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BTW, if you're concerned about keeping the salary down with your guards, Jump Range is the skill that costs a fortune without adding much benefit. Driving is actually very inexpensive and handling is much cheaper than passing.

I decided to play around with buzzer manager's salary estimator on this because it's one of those things that seems to be universally repeated and I felt like it was time to look at it a little more. (Not the little benefit part, of course, just the salary).

My test player started with a 17 in all guard skills and 7 in all inside skills (and ft/stamina, which don't matter for salary). That came up with a rough salary estimate of 256782 at PG and 205814 at SG. I'm pointing out both because obviously as we know some skills cost more for one position than for another.

It's definitely true that of the six skills, JR was the most expensive under the SG salary formula - dropping it from 17 to 16 shaved just over 25k off the salary calculation at SG, while bumping it to 18 raised it about 29k. The second most expensive skill for SGs, surprisingly, was OD, which was slightly more expensive to move up (26k) and down (23k) a level than JS was (25/22), while HA/DR/PA were all inconsequential.

For the PG formulas, though, JR was third-cheapest skill to increase/decrease, with a pop averaging out to about 11k at those levels. JS was actually the cheapest at about 9k, with Driving also cheap at a little more than 9k. A level of OD or HA in that range was 18k, while passing was roughly 37k by that point.

I think a lot of the "JR is expensive" thought is in the same context as the "SB is too expensive" context where people are looking at the cost of adding JR to a build with the other five skills already trained up and seeing the jump, rather than seeing the actual cost of the skill relative to the other skills - Manon's posts on the SB vs. IS describe that far better than I will. ;) In this case, of course, JR actually is expensive - *IF* the player ends up hitting the SG formula (or, I imagine, SF, though I didn't check it). But for a point guard, it's cheaper than OD, handling and a whole lot cheaper than passing, and is barely more expensive than Driving, which is "actually very inexpensive" according to some smart poster.

In any case, I'm actually surprised that JR is actually cheaper than OD by a wide margin for the PG formula and only slightly more expensive than OD for SGs.


Last edited by GM-hrudey at 5/10/2013 10:57:14 AM

In any case, I'm actually surprised that JR is actually cheaper than OD by a wide margin for the PG formula and only slightly more expensive than OD for SGs.

Interesting. Of course the problem is, once JR gets too a decent level it turns most PG's into SG's and their salary starts jumping exponentially as it did in your first example.

I played around with my $57K PG. He's currently 16 DR and 9 JR. I just swapped those 2 numbers so 16 JR and 9 DR and he was suddenly estimated as a 127K SG. And the crazy part is that the lower salaried player is better for LI offense anyways.

So if you ask me, JR is still way too expensive for what you get. Plus it doesn't even guarantee that your player will make 3 pointers at a decent level. The top 3 point shooter in Canada D1 is only at 32% and he's an NT player with a salary well over 200K. The one team that consistently runs motion offense with his 3 high quality perimeter players has them shooting 3's at 28, 27 and 26%.

Last edited by Beener not Beanerz at 5/10/2013 11:14:17 AM

In any case, I'm actually surprised that JR is actually cheaper than OD by a wide margin for the PG formula and only slightly more expensive than OD for SGs.

Interesting. Of course the problem is, once JR gets too a decent level it turns most PG's into SG's and their salary starts jumping exponentially as it did in your first example.

I played around with my $57K PG. He's currently 16 DR and 9 JR. I just swapped those 2 numbers so 16 JR and 9 DR and he was suddenly estimated as a 127K SG. And the crazy part is that the lower salaried player is better for LI offense anyways.

So if you ask me, JR is still way too expensive for what you get. Plus it doesn't even guarantee that your player will make 3 pointers at a decent level. The top 3 point shooter in Canada D1 is only at 32% and he's an NT player with a salary well over 200K. The one team that consistently runs motion offense with his 3 high quality perimeter players has them shooting 3's at 28, 27 and 26%.

The switch to the SG formula is a killer salarywise, for sure, and the benefit is definitely questionable unless you're running an outside offense and even then, as you point out, against the common LI guards with massive OD and passing, it's hard to shoot effectively beyond the arc. On the bright side, at least JR is slow to train... oh. ;)

Anyway, it's definitely unfortunate that the "throwaway" skill for the LI guard is one that is so expensive for an outside build - if driving and JR had their values switched for salary calculation, it would definitely be an interesting shift in the environment.

Anyway, it's definitely unfortunate that the "throwaway" skill for the LI guard is one that is so expensive for an outside build - if driving and JR had their values switched for salary calculation, it would definitely be an interesting shift in the environment.

This is the problem in a nutshell. If the BB's want all the top teams to stop playing inside offenses then they either need to change the salary tag on players with high JR or change the game engine so that 3's go in more often. Likely both. Improving the value of SB against these offenses helps but only solves part of a much bigger problem.