#SLOE: People's Basketball Sim League

I think it's time to bring up training camp and training camp insurance again now the we are one day away from this dreaded event. Most of us know about training camp and the horror stories that come with it. I can't think of any general managers here that have been here for a few seasons that has not yet felt the bite of when training camp sims and your prized rookie, retained RFA player or newly acquired UFA signing just got decimated. Luckily, we have had training camp insurance for I believe just about a sim decade (2007-2008 proposition vote, didn't go into effect until 2008-09 season training camp).

I cannot describe, personally, how big of a change insurance has made on this league already. For 10 points per player we get to put an insurance policy on our player's potential ratings to ensure even if they get randomly hit, we are able to preserve our players' potentials, granted that they meet the criteria of being 27 years old or younger.

The system isn't perfect, but this was a simple and effective proposal Wig created to help teams preserve their talent, especially rookies on rebuilding teams. Before insurance, it was more often than not that one of the top five rookies drafted would immediately be hit from each class in training camp. Further down the road, it was almost a guarantee before the first contract was up that one of those players would be hit. We didn't so much "suck it up" as much realized there was nothing we could do to change the actual results of training camp. Each season is relatively two months long in real life from offseason to finals, and some general managers here can attest to the fact that waiting two months only for your star rookie to get hit not only didn't make much sense, but caused several to consider quitting.

According to Wig (we could probably pull up previous training camp results spreadsheets but I'm too lazy to fetch them), a player is twice as likely to get hit in training camp than receive a boost. Wig has also noted in another league he helped commission, IJBL, they witnessed first-hand what it was like when players received hits twice as likely as boosts. After time, talent levels drop overall and select few general managers receive a random blessing. We saw this during the days of Penny Hardaway, Tracy McGrady, Shawn Kemp, and others that dominated a league due to boosts to such players and hits on others that could have watered down the boosted players had they not been hit.

I want to highlight that estimated ratio of hit-to-boosted again: for every 2 players that get hit, only 1 player receives a boost. We can argue if this is reflective of the actual league and real life, but this isn't about whether it's realistic, this is about us having a training camp system that is built within the game that is inherently designed to reduce the talent pool no matter if we create our own prospects, import from college, or use the game's rookies.




Has the training camp insurance been impactful? We can have every GM come into this thread and give us a list of players who they spent insurance on and either got hit or nothing happened, and a list of players who they didn't insure and whether they got hit or not, but it's hard to qualify whether insurance has been a success. I do, however, want to present a very intriguing statistic that may or may not be related to training camp insurance.

Listed below in the table I've imported the Past Champions table to show by year all the champions from each season, with one small edit: I removed repeating champions from the list (by team). So in the 1990-1991 season, the Hawks won the first championship. They also won the championship in the 1991-1992 season. The repeating seasons have been removed from this table.




So why am I showing you this? Take a look at the Non-Insurance Era vs the Insurance Era. In the Non-Insurance Era over 18 seasons, there were 9 different champions (50%). In the 10 seasons of the Insurance Era, there has been 6 different champions (60%). What makes this so much more impressive is that those 9 championship teams in the Non-Insurance Era were effectively removed from consideration in the Insurance Era and the Insurance Era had a higher % of new champions than Non-Insurance Era, proving that parity is indeed at an all time high.

One thing the table does not show is if training camp insurance had an impact on these numbers, but it at least gives us something to look at and wonder if insurance is helping the rest of the league by saving their players from being hit.

Thankfully, at the end of each training camp thread Wig posts up the results of who was insured and who was protected from a hit that was insured. After a few minutes of compiling the information into some neat tables, I think we have ourselves quite a nice list and table to sort through.

Spreadsheet of list of players insured: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... NX/pubhtml

Below is a graph of the information gathered from the 10 seasons of having insurance. The green and red bars represent the total number of insured players and number of players saved, respectively, for each season, and the line represents the % of players saved each season that were insured.



In total, 489 players have been insured for these past 10 training camps, and of those 489, 94 got hit in training camp and were saved.

Aside from season 20 where only 10% of total insured players were saved, the league has generally saved 20% of total insured players, or in other words, 1 in 5 total insured players on average got hit in training camp.

