Once Every Camp's Super..... No One Will Be

[Kipke]

Supercamps.

I think we can all agree that all things being equal, supercamping a player is the best way to try to maximize their development. You pick up an extra 2 RC points in addition to the strength bonus. They are Ashes-endorsed. They are the ultimate developmental shot in the arm. I mean, it’s in the name-“Supercamp.” While there are some arguments in specific cases for camping season by season (Kevin Durant is a decent recent example), I don't think i'm reinventing the wheel by saying Super-camping is superior to normal camping all things being equal. That is not what I sought to analyze with this article.

I am here to ask the question, much like syndrome in the Incredibles, is EVERYTHING super about supercamps? Do they vary in their Super-ness? Much like a fast food French fry, supercamps come in all shapes and sizes. There is a fairly broad player population that GMs choose to supercamp, from first overall pick surefire superstars to 2nd round NDL dickgrinders.
But is there a way to isolate which kind of camping decisions leads to cardboard in-n-out fries and which choices can generate the seasoned crispy goodness that only fine connoseiurs of Checkers would recognize?

Let us not forget also--Supercamps entail a very significant amount of investment in the form of 3200 RPs in one lump sum. If you are spending that amount on a player that might not be a long-term piece in your organization or worth re-sesigning, that could end up leaving you unnecssarily hamstrung on resources down the road.


With all of that said, let's get into this shit.

We looked at every supercamp since league inception. We classified the players by pedigree and archetype. We then (tried) to dig into the efficacy of camps and tried to see what worked better with certain/worse types of players.

My biggest takeaway, which i'll dive further into AFTER i gauge all your eyes out with data and charts, from this study is that most of us are greedy assholes who want to make everyone into a two-way superstar. The historical data suggests that you almost always want to be maximizing a player's strengths with camps, especially if that player isn't expected to be a legit star-level contributor. If you try to turn that NDL defense/rebounding wing into a two-way starter in SLN with a big offensive infusion in supercamp, I have some...less than stellar news for you, hermano.


Explaining my methodology

Classes
1-trying to maximize an obvious star/superstar
The most obvious supercamp candidates.
These are the true impact players where you are happy to save up a chunk of RP and wait and see on the supercamp because:
A) you want maximum information in developing your most valuable asset(s). This is a theme in other clsses as well
B) you want all of the ratings boosts hitting at once per ashes commentary on a podcast a while back re:bulkier boosts translating more directly to actual improvement (i.e. you'd rather a guy get +3 steals in one offseason vs +1 steals for 4 consecutive offseasons)
C) you want the extra strength boost and camp categories to properly maximize your most valuable assets.There tail of the talent curve in SLN gets pretty steep quite quickly, and giving your best player 3-5% or whatever you want to call that extra bit of strength/camp juice can have a much greater impact on your team's success than giving that to, say, your big butt center.

2-funky shaped good player who was tricky to camp initially
These guys are usually
A) High draft picks, often lottery picks. Almost always top 15 picks, lest they fall into class 3.
B) Assumed to have a good amount of potential under the hood for these fellas
C) lacking well-rounded ratings profiles as rookies. I'm talking your obvious big butts. Interesting looking scoring threats with C defense, and perhaps your C+ and B- rebounding wings with no offensive ratings higher than B.
The thought process seems to be similar to reason 'A' for the Class 1 guys... 'let's see how this guy looks going into year 3 before i spend any RP on him--I will have better information re: trying to maximize a strength or minimize a weakness with the RP i spend.
I think the extra risk you are mitigating with this group as compared to the class 1 guys is that while these class 2 guys are likely to always have a rotation spot somewhere in the league regardless of their Supercamp 'working,' there is a very real risk going into their rookie year that they aren't ultimately the type of players who would justify the spend to fully camp out +24. By waiting to supercamp these class 2 guys, you get to see if they still justify they investment before you start spending. Sure, it's a much bigger lump sum, but if the guy goes +0 over his first 3 seasons or god forbid goes down in ratings, you're probably pretty happy to hold onto your 3k RP and just let the guy be a cheap (in terms of RP investment) rotation player forever.
Another player in this class is the high caliber big butt--he is going to be a big butt at worst, but does his offensive game develop enough organically in his first few seasons to justify perhaps camping his offense?

3-diamond in the rough/NDL path
This is another fairly well-defined population of player. They typically are:
A) Drafted in back-half of the first round or 2nd round
B) have a relatively low probability of becoming a long-term rotation player going into rookie season
D) spent time in the NDL
E) have ceilings that top out as a rotation player/big butt

4-Diamond in the titties
The ice cutting gyro slinger himself didn't fit into any other category, so he gets his own number.

