Special Skills

A few players do one thing better (or worse) than their ratings alone would say. That is a special skill. It shows as a small stamp on the player's card, next to his role: gold for a skill, red for a weakness. Tap a stamp and it says what it does in one line.

Skills are small and situational. Clutch only matters in the last minutes of a close game. Corner Specialist only touches his threes from the corner. A skill never turns a bench player into a star: ratings still decide most of what happens, and the role still decides how he likes to play. A skill is the tiebreaker on top.

About four players in ten have none and most of the rest have one. Two is uncommon, and three (the most anyone can carry) is rare.

There are about thirty. Some help: Clutch, Corner Specialist, Deep Range, Foul Magnet, Ice Water, Plays Through Contact, Shot Creator, Transition Threat, Court Vision, Pick-and-Roll Maestro, Lob Threat, Rim Deterrent, Stopper, Pickpocket, Switchable, Board Crasher, Tireless, Floor Leader and Big Stage.

Some hurt: Ball Stopper, Turnover Prone, Foul Prone, Streaky, Slow Starter, Free-Throw Yips, Shrinks Late, Hothead, Matador, Out of Shape and Chucker. A player never carries both sides of a pair (Clutch and Shrinks Late, Stopper and Matador, and so on).

Skills come from how a player is built and how he actually plays: his ratings, his role, and what he did this season. Makeup can tilt the odds, but no skill needs a certain Makeup grade, so a skill never tells you a player's Makeup. They are checked again every offseason, so they can come and go (a player who missed most of the season keeps what he had). A shooter who stops hitting from the corner can lose Corner Specialist; a young big who starts protecting the rim can earn Rim Deterrent; a player who keeps picking up cheap fouls can become Foul Prone.

Like ratings, skills sit behind the fog. You only see the ones your club has found:

• Your scouts can spot the skills that show on tape (shooting, finishing, passing, defense, rebounding). A scout won't catch every one on the first look; a rescout catches more.
• Film shows everything in time. Once a player has played enough games this season, his skills are on record for the whole league: about 10 games for most skills, 15 for the late-game and locker-room ones, 20 for weaknesses and conditioning.
• Your own players reveal themselves twice as fast, because your coaches see them every day.

Until then the card says how far along the film is ("Film room: 12 more games to a full read"). That line shows for every player still being read, so it doesn't mean he's hiding something. If your scouts are on him and something doesn't add up, the card says "Scouts suspect something in his late-game film" without naming it.

When a skill comes to light, you get a Film room note.

Prospects haven't played a game in the league, so nobody knows their skills yet. With a scout on him, the card shows what your scouts project (a dashed stamp) from their own read. It is a read, not a promise: it can be wrong, and weaknesses never show up in a projection.

Cards and skills don't double up. Most cards raise ratings, which is a different thing from a skill, so they work side by side. When a card and a skill push the same thing in the same moment, such as a Clutch Gene card on a Clutch player, only the bigger of the two counts. A card can also cancel a weakness in that moment: Clutch Gene on a player who Shrinks Late replaces the weakness instead of adding to it.

Players remember who let them go. A player facing a club that cut him or traded him away in the last two seasons plays with a little extra edge in that game. It's small, and it only happens in those games.

Skills are on in every league by default. The commissioner can switch them off or turn their strength up or down in Sim Settings (Special Skills, Skill Strength). Off, every player plays to his ratings and role alone.