4. I agree that the necessity of playing people out of position for training is annoying and can cost you games, I don't see any superior method of training that would eliminate this. Maybe you have a way in mind?
What I'd like to see is a pretty major overhaul, but can be accomplished since many sports sims work like this.
Players would be rated for potential in, say four areas--Offense, Defense, rebounding and ball handling. These potential ratings would control how high the current ratings could be trained. Training would now be in these same four categories. For example, Training defense would increase both OD and ID. (It actually does this now, with the bigger increase coming in the chosen type of D).
All players would get training in the chosen type of training. Young players would increase faster, old players very little, perhaps the speed would be an inverse sine-curve. Playing time would be needed to maximize skill improvement, with zero PT producing no improvement--large squads of bench warmers get no edge. The 48 minute rule would stay.
The strategy of training would be increased because you would need to balance the ages, current skill levels and skill potentials of every player. Do you want a highly skilled older team that is not going to improve much, but could you win the title? Do you train rebounding, which your team needs but for which your players mostly have two-ball potential?
That is the bare bones outline, but I've typed too much and need to sign off.
Comments and thoughts greatly appreciated.