Archetype

A-Two Way Star
Upside to be a true impact player on both offense and defense.A man who can both slap and tickle.
B-Offensive Star
Offensively slanted player who can be a clear option someday. Many are more valuable the Archetype A guys (think Kyrie, Melo).
C-Defensive Star
Not just 'plus' defensive players, but true impact defenders who can shut down opposing star players in a playoff series or challenge for DPOY as a big man.
D-Offensive Starter/rotation
Offensively slanted player with lower ceiling, likely due to flaws within the rest of their profile outside of their offense. Unlike Offensive stars, they are more likely to give you great bench minutes rather than properly shoulder a big portion of the scoring load for a contending SLN roster. Definitely douchebags to play with in any casual setting.
E-Defensive Starter/rotation
These are high quality defensive players that aren't big butts. They gobble up MLEs and long-term contracts in the $4-$7m dollar AAV range like nobody's business. These are the hardworking blue collar folk who make the world go round.
F-Big Butt
Everyone knows these guys. An elite enough big butt can make the leap to a 'Defensive Star' (Duncan, Oden, etc.) if he develops a DPOY level potential ceilling.


Direction

1. Maximize strength. SC goes in direction of player archetype
2. Minimize weakness. SC goes against direction of player archetype
3. Hedge. SC addresses both strengths and weaknesses.
Note--I counted Archetype A (two-way star) camps as Hedges if they camped both offense/defense, and as maximizing strength if they focused on either offense or defense. No way to minimize weakness if you are starting with a two-way starchetype!

Player Outcome (i.e. was the supercamp 'worth it'?)

5. Player exceeded or met star-level expectations
4. Player exceeded or met rotation-level expectations
3. Too soon to tell
2. Neutral Value
1. Negative Value

This is very quick and dirty and ignores things like the camping GM actually realizing the benefits of the camp. It looks at the entirety of the supercamped player's career and is basically a thumbs up/thumbs down/neutral judgement of whether or not the player lived up to their hype going into the supercamp. Beyond that, did the supercamp seem to alter that player's trajectory from typical camping? I'm looking at things like 'did the supercamped attributes actually end up becoming a part of this player's story longer term?' did their scoring volume go up? did turnovers come down? more boards? stocks? if a player was camped defensively and stayed an offensive stud/defensive liability, it's hard to see that as being a good investment of over 3k RP.

When I say "negative value", i am referring to the cost/opportunity cost of the RP spend and developmental focus. I don't consider guys who end up making the LLE/Minimums for most of their careers to have been worth that level of investment for what it's worth. Even most MLE guys to be hoenst. Might as well wait and let someone else supercamp that guy and just spend an MLE on him a few years down the road.

Again, this is quick and dirty, and more to help provide some semblance of a qualatitive value for analysis purposes.

Anyway here's the full dataset, ordered chronologically! 80 supercamps from 1999 thru 2014.




Takeaways

Well we have quite a rich dataset here! One thing that stands out right off the top is that Keyon Dooling and Boban are 2 of the 4 players to have received boosts to 5 different categories in their supercamp. Jesse? anything you'd care to clue us in on? Is it something you shared with Bobby and RB, who also gave that extra 5-cat kiss to Brendan Wright and Hairy Barnes?

Also-- there was a funny bit of data cleaning to be done. some of us like to camp stealing while other camp steals. inside vs. inside scoring. 3p vs 3pt vs 3pt shot. blocks vs blocking! is there any true objective ratings name? or is it merely in the eye of the beholder.....


Before I dig into slicing and dicing everything, I would be remiss if I didn't look at the ratings boosts themselves, agnostic of the GM or player being camped.



No real surprises here on the high end, everyone is a whore for FG% and volume, so I think the smart money would be on Jump Shot, 3pt and Inside to be the clear runaway winners. Also, hey positional defense! Go fuck yourself! This is a red blooded American STOCKS league thank you very much. I do find it interesting how quickness is barely ever included in supercamps, just compared to how big of a thing quickness was in SLOR.



Alright let's start going through this thing archetype by archetype. The big thematic takeaway for me on these is that you generally want to be concentrating your camps on one of either offense or defense, and you generally want that injection to be maximizing a strength, rather than minimizing a weakness. 'Hedging' seemes to be the highest variance camping directional strategy.

