For pure team training (stamina, free throws), it is usually best to only do these in weeks with fewer games (2 game weeks).

Managing Minutes
I would like to spend a little more time on managing minutes, for your trainees. Let's say that you have 3 trainees, and you would like to single position train them at C. To receive full training each week, they are going to need 48 minutes. In other words, they each need to play one full game. For game shape reasons, it can also work well to use each trainee as a backup in one game a week (say, at PF), but this is optional.

To force 48 minutes at a position, for a single game, it helps to set your lineup so that it is impossible for your trainee to be substituted out (under normal conditions). If your team is leading by 21 or more points in the 4th quarter, your coach will try to take out all of your starters, regardless of your instructions. With this in mind, for single position training, it is often a good idea to not let your coach have this option. You can stop him by not dressing any extra players for him to put in for your trainee. If you want to force 48 minutes, at just one position, the following lineup works well (Example names, trainee = Blenkinsop):

C: Blenkinsop Blenkinsop Blenkinsop
PF: Someguy Jimmy Jimmy
SF: Chuckd Ripp Ripp
SG: Jabir Paulo Paulo
PG: Congyou Muggsy Muggsy

Only 9 players are dressed, total
Coach: Strictly Follow Depth Chart
Fouls: Let Them Play

If you do that, your trainee will play the whole game. The only things that will take him out are an injury, fouling out, or annoying randomness at the end of quarters (which I've only seen extremely rarely, and you basically don't need to worry about this).

I'll also add, that for game shape purposes, it tends to work best if you can get your trainee near the 60-65 minutes range. More broadly, 48-75 minutes per week tends to be pretty good.

Bonus Strategy: Secondary Trainees
Some training types, such as rebounding and jump shot, can only be trained at 2 positions. One thing that can work well, for some teams, is to have 3 main trainees (single position trained each week) and 2 somewhat trainable other guys. Let's say your trainees are being trained at PG. For the first two games in a week, you could aim for single position training at PG for your main trainees, with the other guys getting minutes at SG. However, if something goes wrong (say, a main trainee fouls out), you can adjust for the 3rd game, and get all 5 guys full jump shot training (which is a 2 position type of training anyway). This is something to think about, at least. If my memory is right, I think that Superfly Guy (a world class manager) has said some positive things about this setup.

Last edited by The Mogul at 4/22/2010 4:00:52 AM

Section 4: Projected Development

To make a quality U21 player, as mentioned earlier, it really helps to start from the age of 18. In this section, I'd like to present an imaginary case study of how a player might progress (roughly) each season. This is intended to help give an idea of what I'm looking for down the road, in terms of well balanced guys. I also thought it could be good to share some of the thought process I have when thinking about how to train.

Example Guard (PG/SG)
I think of PGs and SGs as very similar players. I like it if players at either position can defend, protect/move the ball, and score. The main difference to me is that a PG, in general, benefits from slightly better ball movement skills (handling, passing). A SG, in general, needs slightly better shooting skills (jump shot, jump range).

Test Player: Random sample Canadian player, that is pretty good right out of the draft. Let's call him Steve. "Steve" started out with the following skills, when he was drafted at age 18:

Height: 6'4", 193 cm
Jump Shot: respectable Jump Range: respectable
Outside Defense: respectable Handling: awful
Driving: mediocre Passing: average
Inside Shot: awful Inside Defense: respectable
Rebouding: respectable Shot Blocking: respectable
Stamina: pitiful Free Throws: awful

Wow, Steve's good! With skills like that, it would be possible to make him into a nice SF. However, he could also be trained as a pure guard. Let's see what might happen each year if we do that, and give him some nice well rounded combo guard training, with perhaps an SG slant (estimates from my good friend, trainer parrot):

Season 12 (age 18):
Plan - heavily train handling, to build up his lowest guard skill, while also mixing in some passing. Single position trained at PG, level 5 trainer, with results:

