BuzzerBeater Forums

Hello, since we have been having an influx of new members, I decided to start up a training guide which will help everyone with building their franchise players!

Introduction
Training requires you to play a player at a selected position for 48 minutes a week, and at Friday (currently it's 4.50pm, but after DST happens, it will be 3.50pm coz the server time is affected by DST).

List of Contents:
1. Training Types (326268.2)
2. Training Positions (326268.3)
3. Special Lineup for Trainings (326268.4)
4. Elastic Effect (326268.5)
5. Cross Training (326268.6)
6. Other Factors that Affects Training Speed (326268.7)
7. Training Staff (326268.8)
8. Potential Cap, Salaries, and Player Position (326268.9) (326268.12)
9. Player Builds
- Point Guard (326268.16)
- Shooting Guard (326268.17)
- Outside Forward (326268.18)
- Inside Forward (326268.19)
- All-Round Bigman (326268.20)
- Budget Bigman (326268.21)
- Defensive Bigman (326268.22)
- Mono Center

Last edited by BuzzRBeater at 1/20/2025 9:38:52 AM

Training Types
Every single training type (except for Team Training) improves one of your player's skills. Each of them have a primary skill that is trained, as well as secondary skill(s). For instance, training Jump Shot will increase your player's Jump Shot, but it will also increase their Jump Range.
Here is the list of what skills are trained by what training type (301522.7)

As for Team Training, there are 3 types of Team Training: Game Shape, Free Throws, Stamina.

1. Game Shape Training
Game Shape is important for players. A 20k player with pitiful game shape will perform worse than a 10k player with proficient game shape. However, game shape can be maintained by playing players for 48 to 70 minutes a week. Meaning if you play a player too much (like a starter for 3 games), their game shape will be bad, and their performance will get worse (imagine exhaustion). Or if you don't play a player much, they will perform badly too because their game shape would fall (imagine being rusty and not game ready). However, you cannot train Game Shape every week, because its effectiveness will drop every consecutive weeks you train it. In fact, you won't need to use it if you manage your player's minutes well. Only train this if you have an important must win match coming up and your players might not have good game shape (and it you don't have a psychologist).

2. Free throws
Improves your player's ability to make free throws. But BB introduced the training court, which improves your player's free throws each week, so this training has more or less became redundant. Only train it if you don't have training court and if don't have any meaningful training to do, because the effect of the free throw skill has diminished. Basically after BB introduced the training court, a lot of players had very high free throw skills. For the record, this dude (49663341) has Legendary (35) free throw, that's what 10+ seasons of training court will do to your player. So in order to prevent all the players shooting 100% from the line, the game devs included other factors like Jump Shot to affect free throws, so to be good in free throws, your player will also need to be good in jump shots and stuff.

3. Stamina
The most logical option to train, because some players are drafted with terrible stamina. Stamina has a cap (proficient) and will keep falling over time. However, if you get a nutritionist, you can negate that fall (a level 6 nutritionist totally stops stamina decay, so you will notice a stamina pop once in a blue moon in players who are trained, thanks to cross training). However, as there is a cap, and it is not permanent, you should usually only train stamina during off season or the All Star Week when you only have a maximum 2 matches to play (during regular season you have league games on Saturday and Tuesday, then a Cup or Scrimmage on Thursday).

That said once you become more established, and get yourself a nutritionist, training court, and psychologist (and manage your player's minutes well), you would never have to use Team Training.

Last edited by BuzzRBeater at 1/4/2025 12:42:12 AM

Training Positions
It is always best to train minimum positions. Here are the list of single position and double position trainings:

Single Position: Outside Defense, Shot Blocking, Inside Defense, Inside Shooting, Outside Shooting, Ball Handling, Passing
Two Position: Rebounding, One on One, Jump Shot

Training 2 or more positions in single position training will cause your training speed to reduce by 1/3, so your players will train slower, even if it doesn't show the percentage of decrease like in other off-position trainings (Eg Outside Defense for SG is 90% effectiveness). Similarly, choosing Team for Rebounding, One on One, and Jump Shot will also reduce the training effectiveness (but I'm not sure by how much).

Remember, you have to play the player in that position for 48 minutes a week (not 48 minutes a game). It is important to get 48 minutes a week, or else their training effectiveness will be reduced. Playing more than 48 minutes will not give them more training, as 48 minutes is full efficacy.