I am color coding the direction here, and i am also red shading any neutral or negative Supercamp outcomes for help visualizing the overlap of certain directions with certain less-than-desired outcomes.

Archetype A-- the two way stars


It's fairly difficult to 'mess up' camping a two-way star. These guys are particularly tricky to evaluate on outcome because they all end up as really solid players with high floors by definition. We also see that among the 4 lower outcomes, there is an even mix of directions. We also see a pretty even mix of directions among the groups that generated ideal outcomes as well. It seems players at this level are just going to do what they're going to do. That said, camping out Chris Paul's rebounding was a travesty.

Archetype B-- the offensive stars



This is where things start to get interesting and clear trends start to develop. I promise you I coded the direction and outcomes separately, some of these pictures fit so well that it almost looks like I did it intentionally. With an offensive-minded player, you are pretty much guaranteed to end up with a useful player if you end up maximizing that player's offensive strengths. Where you run into problems is when you try to get greedy on stocks with a guy who's going to be earning his career paychecks on the other end of the court. Just look at the discrepancy of directional decisions with outcomes. If you were a greedy little pig and tried to have your cake and eat it too by hedge camping one of these offensive stars, there was a 75% likelihood of a non-ideal outcome. This compares to a ~15% chance of a non-ideal outcome when maximizing an offensive star's strengths.


Archetype C-- the defensive stars



I suppose almost by definition for a guy to be considered a 'defensive star' instead of just a Class E defensive starter/rotation guy is taht he is coming into his supercamp with such a strong defensive profile that it is inevitable that greedy little pig GMs will try to turn these humble middle-american farmer work ethic bruisers into Class A two-way stars by shoving a circular offensive camp peg into their square developmental holes. Well let me tell you, it pretty much never fucking works. This is one of the saddest groupings to look at in my opinion, because nobody chose to camp these humble beasts directionally to max out their glorious god-given defensive traits. Just imagine what Gerald Wallace or Josh smith could've looked like with more stocks/boards/even positional D. Same for Rubio. Holiday is a really nice player, but I can't help but think that he's a pretty replaceable above average PG after his offensive camp vs being a potentially special game manager stopper kind of guy.

Archetype D-- the offensive starters/rotation players



Fun grouping here, and once again, it is fairly clear here that you are taking the safe road by maximizing strengths. I do suspect most of the poor outcomes here have more to do with the players themselves than camping decisions. I'm not sure if there was any saving Dan Dickau, Wilson Chandler, or Qyntel Woods. Let alone Ira fucking Newble. Who was someone I had to go back and look up to even remember the type of player/position he played. I like to think I'm the most degen GM on here with my outrageous Faverani and Siler misadventures, but supercamping Newble is respectableAF and i commend Ralph.

Archetype E-- the defensive starters/rotation players



This is a lot easier with the defensive players, isn't it? If you try to get greedy with these humble kids, then the lord is going to humble YOU. Pubic deserves nebula. Humans deserve pegasus. Something like that. You get the gist. I think seeing the Harry Styles '1' Direction players in this group really highlights why I was so bummed out with the decisions in Class C. Balkman, Outlaw, and AFA are cool as fuck. They are extremely rare and will always hold value, not to mention the love and admiration of discerning GMs around the league.

Archetype F-- the big butts



The easiest group to camp. Camp their stocks, strength, and rebounding and cross your fingers. The bynum camp was one of the greediest ones on here. Didn't ashes say he had the same base ratings as Kwame brown?? And he gets no camps to his boards, just +10 inside, +8 post D, and +8 strength?!?! come on man!!!


Hope you guys enjoyed!
Here are some extra sort rankings of the full list just in case folks are curious.

SORTED BY OUTCOME


SORTED BY CLASS

SORTED BY ARCHETYPE



Google Sheet formatting for desktop folk:

[jwoo]

man i cant wait to dive into this

[Joe]

man i cant wait to dive into this

[Derek]

What’s the “strength bonus”?

[SWAMP STEVEN]

This is cool and makes me feel better about AD

[Kipke]

What’s the “strength bonus”?

Whoops this was a thing in slor I imagined carried over to SLN! I'm a dummy

[Derek]

What’s the “strength bonus”?

Whoops this was a thing in slor I imagined carried over to SLN! I'm a dummy

Oh damn I forgot about that yaaa

[Tyler]

this is insanely deep hahaha

[Merv]

This was a lot of work and analysis. Amazing stuff Kipke

3x bonuses…1 super camp for talking about super camps

[The Transfer Portal]

Talk about an article that will earn the writer a super camp