My guy always fouled significantly, but I wouldn't say it was at the end of the spectrum like some guys who get several flagrants in a season or regularly foul out. Increasing the skills will make it a little better, however my guy also played against D1 competition the majority of his career and, against better competition and better offensive teams, the problems will resurface. Even against the same competition, it's not like the player will go from 3 Fouls/36 to 1. In my player's case however, he was the only one with high SB in the team and guarding the best big on the opponent's team, so my experience might be a little different compared to Nachtmahr's, Manon's, CaptainTeemo's and others who had teams built with SB in both big men slots.
I will say 2 things though:
1) ST might be the single best way to reduce fouls. Not just for high SB players, but in general. The problem with foul prone players are not (or not just) the shooting fouls, but the offensive fouls (which are also turnovers) and regular fouls. Offensive fouls are about as bad as shooting fouls (what's worse depends on FG% and FT%), but regular fouls can also be a problem as they put the other team in the bonus and may foul out your player. ST (and HA+PA) will help minimise at least that.
2) Aggressive players have a clear trade-off: more fouls on defense and more trips to the line on offense. However, because the IS of high SB players is typically lower and their shooting efficiency not that good, you would typically try to build them so that they take fewer shots (so relatively low DR, controlled JS and high PA). Therefore, assuming you punt IS, an aggressive player is not well suited for SB also because you cannot take full advantage on offense, not just the fouls on defense. He'd be better off being the primary or secondary option on offense.
All of this obviously has implications on how you train the player as you will want to limit is FGA per game. Training HA instead of 1v1, as Nachtmahr did for Haek, might be a very good idea indeed in this respect.
Keeping DR in check might also have implications on Offensive Rebounding, since it's unclear if ORs are impacted by HA or DR (typically players who have high HA also have high DR, but it stands to reason it's DR), but I don't want to enter into this discussion here.
All of these points do not take into account the recent GE changes. It might well be that players like Jagermeister who had very nice outside shooting skills and elite defensive skills, including high SB, could benefit substantially from the new changes offensively.
Last edited by Lemonshine at 1/4/2021 12:42:03 PM