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My first draft is done, the dust has setteled, and my First Round Pick is... Al Ayers-Spicola, a 6'5" SF with HOF Potential. I got the National Team Tracking deal attached to him, so he must be legit.

Al Ayers-Spicola, 18 YO 6'5" SF
JS 7 JR 7 OD 1 HA 2 DR 6 PA 6 IS 3 ID 7 RB 7 SB 5 ST 7 FT 1

So his JS/JR are 7/7, the man has a decent shot for 18. In fact, he steps off the podium as being tied for the second best Jump Shooter on the team (A. Martini 9/7, G. Morrissey 7/7, A A-S 7/7). Morrissey and Martini shoot most of my shots and score most of my points, though sometimes at pretty bad percentages (33% or so on bad nights). His DR is 6, but with 2 HA and 3 IS I don't really want him to drive. His 6 PA will help as well, as he can kick out the ball when he doesn't have a good shot. (I have 5 Respectable Passers, and 2 Average on the club). His FT is 1, so that doesn't help at all.

He obviously will help on the Outside offensively, and help to keep Offensive Flow going, but is weak taking it to the rack and handling.

His OD is 1, atrocious. This won't do. However, his ID is 7 (tied for 1st on the Team). His Shot Blocking is only 5, but can easily be moved up to something better, and his 7 Rebounding isn't a bad start. Defensively he is all Inside.

His Stamina is 7 right now, not bad.

So he plays O like a SG and D like a PF. Since he has National Potential, I don't want to screw this kid up. How should I look to build him?

I see playing him at PF, where he can actually defend the guy. And maybe with the right Offense his Outside Skills can take advantage of the PF (unless they move a different position to cover him).

Now... what to do, what to do? LOL! (Not only that... I had the 7th, 23rd, and 30+ Picks... I got this guy 23rd!!!)

Last edited by KillerKell at 11/2/2011 12:16:17 AM

KillerKell,

I love your posts and details about your team. And I also like your draftee, but that 1 OD is sorta a buzzkill. But if you want to go the PF route that would be ok, cause you won't have to take OD to huge levels.

One thing I would really encourage you to do is to join the USA offsite forum. We have tons of threads there where people detail their team progress, team training, and whatnot. It's a great place to get advice on training guys who might have a shot at the USA U21 and/or NT squads.

Details in my sig on joining up.

Hope to see you there.

I think you're still better off than the vast majority of draftees. Stick him on OD training for a bunch of weeks, and train Curry there as well (assuming his build is passable for training)- you'll wind up with 2 pretty good trainees, and you'll wind up being able to sell off Curry for a tidy profit once you want to start training inside skills and the such. Just my opinion though. Honestly I find training OD to be less tedious than training passing anyways, so getting a 6 in PA and a 1 in OD balances out a little in my view.

Something i wish i had done with a trainee of mine in years gone by was train him up so that he could play in a trainable position during league games. It became difficult to manage his minutes, and i was relying on him to get 48 mins at one position in a scrimmage, which, if he fouled out, meant he missed out on his full training minutes for that week.

So may advice.

I would train OD for the first 5 weeks.
Once his OD becomes, say, level 4, then you will be able to play him in normal league games (albeit against moderate opposition) at SG/PG without taking such a massive defensive hit.
This will in turn make it easier to manage his minutes in the long term, and wont leave you fretting over getting him 48 mins at PG in a scrimmage every week.

Ah...really unfortunate combination of skills and height. Don't get me wrong, he's a good trainee. But either he becomes a PF and his inside skills train quite slowly because of his height, or he becomes a SF with at least two seasons of OD training (not in a row of course). I suggest you talk to U21 and NT coaches, as each of them will proably have different opinions on how to train him. I imagine U21 coach would like to make him into a killer multitask PF, but after three seasons of inside training you will be stuck with a 50k guy who has to play on PG for 3 seasons because his skillups will be a bit slower since he will be turning 22 at the time.

Or you can appease to NT manager, train mainly OD for most of his first three years and have a mediocre SF for U21, but a great potential for NT. I say go with the training plan that suits your team's plans because you will never be able to satisfy both U21 and NT.

Last edited by Koperboy at 11/3/2011 4:30:21 AM