At 19
Jump Shot: respectable Jump Range: respectable
Outside Defense: strong (+1) Handling: strong (+5)
Driving: proficient (+4) Passing: proficient (+3)
Inside Shot: awful Inside Defense: respectable
Rebouding: respectable Shot Blocking: respectable
Stamina: pitiful Free Throws: awful

Season 13 (age 19):
Plan - Work on OD and JR, while sneaking in a passing pop

At 20
Jump Shot: strong (+1) Jump Range: proficient (+2)
Outside Defense: prolific (+3) Handling: prominent (+2)
Driving: prolific (+2) Passing: prominent (+1)
Inside Shot: awful Inside Defense: strong (+1)
Rebouding: respectable Shot Blocking: respectable
Stamina: pitiful Free Throws: awful

Season 14 (age 20):
Plan - Work on OD for 2 pops, then switch to JS (2 position training)

At 21
Jump Shot: prolific (+3) Jump Range: prominent (+1)
Outside Defense: tremendous (+2) Handling: prolific (+1)
Driving: sensational (+1) Passing: prominent
Inside Shot: inept (+1) Inside Defense: strong
Rebouding: respectable Shot Blocking: respectable
Stamina: pitiful Free Throws: awful

Everybody dance now! Steve made the U21, as those skills happened to be good enough to earn a spot on the season 15 team (in imaginary Steve land).

continued in next post ------>


Last edited by The Mogul at 4/22/2010 3:46:37 AM

<-----continued

Season 15 (age 21):
Plan - get one more level of OD, then train JS all season

His last week on the U21, he looks like:

Jump Shot: wondrous (+3) Jump Range: prolific (+1)
Outside Defense: wondrous (+1) Handling: sensational (+1)
Driving: tremendous (+1) Passing: prominent
Inside Shot: inept Inside Defense: strong
Rebouding: respectable Shot Blocking: respectable
Stamina: pitiful Free Throws: awful

Yay for Steve! If his potential is allstar, he's probably hit it now, or possibly a couple of pops earlier than that. With higher potential, he can keep training into his age 22 season, and possibly beyond, and on to national team glory (depending on just how high his potential is).

That was all just an example, with estimated training speeds, but the pop rates seem reasonable based on my observations of various players. Also, Steve was lucky enough to stay injury free, but that is somewhat offset by his 6'4" height (which slows him down compared to, say, a 5'11" guy). The main goal was to give an idea of how an U21 training program might go for a particular player, in terms of types of training and general development.

Ok, that's all from me, for now. :)

Last edited by The Mogul at 4/22/2010 11:33:36 PM

One extra thing!

Details on what trains what, with rough speed estimates: (78242.1)

Fantastic post! Cudo's to you for putting this together. These types of 'How To' post are incredibly helpful. I still refer to the post HPP made a season or two ago. And will surely do the same with this one.

Thanks again!

One extra thing!

Details on what trains what, with rough speed estimates: (78242.1)

I am starting to wonder if this is true. I was foolish enough to train a player from atrocious IS and have him currently up to strong. In that time I trained IS for 14+ weeks and got no secondary pop in ID. Is there a reason why? I have a level 5 trainer and the player has pretty decent potential(have a look he is on your U21 team) ;)

Terrific job Mogul. This is an excellent write up and should be ESSENTIAL reading for almost every BB manager no matter how experienced. Training young players is an absolute must for any manager who wishes to be successful in BB.

Fantastic summary...all of my prospects will be following this theory.

Training IS at Center (or C/PF) does provide secondary training to ID. I know, from experience, and have seen ID pop while training IS.

I suppose that for your guy, he could have gone 14+ weeks without an ID pop if:
- his initial ID sublevel was extremely low
- ID was relatively high (compared to his other inside skills), and trained slightly slower as a result
- his age was a bit higher than optimal
- his height is a bit lower than optimal for inside training
- maybe in some weeks, he didn't get a full 48 minutes?

Those are just some possible factors I can think of, some of which might apply to your guy. His ID sublevel should be very high now, in any case.

Last edited by The Mogul at 4/22/2010 5:22:39 PM

Absolutely GREAT post Mogul... We should have more managers like you :)