NBA Supercoach First Look | Positional value, salary, strategy and more

If you are an avid NBA fan like me, you would have been delighted by Supercoach’s decision to continue their generational run with the release of Supercoach NBA!!!

You could be a Supercoach veteran converting to NBA or an NBA fan converting to Supercoach, or like me, a Supercoach veteran who loves NBA, wherever your interest originates from, welcome!

Supercoach NBA is a new game for all of us, so for my first article of the season, I think it would be beneficial for us all to talk through a few things I have noticed at first glance.

I apologise in advance for the lack of structure and organisation of ideas, but hopefully, after reading this, you will have a better idea of how the game works and a foundation to work from when building your starting side.

Embed from Getty Images

Scoring

If you want an in-depth analysis of the scoring system, I highly recommend you check out the scoring breakdown article we have coming soon on the SC Playbook website.

There are a few things that stood out to me with the scoring that I thought I should mention briefly.

Firstly, assists and rebounds are both worth the same.

Not only this, but assists and rebounds are worth the same as points scored.

I also noticed it is minus 1 point for a missed shot, and there are no additional points for made field goals or 3-pointers.

So ultimately, what players does this scoring system lend itself towards?

Embed from Getty Images

Best scoring position

Based on the scoring system above, I think the ideal players we are looking for are efficient scorers, with high usage, that can also fill up the box score across many different stats (with no bias for assists over rebounds).

I bet you can already guess what positions this lends itself to; that’s right, big men.

Looking at last season’s would have been Supercoach stats, 7 out of the 11 top-averaging players were power forwards or centres.

That is excluding Tatum and Lebron, who finished inside the top 11, but I can’t exactly classify them as ‘big men’.

Why is this the case, and what lessons can we take from this?

Embed from Getty Images

Generally speaking, these big men are usually scoring at a much higher efficiency, with a higher field goal percentage due to their easier average shot difficulty.

Another reason big men tend to score better in Supercoach is that rebounds are a lot easier to rack up than assists.

Only 6 players in the NBA averaged over 8 assists per game last season.

Meanwhile, 20 players in the NBA averaged over 8 rebounds per game, a lot of these being centres.

So yes, the NBA Supercoach equivalent of fullbacks in the NRL, and quarterbacks in the NFL, is going to be the power forward/centre position.

And yes, there is a player built for Supercoach that perfectly matches everything I have just listed.

His name is Nikola Jokic.

Embed from Getty Images

Salary

Nikola Jokic averaged 45.2 Supercoach points per game last year, more than 7 points clear of the next best player in Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Unfortunately, this also means Nikola Jokic is by far the most expensive player in the game, sitting at $28.07m.

Now, I don’t know if you have attempted to build your starting side yet, but something that immediately became alarmingly apparent to me was the lack of salary we have been given.

We have been given a salary of $154,647,000 to select 15 players.

So, you might already notice that Nikola Jokic, one player, would cost you 1/5 of your total budget.

Let’s try and do some realistic but simple calculations here.

We have five non-scoring bench spots, so if we fill each of these spots with a rookie priced at less than $5m, then we would be left with approximately $130m to select our 10 scoring players for week 1.

This averages to about $13m per player.

If you are picking up what I am putting down, be prepared to start the year without many of the league’s biggest names in your side.

Become a member of the SC Playbook community by subscribing for less than $2 per week! Gain access to additional premium articles on site every week, our Whatsapp community, prize money and plenty more. Check it out here.

Strategy and player criteria

Well, with this tight salary, we are going to need some sort of strategy.

Just like all variants of Supercoach, early in the season, it will be all about cash generation.

If you are new to Supercoach, throughout the season, players’ prices will change, sometimes quite significantly, to match their performance.

The way to use this in our favour is by finding undervalued players that can increase in price and that we can eventually sell on to proven superstars.

Players are currently all priced roughly around their average last season, so finding value at the start of the season is going to be challenging.

Embed from Getty Images

Rookies offer the most cash generation potential, starting at a basement price, however, we all know how hard it is for a rookie to hit the ground running.

So, what should we look for when trying to identify potential breakout players?

Number one is always going to be volume/opportunity.

We want as many starters in our teams as possible, players who will average 30+ minutes a game.

However, it isn’t all about minutes.

It is more about usage.

We want players with the highest usage amongst their teams, players that touch the ball the most, and are most likely to get involved with stacked stat lines.

Embed from Getty Images

When you are looking across the board, most players will have similar usages this season to last, but the few that see a significant increase are the few we are looking for.

This could be because of a change in team rosters, a change in coaching staff, or just a change in role.

As we get closer to the season, I am sure we will take a closer look at what players might match this criteria.

A second thing to look for is playstyle.

As mentioned above, we want efficient scorers.

We also love rebound-hungry guys and even prolific ‘assisters’, even though they might be rarer to find.

Wrapping it up

That’s all from me for now!

Hopefully, this gives you a better understanding of what NBA Supercoach might look like in its inaugural season.

Now time to start tinkering around with our starting sides an indefinite number of times before the season’s start!