What's interesting is that of the 94 players who were saved overall, there were quite a few multi-hit players. I attempted to comb out the duplicates and believe a total of 69 unique players have been hit in training camp that were saved. The other 25 saves were players who were saved at least one other time, leading me to question if certain players are just magnets for training camp to hit. I’m not too sure as nothing in the game has given us a clue how training camp works.

Moving on, I look at the list of players that were hit in training camp and, had they not been insured, wonder what the league would look like without some players. Sure, Anthony Davis and Kevin Durant not being over powered may be perceived as a benefit to some, but what about guys like Nikola Vucevic, Andrew Wiggins, James Harden, Derrick Rose, Ricky Rubio, Russell Westbrook, or Kyrie Irving? These guys aren't overpowered and are key pieces on teams attempting to compete this upcoming season. Also, what about guys like D'Angelo Russell, Harland Ellinger, Jeffrey Duren, James Peacock, Lavar Ball, Phil Hogg, or Ronald Small? These are college draft players we've recently just welcomed to the league that could have been hit and lose a lot of value due to a training camp system we do not understand.

To say insurance has had an impact on our league is a severe understatement. The list is all I need to see to know insurance has helped save this league from losing valuable talent to a broke system, has kept the league trade market healthy and active, and has kept rebuilding teams from losing all hope.




Is the system perfect? Short answer is "no" but there is opportunity to improve it. In my view, one of the shortfalls of insurance is the unintended consequence of rebuilding teams spending points to save their players that in the Non-Insurance Era was generally saved to pay for luxury tax at a later date. Before insurance and an improved training system, points were mainly used for one thing: luxury tax. They were bargaining chips in trades, too, but only for the purpose of saving up for luxury tax. With the new training system that is incredibly beneficial and the insurance that can save your next franchise pieces, rebuilding teams have a very short window to start paying for these services before they need to start spending salary on players in RFA or UFA. When rebuilding teams start shifting towards this phase of this build, points become a premium as you start estimating how far into the repeater years you can go and how many points you will need to save for this.

Planning for luxury tax should not be as complicated as planning for my retirement 40 years from now, but it’s becoming that way. I think a good question to ask is “what does an average team spend on training camp insurance?” Let’s take a look at the chart.



It’s interesting to see that the average number of players insured per team is declining, but there may be another factor in play here. We’ve had a few GMs ghost on us over the past couple of seasons, such as the Lakers and Warriors who were actively insuring their players until recently. So for all 30 teams being considered (or 29 up to season 25 if I’m remembering correctly), the average only hit over 2 players being insured just once in season 25. If I had more time, I would like to assign teams to these players for who insured and get a table and chart to see which teams are actually insuring and how many players they are, but at the moment it would be too much manual inputting. I feel it’s safe to assume that with several teams going through a cruise control motion, that the average active team is insuring 2 players in training camp.

That’s 20 points per season, which doesn’t seem like much until you consider that you’re more likely to insure your young franchise pieces for a long period of time. We can use me as an example. I’ve limited myself to 2 insured players for training camp I believe the last two or so seasons, and I am continuing that limit. I currently have Duren, who I have insured each season, and Ronald Small, who I will insure each season. Each year of their rookie contracts they will be insured, and going into the next contract they will be insured each season after until the hit 28 years old or they are no longer on my team. Duren is currently 22 years old and Ronald Small is 19. That’s 6 more seasons for Duren to insure and 9 more seasons for Ronald Small, a total of 15 insurances to be spent for a total of 150 points.

You may read that and say the 150 is spread through 9 seasons mostly, that’s easy to cover! Perhaps, but I think it’s important to realize I am spending 150 points NOT to improve my player, but to protect him from the game. How insane is that rationale, it doesn’t make sense to me. 150 points can be pocketed for luxury tax purposes or taking advantage of this awesome training system we have, but I must set aside 150 points to make sure my two players are not randomly targeted by the game. If you think I’m irrational about this, please look at the Unique Player list of insured hit players and realize both players are on that list. It’s happened before and it can happen again.

If that doesn’t seem too bad, let’s take a look at Ben Simmons on the 76ers. Ben Simmons was 20 years old when GM ballsohard drafted him, meaning the 76ers will have to set aside 80 points to insure Simmons to guarantee he won’t lose his potentials due to a random hit by training camp.