Last edited by BuzzRBeater at 1/3/2025 11:33:46 PM

Special lineup for training
If you want to specialize in training (this is only applicable if you have 3 players training single position training or 5-6 players training two position training), you will need to set a specialized lineup, or they won't get full training. Below is an example of how the lineup is set if you are training Outside Defense for PG:

Substitutions: Follow Depth Chart
Foul Trouble: Let Them Play
PG: Empty Slot (starter), Trainee (subs), Trainee (reserve)
SG: Guard 1 (starter), Guard 2 (subs), Guard 2 (reserve)
SF: Forward 1 (starter), Forward 2 (subs), Forward 2 (reserve)
PF: Bigman 1 (starter), Bigman 2 (subs), Bigman 2 (reserve)
C: Center 1 (starter), Center 2 (subs), Center 2 (reserve)

As you can see, the starting PG is empty. This is to guarantee that your player plays all 48 minutes of the game (unless they get injured or foul out). If you place the trainee in all 3 slots, then they might end up getting subbed by one of the subs in other positions. The same will apply when you are training double positions. Below is an example for people training One on One for Forwards:

Substitutions: Follow Depth Chart
Foul Trouble: Let Them Play
PG: Guard 1 (starter), Guard 2 (subs), Guard 2 (reserve)
SG: Guard 3 (starter), Guard 4 (subs), Guard 4 (reserve)
SF: Empty slot (starter), Trainee 1 (subs), Trainee 1 (reserve)
PF: Empty slot (starter), Trainee 2 (subs), Trainee 2 (reserve)
C: Center 1 (starter), Center 2 (subs), Center 2 (reserve)

The empty slots are in both SF and PF starters for the same reason as previously. Do note, you can only leave a maximum of 2 empty slots in the starting lineup, or else the game will mess up your lineup into something terrible. This "feature" was done because previously people would send out blank lineups and the game would automatically pick the best competitive lineup for you, so to prevent people from exploiting it, they made the game do bad decisions. Hahaha.

Last edited by BuzzRBeater at 1/3/2025 11:36:17 PM

Elastic Effect
In the early days of BB, a lot of players focused on monoskilled players. In order to encourage players to build more well-rounded players, the devs introduced elastic effect. Elastic effect is also sometimes called the rubber band effect - it's like pulling a rubber band. The further away you stretch a rubber band, the faster the rubber band will spring towards you. Using that metaphor, we can see that if you train 1 skill to a very high level, when you start to train another related skill, that related skill will improve faster than normal, and its speed will slowly normalize the closer it gets to the first skill. However, not all skills can pull up other skills. You can find the list here: (307729.7).

When the elastic effect was first introduced, it was said that there were negative elastic effects. Metaphorically, if you pulled a rubber band hard, the further away you pull it, the tighter it gets right? So theoretically, it was said that if you train a skill too high and far away from its associated skill, its training speed will be slower than normal. However after a lot of data gathering, it has been deemed that there is no sign of any negative elastic effects, so you don't have to worry about training a skill too high.

Cross Training
Another effort to encourage well-rounded players, the devs introduced cross training. Every week, about 10% of training effort gets put into another (totally unrelated skill). Rumour has it that it goes to an untrained skill that is the closest to pop (needs verification). It usually goes to a lower skill tho (so if your player has awful/pitiful skills while the rest are very high up, then those are the ones likely to get cross training).

If you have a gym, it provides extra cross training slots (up to 3 extra slots). However the nature of how exactly it works is still unknown. Here is a thread you can read up on (309316.1)

Other Factors that Affect Training Speed
Two important factors that affect training is height and age.

Age
Players of all age will benefit from training. However younger players improve faster. That's why quite often, an 18 year old will often be prioritized in the drafts (of course, we also need to take starting skills and potential into account, since 19 year olds can have considerably better starting skills). To get a better idea of how much slower a player trains as they age, you can refer to this post: (295510.6).

A player will also start to deteriorate in skills at the age of 35, just like how players get slower when they get older. As far as I know, the rate of skill drops is random (and which skill that drops), so there are times when you can get a double drop. To slow down this drop, you can get trainers with Career Extension specialty. Players above 35 can still be trained, although their skill drop rate will definitely outpace the skill training rate.

Height
Height has no impact during matches. A short player can still consistently outrebound a tall player if their rebound skill is better. I know some people might say "how is that possible? The taller player doesn't even need to jump", but imagine a short player who can jump so high that they can catch the ball above the taller player's outstretched arms, or the taller player gets boxed out by the shorter player and is in a bad position to catch the rebound, or they just have butter fingers or bad coordination. Either way, height has no impact during matches.

