Secondary skills, how important are they? Should I train them?
Secondaries are important, and do factor in to our decision making when we select U21 and NT players.
Should you train secondaries? For U21 players, NO (unless you are planning on training a specialized SF/PF). If we are talking about basic guards and bigs, you don’t have time to train secondaries if you want your player to make the U21 team. Its basically luck whether or not your player has good secondaries.
For the NT, my suggestion is to train secondaries AFTER you have completed training primaries, or during short weeks (all-star, end of season, etc).
Guard wise, if your guard has good IS that makes them more usable in an inside offense. If your guard has good ID/RB that makes them a better option at SF in an outside offense and is always a +, guards who can rebound can have a significant impact on the game.
Personally I look hard at secondaries for bigs. The difference between 1 PA/HA and 4 PA/HA is often 2-3 turnovers a game. The difference between 1 OD and 4 OD can be a lot points if the opposing big has even a decent jump shot. If your big guy has good JS/JR that makes him more playable in an outside offense.
In my training of cottrell because of the new training and 10% going to the opposite of what you train I started on outside skills for him, mainly JR and OD, because as you age those take the longest to pop. My thinking being that if i waited to get the secondaries i want for a beast PF type player they would take way too long, and i feel like getting to a point thats close and pounding inside skills i might get those last couple crucial pops on the outside skills. I hope that i haven't shot myself in the foot doing it, but we'll see.
Last edited by southpaw17 at 11/17/2011 7:48:18 PM