As many know, Ben Simmons, being part of this very random college game, had a foul rating of 7 upon being draft I believe. This has recently been bumped up to 17, which cost 10 points (F Band Personal Foul Training). Even at 17, Simmons fouled 3.7 times per game in just 24 minutes averaged. Due to the randomness of the game, the 76ers are forced to train Simmons in personal foul training. Not athleticism, not potentials, not current skills training, but personal foul ratings to help keep their franchise player on the court. Let’s assume we want to get Simmons to a 50 rating in personal fouls but we can only bump up 10 points each time: 1st training 17-27 (10 points); 2nd training 27-37 (15 points); 3rd training 37-47 (15 points); last training 47-57 (20 points). Add it all up and that’s an additional 60 points needed to be spent to get his player to stay on the court. Add in the 10 points already used to train fouling, the 20 points of insurance he’s already used, and the 60 points he will need to insure Simmons for the future. A total of 150 points will need to be spent to protect his player and to get his player to stay on the court consistently in just 8 seasons. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, as the 76ers have other young players they can insure and are in the tax currently.

We’ve created a system to protect ourselves from the game while we are exposing ourselves to the system of luxury tax that is meant to curb poor cap management, but is indirectly causing teams to shorten their builds and expose potential franchise players to training camp by not insuring.




There’s been several ideas that have been suggested in the past that have resurfaced, and other ideas that have casually been discussed. One idea floated by the commissioner has been to allow free training camp insurances for all rookie-contract players, and continue allowing paid insurances for other players 27 years old or younger, in exchange that we get rid of the rookie contract trainings. I’m a huge fan of this idea, because for every 1st round pick that player’s potentials are automatically protected for free, saving you 10 points each player each season.

What about the rookie trainings? It’s easy to do the math here: for every 500 minutes played, a rookie is allowed +1 point in current trainings, and each season into his rookie contract he moves up a tier for every 500th minute. Unless you have a player averaging 43 minutes per game or more for 82 games over 4 seasons, there’s no way you can get past a total of a whopping 18 points to train currents. I’m not scoffing at the 18 points, but my thoughts are you can spend at most 30 points to train a potential from B to an A and still have 10 points remaining by the end of a player’s rookie contract. Potential trainings are an increase of a max 20 points, which beats the 18 points every which way for me, especially considering I would still have saved points left over to save for tax, insure an older player, or training someone. Another way to think about it is that you are saving 40 points of insurance for that rookie, which you can use later in their second contract.

Another idea was recommended by Inner_GI several months back. The premise is that training camp insurance is free and you only get 2 insurances to use. Simple and easy, it’s hard to argue against it considering teams are on average already insuring roughly 2 players each season. Teams will be able to save 20 points per season, no more bookkeeping of points and insurance, and teams would need to strategize who gets the insurance. It’s not a bad idea and I’m providing a link below to the original thread.

viewtopic.php?f=37&t=4991&p=44947#p44947




I’ve harped on how terrible training camp is, how the current setup of insurance is great but still lacking, and ideas on how to improve the system, but I wanted to add this section here last so those who give this serious thought are left with this to consider: Wig has been keeping up with all of this and much more. For every player that gets insured, Wig needs to get that players potentials, input training camps for all teams who do not use the node, keep track of every insured player and once training camp is simmed, go one-by-one for each insured player and check if the insurance needs to be kicked in. If it does, he has to go into that players file and re-enter those numbers into those tiny field boxes, and do the process for every single player insured. He then compiles the list and makes notes for who was insured and saved. I can’t describe how tedious this has to be, and for it to be Wig’s proposal for the original training camp insurance means he realizes how important insurance is.

As if that’s not enough, paid trainings are then opened with the new rookie system training. He has to double check our math and go one-by-one yet again for each player, go to their file, add in the amounts you’ve requested, and check off his list. If you did something wrong, he has to respond to you.

Time is a very valuable resource that the commissioner puts into this game, and he puts in a lot of it. We can get entitled at times, and I’m looking at myself in the proverbial mirror here, but I think sometimes we need to step back and realize that while we want to protect our team and players, we have to consider the time investment being put in to run the league.

This is a very well-researched article, Tani - thank you. Stuff like this makes for a great jumping-off point into the suggestions forum - there are always opportunities to improve what we do and it's best to have a discussion informed by research so we have an educated guess of what will actually happen if we implement a rule as opposed to simply guessing blindly at what we hope might happen.