However it does impact training a lot. A taller player would train much faster in rebounding than a shorter player, while a shorter player will train much faster in handling than a taller player. The equilibrium, where a player trains all skills at 100%, is at 6'7" or 201cm. Here is the list of skills and how their training speed is affected by height: (295510.5).

Does that mean 201 cm players are the best? Not necessarily. For guards, shorter players are better because they train handling and outside defense faster. You would want taller inside players because they train inside shooting and inside defense faster. However, this isn't exactly set in stone because it all depends on context. A player who is around 6'9" could be a more ideal post player than a 7'2" player. I'll get into that later on when I talk about player builds.

Training Staff
There are two types of staff that affects training speed: Trainer and Youth Trainer

Trainer
You will have this dude by default, although his level will be very low at the start. In order to train players, you should get a higher level trainer, at least Superior. Here is a list which shows the difference in effectiveness of trainers of different levels (295510.13).

Optimally, it would be good to get a world-renown (level 7) trainer. However, they can be very expensive (up to 3 million) and their upkeep can be quite expensive. So many people go with at least level 6 (exceptional) trainers if they are training for the NT (or if they want to cap out a MVP/HOF).

Remember to watch out for the staff's salary when bidding on him. You might be able to get a world-renown trainer for $1000, but if his weekly salary is $100k, then you might find yourself bankrupt soon.

Youth Trainer
Only get them if you are training players aged 18 or 19. They won't work on players aged 20 and above. They're much cheaper than trainers, so if you're serious in training players with MVP or higher potential, you should at least get a level 6 youth trainer. Again, watch your finances. You don't want to go bankrupt just because you can't wait to train your next franchise player. The difference in speed of Youth Trainers is still pretty unknown at the moment, so there isn't much data.

Potential Cap, Salaries, and Player Position
In order to prevent users from training players into a legendary machine, the developers introduced Potential some 50+ seasons ago (was it season 6? 7? I can't remember). So players who existed before that had their potential set to allstar, with an asterisk. For reference, here it the oldest player in BB that I know of (2313980).

How does potential work?
Basically Potential is a limiter which determines your player's final product. So if you don't plan on training anyone, DO NOT get a high potential teenager, because you will be paying a premium for a player you can get for much cheaper. Potential DOES NOT affect game performance.

Also if you don't plan on training, and you somehow manage to draft a MVP or HOF potential player, then sell them off. It's good money. Not a lot if it's MVP or if they have bad starting skills, but at least it's still a good 5-6 figure price tag rather than paying them 2-3k a week for nothing. You can even buy a low potential replacement player with the same skills for 1k.

Every single skill your player improves in, they will take one step closer to achieving their potential. When they reach their potential, they can still train, but at 1/3 of the training speed, so you can still train a player that has reached their potential. Although personally I would say it won't be worth it unless you are training a HOF/NT player. That said, do bear in mind that different positions have different weightage for skills. I'll talk about that later on.

What is a good potential for training?
I'm sure everyone is hoping to hit a ATG (All-Time Great). Guess what, these people are very hard to come by. So should you "settle" for a HOF (Hall of Famer)? Well every potential has a value (you'll notice if you put your cursor on the potential, it will give you a numerical value. The value for ATG is 10+, while HOF is 10. Why is that so? Because each potential has subvalues (decimal points), so yes, in case you were wondering, not every HOF caps at the level. The value of HOF players are 10.00 to 10.94, while ATG is 10.95 and above (They will be the top 5% of HOFs). So a ATG can just be 0.01-0.05 levels higher than a HOF.

Here's a rule of thumb you can follow:
U21 - star (20k salary, 70-90 tsp) and above.
NT - MVP (100-130k salary, 140 tsp) and above.
Francise player: HOF (200k+ salary, 150 tsp)
SBBL PO contender starter: MVP (100-130k salary, 140 tsp)
SBBL PO contender sub: Superstar (60-70k salary, 130 tsp)

But it also depends on your trainer and youth trainer level. On average, it takes a level 6 coach and level 6 youth trainer (for players who start at 18) to cap a HOF at age 25. If you don't have that, don't bother training any HOFs. If you can only afford level 4 trainers, then go for Superstars. They will be decent enough for your team until you get enough funds to upgrade your coach. Remember, BB is a marathon, not a 100m sprint.

Tutorial to be continued at (326268.12)

Last edited by BuzzRBeater at 1/18/2025 10:23:28 AM

This will be helpful , thank you!

I didnt know need to empty starter.. that explain i cant get him train full 48 min even i put strict follow depth chart