The first few days is all you need to build the core features. Anything else is just icing, and i can do that at a less critical time. Need to do player evaluations before the enthusiasm reset happens.
Consecutive weeks is 45, on just over 3 seasons. The 18 year old draftees that i will scout this season will be the first actual class of players that i have full control and responsibility over. Getting them from start to finish is the most important and consecutive part of the job, moreso than the gameplanning for each opponent. You have all of 18, all of 19, all of 20, and the first three or so weeks of 21 to get a player to the point where he can be considered for the u21 position. From there, development is still important week to week, but gameshape begins to take significant priority by the halfway point of season 21. I'm not sure whether or not i survive long enough to reach the point where i can take the group of owners and players i work with to that level given i will be judged largely on a player base that i had about 18 weeks of my own development time to invest in.
As far as the remaining strategic questions
1) Defense, Handling, Defense, Rebounding. Outside Defense and Inside Defense improve the rate of contested:uncontested shots (amongst other things such as reducing the passing efficiency of the opponent). Shot blocking also plays a part, but if there is something i am ok with sacrificing it is shot blocking as it increases the big rating and salary of a player too significantly for managers to control. from there, reducing the amount of turnovers and increasing the amount of rebounds we win over the opponent will reduce the amount of opportunities the opponent will freely generate.
2) My valuation of players is that you prioritize the players with decent primaries and good secondaries (typically 50-54 tsp) with those willing to spend on the quality. For guards, you will inherently train some IS if you utilize OnevOne @ Forward AND every 8 weeks in OD you will usually see ID pop, and that'll get you on better starting players to the point where they have about 7-10 IS and 6-8 ID, which is kinda useful. This is especially true of the Small Forward position. you will see me do some interesting things from here.
3) Depends on the opponent, which is why you honestly need bigs with different strengths in their secondaries to have a real chance. Some opponents value OD on bigs, which means any HA + PA <= 5 big on the team will have 0-1 assists and 3-5 TO's in the game. Some opponents value shooting on bigs (which really only means they'll gain 4-5 points per big if your big's have OD's of 1 and 2 over the 5+ OD bigs), some opponents value donkeys that can be exposed ridiculously quickly by any bigs we have with high OD/HA. If you wanted me to pick two, i'd probably pick HA/PA to reduce flow issues from 12-20 TO's a game to a more managable and consistent 6-13 average pending the opponent's philosophy.