Purple People Eaters

[MexicanMamba]

Word count: 2,112



Going into writing this article I am not quite sure where I will land on this topic. I have kind of went back and forth on my thoughts on it and so I wanted to get some words jotted down to discuss it. Especially since we have had podcast discussion and player training debates/votes stemming from this potential issue. This will be a Michael Scott article … “Sometimes I’ll start a sentence, and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way.” So, let’s ride!



THE PURPLE PROBLEM



It has been brought up by some that the league has been flooded with purple potential players which is skewing how rosters are supposed to look if you are aiming for a championship. In the early days of the league, you could go out and win a championship with 3-4 blue players (and MAYBE a purple if you were incredibly lucky) and oftentimes, you’d see yellow current players with important roles on the rosters of the top teams. These days? Well, last season my Lakers won 70 games, had TWELVE blue/purple potential players … and did not win the championship. It’s quite a big change from the earlier years of the league.



Two questions immediately come to mind:



1) How did we get here?



2) Is it actually a problem?





HOW DID WE GET HERE?



I was not a member of this league in those 1990s seasons using real NBA players and important yellows. However, what I do know is that over the years the league has tinkered with the rules to make it more user friendly over the years. The two biggest additions being training camp insurance and player training. Much to Varga’s chagrin, the league did not want teams and individual players to be completely reliant on the ability of a wildly inconsistent portion of the core part of the program that we use to destroy them via training camp. It would also seem that they wanted to give General Managers more control over who and how players were built up by adding training mechanisms.



Prior to the implementation of insurance, if the TC Gods decided to rain fire down upon your team, well, tough luck. You better figure out how to play around your new SUPER Max contracted green potential player! Honestly, there’s a part of me that would find it interesting to see how the league would play out in a situation where this was still the case. It certainly COULD be a form of equalizer, bringing more parity to the league. However, I kind of feel like it would just as likely just create larger gaps between the top and bottom teams, because TC does not discriminate. It will just as likely crush a star player on a rising team and possibly their GM’s spirits. With so many newer GMs currently floating around, I feel like that could really deter them from wanting to continue the game.



The league also has continuously voted for keeping insurance as part of the game and even voted to add more ways for teams to insure players in recent voting sessions, so I don’t think that is going anywhere. Which means that the talent level in the league will remain higher than what the early days would have looked like because guys aren’t randomly getting squashed all over the place. I am one of the people that has consistently voted for keeping insurance as it is, so in that respect, I guess I am pro-higher talent league-wide.



The other key way that has allowed us to see the talent in the league explode is player training. While adding in the ability to handcraft their players gave GMs more control, it also meant that the league was going to have more talent across the board. Again, some folks have called for a complete abolishment of this, but the league has voted against such a measure a few times. Also again, I am one of the people who have always voted in-favor of keeping training. I prefer a league where you have more ways to use the points you’ve accumulated than simply paying taxes or throwing them in a trade.



The area of player training where I could see some wiggle room in how to adjust would be to play with how we train. It is true that once you learn the important traits to focus on during training, it is quite easy to get yourself a purple potential player. Josh has brought up possibly making it more expensive to train certain attributes so that this becomes more difficult (QKN for guards/wings for example). In a podcast chat, X brought up the idea of capping training of players to the 150 future rating (151 turns them purple) so that you can train a player to be great, but they can only jump to purple with a natural progression from the computer program itself. I do believe there could possibly be something to both of those ideas … however that leads into the discussion about question #2!





IS IT A PROBLEM?





There are some out there who do see the influx of purple potential talent as a problem to be solved. Obviously. Or else we wouldn’t have had conversations about it and I wouldn’t be writing about it now. Is it REALLY an issue though? As-in, is it something that is causing some kind of issue within the league?



One thing I told Josh that could have gotten me on the side of adjusting training to slow the influx of purple potential players is that if everyone is special then nobody is. In theory, purple potential should mean that they could possibly be a true Alpha and leader of a championship team. The fact is that, right now, there are plenty of purple potential players who do NOT fit that description. Currently there are fourteen purple potential players in the league.



Sion James

Kai Jones

Ayo Dosunmu

Antonio Gates

Victor Wembanyama

Kel’el Ware

Herb Jones

Safi Fino-A-Laself

Karlo Pearson

Brandon Ingram

Peewee Kirkland

Antonio Blakeney

Lenz Durrenberger

Xue Huo



Amazingly, of those fourteen only TWO are currently Purple current to go along with their potential. Those two being Antonio Blakeney and Karlo Pearson. There is a massive gap in production just between those two players, who have the same color rating and very similar future ratings. I will say though that Karlo Pearson has consistently been on more stacked teams since he has hit his peak, so I really am not sure how he’d look as the primary option or what a Pearson-led team could be in the league. Still, just look at them this season. Blakeney is averaging 28 points per game and Karlo is hovering around 15. Blakeney dwarfs him in PER and shooting. Karlo’s offensive and defensive efficiency are much better but he’s on the better team so it makes sense. It’s not simply an indication that Karlo is better or comparable.



