BuzzerBeater Forums

1v1 training is generally considered to yield the highest overall TSP gains, despite being a two position training type. So it's only natural that it has become a common way for us to start a draft prospects road to the junior national team. But I think the rush to gain Handling and Driving first might be a trap in some cases.

On paper, they seem like good skills to have, but during my run at the top of the ABBL, Hampshire rarely turned the ball over despite only having 14 handling and predominantly playing point guard. And whilst we know that driving is useful in some way, shape or form, is it worth giving up passing, something you have to sacrifice if you want high HA/DR without going bankrupt?

Hence, I would argue that the idea of pumping up HA/DR on 18yo's with the idea of using the elastic effect on other skills later might be misguided. Said effect works both ways after all, and training 1v1 in weeks where you have 3 games means you're not improving primary skills, which are fast to train anyway at 18.

There are player archetypes where I can see high HA/DR being worth it (like volume scoring swingman), but for what I'm trying to do with Laga'aia (point forward), I do wonder if the 1v1 training I did was a mistake. And that was only 6 weeks in all, half of which came on 2 game weeks anyway. Jump Shot, Outside Shooting, Pressure, and especially Passing all boost HA/DR as a secondary, so it's easy to end up with more of it than you might want.

Maybe I'm just talking too much without saying anything. I'd like to hear what the rest of the country thinks about this and maybe breathe some life into these forums whilst we're at it...

Last edited by Jay (OTT) at 06/21/2019 06:08:55

Personally I think your points are valid ones - especially the case where training the various other outside skills boost them anyway.

Probably not worth training unless they start with really low Driving and Handling.

Additionally I think these skills can be trained at a later stage should it be required...so get OD, JS, JR and PS up to optimal levels first then take stock and if required train it to round the player off.

I wonder also if you have low IS but good JS and JR is high driving optimal? Would this mean they might drive there way into a less optimal shot? I haven't done enough analysis to determine if this is the case but would loosely make sense to me...

You raise some good points, and at the elite end - the real top end of ABBL and other leagues across the world - you might be right.

However, for the majority of teams - and for most teams in say D3 and most of D2 etc, I would still highly recommend 1on1 training to start with. As we agree it yields the highest TSP gains, it is the quickest and easiest way to raise the value of your individual players and of your team. Definitely starting out, I think you'd want to get 5-6 18 year olds and run some 1on1 (maybe some JS thrown in too) and then sell down to 3 main trainees that you then focus on finishing.

Once you have an established team with a maxed arena and are thinking of taking the next step though, it is worth considering how your team will look 5-10 seasons down the track, and optimising your training on your star trainees is worth looking into. Not something I've thought about long and hard personally, I just wing it week-by-week for the most part, but if someone else wants to come up with the answers I'm happy to listen.