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I did not have the time to read everything. just browsed through, so I hope I don't repeat anything.

1. to give an answer to trainermans question from a perspective of someone who cares about reallife basketball and is an active (but not very good) player:

I don't think it is so unrealistic that a young multiskilled starplayer plays out of position for the beginning of his career. I am focussing on star players because if you think of it, it is only them who have to play out of position for a long time. The average starter in my league didn't spent much team out of position. I guess even in the first division many players didnt play out of position very much. And I say multiskilled player, because again only if you want a multiskilled player, he has to play out of position. So your examples dont work, in order to train a player like Shaq and Howard, he would not have to play any other position than PF and C in this Game. (heck you wouldnt even have to train FT)

So the players you have to train out of position are players like this:

- a big who can defend outside, score from outside or run the offense
- a guard with good postgame or a (tall) guard who can play good defense inside
- a small forward

If you look at college basketball, highschool basketball or even young rookies in the NBA you see those players playing out of position. The top guards who are good inside the paint, have played inside the paint when they were young. great forwards have played other positions and multiskilled bigmen like kevin garnett or anthony davis have played guard or SF in their youth.

when i started to play in the mens team in austria (which is really not that competitive i admit), I had to play sf or even guard because i wasn't strong enough to work in the paint. I learned a lot in these days. I always had a good shot, but I learned a lot about passing, defense and how all the different offense are run and how the bigs have to position themselves for me to have an easy pass inside. still I am 6'7'' and are considered a "bigman" now.

So it is not so unrealistic. especially because only multiskilled starplayers have to be trained out of position as i mentioned above. PF with 12+ OD and Passing are not that common in the top leagues. Players like Garnett, Lebron or dwayne wade, who i consider multiskilled are not common in the NBA and I can imagine that they played different positions when they were young (i know it from garnett and lebron, not wade though)

2. I made suggestions in order to improve training in the past. I am not a big fan of it.
- I would like to have some option to train the rest of the team. maybe like a training camp for all players one time a season where everyone can get a pop in a skill of my choice or sth..
- even if I dont think it is as unrealistic as trainerman thinks, I am frustrated sometimes because my best player has to play out of position for more than half of his career. I want to see him score, rebound and light the opponent on fire, but the only thing i see is how bad he performs at PG or C, where he doesnt belong. Even if i like the trainingsystem in general I would like to limit that time somehow.. but i don't have a specific suggestion.

3. I have a suggestion, but I will post it in another thread, out of respect for the threadstarter.

4. I would not be mad if training just stays like it is. it is weird but funny in some aspects

Last edited by jonte at 4/6/2016 3:27:32 PM

Most of those multiskilled Bigs have started their careers as kids and had to switch to a frontcourt position because of instand growth spurts.

Anthony Davis went from 6'2" to 6'10" in less than 2 years... Maybe that explains a little bit

yeah but BB-players don't start as kids. they start as 18yo. so we have to work with that..

My point was to refute your position that playing out of position for training reasons is perfectly normal in pro sports.

It is not perfectly normal, but it happens. It isn't perfectly normal for the majority of BB-Players either. I admit that playing "too far out of position" is weird. I made a suggestion which could be a good compromise between the two camps in this treat. also it has some other advantages over the current training system, f.e. that you can train 3 trainees, but play them as normal starters two times a week.

here --> (278239.1)

yes its true, you don't really play out of position to train, but you learn something. Anyways, I just wanted to show that it is not per se unusual that a multiskilled player like lebron plays out of position. whereas the examples mentioned in this threat (Howard, Shaq) would never play outside of their position in this game as they do not in reallife basketball.
But I agree that the difference is the inention, which is not training most of the time. But let us get away from the "is it a good simulation?" topic.

I understand BB-Ryan and others argument, that training has a balancing effect. If you are at the top, you cant really train, and if you are at the bottom you can train and benefit from it (money, good players, etc.). I find it intuitively reasonable, but as we see, it has a severe side effect. people compete in the top leagues, just to tank and train as soon as they don't see a chance for further success. I think that is a huge disadvantage that follows from this idea i described above.

Another is, that we have a lot of top league managers, compared to lower leagues. So in some countries you can't really train at all. This is because of micronations. and maybe this might be a thing of the past someday.

And another thing one should think about when talking training and especially if we consider the idea from above: if we want players to train in order to gain from the benefits, get money and players etc. and then at some point be competitive, until the players get old and you have to train again. We demand that new managers play this game without beeing really competitive (on a low level) for a few seasons and we demand that they have to play weird lineups, where they cant even see how well their trainee would perform on his position etc.. I play in a private league and nothing is better in this game than seeing my 26 year old SF play his natural position every friday, so I can see how good he really is.
I think that this is something that is really demanding of new managers.

Thats why I think it has to be a little easier on them, and players should not play "too far out of position" and not 48minutes/game one time a week, but just like normal starters. even if I understand the initial idea of using training as balancing.

Last edited by jonte at 4/6/2016 9:42:13 PM

yes its true, you don't really play out of position to train, but you learn something.

You gain experience, no skills.

In this game you could turn a Manute Bol type player into Steve Nash, after playing him as PG for like 10 seasons. I know for BB, realism is no requirement in this regard, but it should be. Fans would revolt, staff would be fired and the player would quit because of sheer frustration.

I think some individual XP gaining system would be cool, where players unlock skills after reaching certain XP milestones -

Random numbers: each minute played is 1 XP point. 18 year olds can trade 20 points for 1 skillup, the older the player the more skillpoints are necessary.

That way all players could gain some training, older players progress much slower and at a certain point they can't develop further. Every player could play the position suited best for his skillset/size.

Training in the real world possibly focuses on tactics, so maybe we could expand this area too.