Also (and I have mentioned this in podcasts but it's good to have in writing too), I rarely like to veto stuff outright. However, you may notice that sometimes suggestions are not brought up for a vote as quickly as you might like. Here's why:

1. After we vote to make a change, unless it has very obvious unintended consequences, I generally don't like to vote again to change it right away. Seeing the effects changes had takes time, and I like to be patient enough to let things play out so the true trend of the change becomes clear - and that means I'm a little more patient and slow-moving on "changing changes" to make sure that what we see isn't the result merely of short-term randomness but really is the long-term trend.

2. When a suggestion is made, I generally don't like to see the initial post be the final suggestion unless the initial post is well-documented and thought out (or unless the initial idea survives discussion as the "best version of the idea"). Instead, I like to see it go through the process on the forum of being discussed, picked apart on its merits, having educated guesses about what the impact would be, and generally coming to a consensus as to what the final suggestion should be. Often suggestions are vastly improved during the discussion process. This is to make sure that we don't put half an idea up for a vote and then have to vote to fix it soon after.

Voting tends to close discussions. That your suggestion hasn't been brought up for a vote doesn't mean I've vetoed it. Rather, any discussion that I leave sitting in the suggestion box is a discussion where I feel there is still enough "meat on the bone" to not close the discussion by bringing things up for a vote - either there hasn't been a consensus built on what the final suggestion should look like or there hasn't been enough discussion to truly suss out the impact of the change. As a concrete example, as of this writing Logan's thread was waiting to get discussion on 1. whether or not it should be permitted to pay for insurance above and beyond the initial 2 "Free" discussed (this thread with the research Tani did probably helps a lot in that discussion) and 2. the idea of free insurance for rookies was thrown out in the second-to-last post but not discussed.

I have ideas on how TC insurance can be improved (I have ideas about how a lot of other things might be improved, too) but I try very hard to limit the amount of ideas I throw into suggestions threads to get the process rolling for a formal vote because I want this to be THE PEOPLE'S league, not WIG'S league. After all, things that bug me might not bug you and you'd think "why is Wig bothering to suggest that anyway?"

Wow what a great article. Y'all are reading the Media Entry of the Year!!!

Tani great article. I love the way you incorporated facts into your topic and main points of discussion, rather than just holler random things with no logic or basis whatsoever. Simply fascinating what you've done here. Bravo.

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Great werk, Tani. I think the inevitable solution will need to be a hybrid of Option 1 (rookie deal guys being auto eligible for freebie insurance while on rookie deal) and Option 2 (free insirance for a set number). I know this isnt the official suggestion thread, but if we end up getting one up, I cannot wait to hash out some ideas.

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Nola. I wish we could award more points, but for now you may collect 5 points for this in Depth Article

This is a great article.

Another idea I think is if you don't insure a player, you should be able to "buy back" that potential at a huge discount. I literally only had 24 points this season, and I get it my team sucks and I haven't written as many articles as I should. But I could only insure KAT and Ulis. Thank goodness I did b/c Ulis got hit. But so did Russell and McCall. Russell for example lost a letter grade in 4 categories (INS A->B, 3PS B->C, DRB B->C, PSD B->C). I would have to spend 105 points just to regain his original potentials...that's crazy. OK Russell is a SG I don't really need DRB and PSD, that's still 55 just to get the INS and 3PS back...I think spending 10 points a category to "regain" your potentials could make sense.

Conroy wrote: Tue Dec 19, 2017 9:15 am This is a great article.

Another idea I think is if you don't insure a player, you should be able to "buy back" that potential at a huge discount. I literally only had 24 points this season, and I get it my team sucks and I haven't written as many articles as I should. But I could only insure KAT and Ulis. Thank goodness I did b/c Ulis got hit. But so did Russell and McCall. Russell for example lost a letter grade in 4 categories (INS A->B, 3PS B->C, DRB B->C, PSD B->C). I would have to spend 105 points just to regain his original potentials...that's crazy. OK Russell is a SG I don't really need DRB and PSD, that's still 55 just to get the INS and 3PS back...I think spending 10 points a category to "regain" your potentials could make sense.

Suggestion Thread it up, bro