BuzzerBeater Forums

Yes, like Manon said, there's many trainees for sale right after the draft, and when supply is high, prices are lower. Right at the start demand will also be high, so the lowest prices you will get a week or maybe 2 after the draft, but you should be looking right away if you can find a nice trainee which isn't in a bidding war.

If you want to spend more money on a good trainee, remember to save some money at the end of the season.

I find star level players and below to be a waste of time when looking at them from a training perspective. If someone else has a 27 year old that is most of the way or all of the way to their cap, then it's a different story. But a player with mistakes made at an 8 potential can still become a long term project for a learning player.

Well-trained star potential players can be very useful for both the short term for a new team and for quite some time. You're not going to ride them into the NBBA but the odds of training a player to NBBA standards, being able to afford him and getting to the NBBA for a new team is exceptionally low to begin with, while the incidence of badly trained, salary inefficient guys with huge salaries torpedoing clubs is high and the number of people who train high potential guys incompletely for a few seasons and then repeat with a new high potential guy is also high.

Spot on (oh! and edit: ball for you!). Guy's not going to keep his initial trainees. They are just there to help him get going. Eventually, he'll sell them at a nice-ish price, and move to something better. Far more affordable to look for guys like that now, and get better later.
It's a very rare team with their initial trainees STILL on a roster 5-7 seasons later.

Last edited by malice at 2/5/2013 6:22:38 PM

Dunno who mentioned the arena, but I disagree with bleachers and lower tier build. I've built some luxes and courtsides first. The improvements were done is about a week, and were used in the next matches. I'll build bleachers in the offseason, because it lasts longer.

I'm in the league II though, so not sure if you can do the same in lower leagues. Also not sure how much you should invest, I've invested 800k from my first 3 economical updates, still filling out the arena. That's with prices increased to 60%(of the max price). I guess in the lower league you can lessen the prices to fill out the arena?

Completely wrong for a div. IV/V team. Additionally, in the long run your bleachers/lower tiers will most likely be your bread-'n-butter for attendance.

Actually this would be incorrect.

the average price of a superstar+ potential player at the start of the year with the same ratings is higher. When people miss 4-5 pops i feel is the opportune time. It's quite easy to cap someone out believe it or not as long as you avoid MVP and HOF (and ATN, but you'll likely never get your hands on those when it's worth your time).

if someone is going to learn how to develop someone remotely well (if you want my help, just pm me, but i'm not the best), i don't want them to waste their time getting attached to some star potential guy UNLESS they plan to 2 position train (5-6 players). I'd rather take a guy at 47 pops still (which i think is closer to the average starting point) that has superstar potential over someone at 54 pops with star. I can still get you past the star point with relative ease to be honest. The reason why i hate single position on a star or even an allstar level player is the fact that some people tend to get emotionally invested in the guys they train.

if you dont want to train properly, dont pick up a star player, and dont pick up a superstar player. better off going with veterans all the way up. Thats each individual owners call. you can safely get a lvl 1 or 2 trainer and train stamina, GS, and free throws the rest of the way and still do relatively well.

That might be true for Superstar+ potential guys, but I was talking about Star/Allstar players. Still I think the low supply during the middle of the season would inflate prices of trainees; the few that are sold might end up in bidding wars.

And yes, it's not smart to get emotionally attached to low potential guys, but the solution to that isn't to not get low potential guys but to not get attached to them; see them as try-outs before the real thing. I'm not saying Star potential guys are better for training, it's just a waste to spend a lot of cash if you just start playing the game, and you can't even train players properly. If you screw things up you just wasted good cash on a player that ends up at the same level a Star/Allstar player would be, cash you could have used to invest in your arena which should be main priority when you start.

Some managers might pick up things faster than others, but the general capabilities of new managers I see so far isn't that high; they'll need at least a season or two to figure things out (heck reading this forums some still don't have a clue after 5 seasons). That time can be used training star/allstar type guys, sell them or use them as backups after that and then spend money on real good trainees.

I was kinda making a point like your last paragraph; advice for managers who literally just joined the game, want to have some fun and experience and learn the game. Managers that just joined don't have the capability to properly train high potential guys yet, but if they are to learn it, they should start training. Since it would be a waste to spend a lot of cash on something you can't do properly yet, I recommended star/allstar potential players. And when I mean cheap, I mean sub 50k prices. You can get a star player for under 10k and sell him for 100-200k, or keep him so you don't have to buy a veteran for that price.

My advice is a combination of fun and learning, while still being somewhat efficient. If you don't train, you can't get fun or experience out of it. If you train high potential guys, you waste money better spend in your arena as a beginning manager. So, that's why I recommend low potential training when you start with the game.

don7t take advice from guys also in DIV that have never made higher divisions. If you want to know about training, talk to NT coaches and U21 coaches and guys who've promoted while training and made profits/usuable players with their trainees. more bad advice than good on these forums most of the time.

Wow, I can't believe it's this time of the year again! ;)

You clearly have a definition of "usable" that is perfectly relevant to your situation but does not at all apply to the USA. I still am playing two of the star guys that I trained from my first full season here as my starting and backup PG, in what is inarguably one of if not the toughest III series in the USA, and they're getting ready for the playoffs. Now, they're not at all elite or even particularly good fits for my current offense, and the one that is a backup is one of the next few players to be replaced, but the "unusable" players still played a big role in getting me out of V, then out of IV, and holding down a place in III while I've worked on training higher potential guys.

Personally, I'm surprised you'd mention listening to NT/U21 coaches as a reference - of course they understand training but the last thing a new team needs to do is building those types of players. If anything, teams at the lowest levels who do choose to train higher potential guys should work on getting their secondary skills up while at the lowest levels rather than, say, spending four seasons in III doing so. ;)