I think I bring up this comparison because one of the arguments I’ve seen for doing away with training or just making it more difficult is that it makes game planning and teambuilding more challenging. It might. However, isn’t it also challenging having to decipher between two players who look similar on paper (even at purple) but do not perform similarly? This makes us have to learn the important traits for the different positions (just like with training) to maximize the talent we put together for a championship run.



Another thing to explore here, which I am doing on the fly: There are 10 teams with purple potential players in the league right now and 4 which have more than one (but none with more than 2). Here are those teams and their current records:



Houston Rockets (18-40)

Miami Heat (22-35)

Chicago Bulls (25-31, 7th in Omega)

Phoenix Suns (33-24, 5th in Alpha) *And their purple isn’t even playing yet but will be really great eventually*

Milwaukee Bucks (35-23, 4th in Alpha)

Indiana Pacers (41-17, 3rd in Alpha)

Los Angeles Lakers (49-8, 1st in Alpha)

San Antonio Spurs (10-51)

Boston Celtics (32-27, 7th in Alpha)

Minnesota Timberwolves (32-26, 6th in Alpha)



What can we pull from this information? Well, for one, it’s obvious having purple potential players (even 2) does not mean you are guaranteed a successful season as 3 of these teams are way below the .500 mark and definitely out of the playoff picture. The Bulls are right at the 7 spot but it feels like that is more by default than by any actual effort on Josh’s part, who I am sure would have loved to made a lotto run this season instead to beef up his asset bank. Due to the Durrenberger injury, the Wolves could have a tough time pulling a final playoff spot but we’ll see. Then there’s the 7 seed Celtics who have the clear-cut best player in the league in Antonio Blakeney. Of this group, if history tells us much, we genuinely only have 2 championship contenders right now (Lakers, Pacers because it is incredibly rare for anyone below the 3rd seed to grab the title). Of the top 3 seeds in both conferences, only those 2 teams have any purple potential players at all. Just shows that it takes more than that to build a top-tier team. You are likely to be a winning or even playoff team with them (more talent is always good) but there’s no guarantees If you mismanage things beyond that purple (or 2).



Another truth is that a number of these players will not reach their purple potential. Kai Jones is certain to lose that potential soon and he never hit it in his currents. Safi plays like a purple current generally, but his lack of athleticism COULD mean that he never reaches it fully or that he does, and his absolute peak is very short-lived. Even Antonio Blakeney, as absolutely fantastic as he is, has a relatively low future rating for a purple, so when his athleticism dips even slightly, he could drop to Blue/Blue fast. He’d still be an MVP caliber player, but it won’t be as aesthetically pleasing.



So, with all of this information, is it a problem that needs to be solved? I think I am leaning NO. I believe that while purples look great and we should all strive to get them, it is NOT the end-all, be-all of championship building (Just look at last season’s Grizzlies though he certainly did have players who used to be purple). There’s nuance even to purples and the training of our players or knowing who is even worth it or can really reach the color. On top of that, there’s nuance in understanding that there are blue players out there who will outplay purples because their position or stature simply do not lend to gaining that purple (Harold Schiff? Darius Garland?).



Lastly, and maybe most importantly, it is such a boost to a GM’s morale when they get that purple shot in the arm. We had at least three brand-new purple potential players this past off-season. Victor Wembanyama, Sion James, and Antonio Gates. I directly spoke to all three of those GMs afterwards and it had them legitimately hyped up about the game and their season or future seasons. I mean, when the hell was the last time that 78 was so active with his Rockets? That is a direct result of seeing Sion take that bump. For Nate (Suns), he got the lucky TC bump, but he also had already been molding Gates to his liking and this was the final step to seeing his work pay off. Seeing that kind of juice in those GMs makes me very hesitant about making it more difficult for other active GMs (especially the newer ones) from working to get that same type of reward and motivation.



Look, I know it is probably easy for me to say that I don’t think this is really an issue and would prefer to keep the status quo. I regularly train players up and have currently trained 3 players (Pearson, Bone, Safi) who eventually got the purple potential designation (and a 4th is well on his way). This is why I have been willing to open up the floor to new takes and changes to how we do our business. I’ll continue to do so too.



But writing this, I do think I’m 100% certain I’d never abolish player training.



Tweaks? We can continue that discussion as long as it seems like it’s worthy of it.



For now?



THE PURPLE REIGN SHALL CONTINUE!



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[pennpanther1]

really interesting article! I have been training a couple of different guys the past couple seasons to make them even better and it is awesome to see how much they improve during the season but this future rating is really interesting. Are we able to see that somewhere on the team's webpage? I'd love to see which guys are closest to becoming purple.

[MexicanMamba]

really interesting article! I have been training a couple of different guys the past couple seasons to make them even better and it is awesome to see how much they improve during the season but this future rating is really interesting. Are we able to see that somewhere on the team's webpage? I'd love to see which guys are closest to becoming purple.

It's nowhere on the site, and I'm honestly not sure if there's a method to pull and post them. However, I'm always willing to let people know any deeper information that they ask for if they come to me.

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[greepleairport]

2100+ words, +7pts

Love how you are incorporating league rules into editorial columns, Mamba. Great stuff.