The SCOUTing Report: Attribute Breakdown

At Swoops Illustrated we pride ourselves in creating content that (hopefully) produces insightful discourse regarding topics in the Swoopsverse. With so little known about player attributes at this point in time, we turned to the hardest working journalist in the game, Stuart Scout, to do a deep dive and see what he could come up with. This is pure speculation.

[Spoiler alert: while he rambles a bit, Stuart didn’t let us down.]

Setting It Up

For this project, I went through each of the 1,500 Swoopsters (which by the way starts with Swoopster-0 and ends with Swoopster-1499) and compiled the top three attributes for each. I separated the totals out by prospect rating to try and provide an interesting look at how often certain attributes appeared among the tiers.

Obviously on sites like OpenSea, you can see the breakdowns of how often a skill shows up as the top, second, or third attribute for the entire Swoopster population, but I wanted to know how often it appeared overall in the top three and see variance across prospect ratings. I have no doubt there was an easier way to do this, but I did it the hard way.

With 1,500 Swoopsters each having a top three, I calculated the breakdowns of how often attributes appeared in the entire group by seeing how often they appeared overall, divided the total count by 4,500 (1,500 times three to incorporate there being three attributes each), then multiplied by 100 to get the percentage.

There are 15 attributes for Swoopsters, and I like to separate them out into two categories: 1) basketball skills (the top nine— shooting/scoring, rebounding, passing, and defense), and 2) intangibles (the bottom six — physicality, longevity, hustle, IQ, leadership, and coachability). See the player card below with the red line I added as the divider between the two groups.

The top nine should have the most direct impact on gameplay, whereas three of the bottom six attributes (longevity, leadership, and coachability) will have no impact on gameplay at this time.

The Data

The chart below shows each attribute followed by the total number of times it appeared in the top three of the population, then that count as a percentage of the population. The chart is organized with the most commonly occurring trait at the top and least commonly occurring at the bottom.

Not too surprisingly, the six most commonly occurring attributes are the six intangibles. Interestingly enough, though, is that the most commonly occurring is IQ at 11.98% (539), but the last of the intangibles is Leadership at just under 10.96% (493) — there’s barely a 1% difference in the range of how often the six appear.

Speculation: These six traits appear as though they will be fairly static in comparison to the actual basketball skills — although it has been confirmed in a previous Twitter Space that IQ should generally increase over time (like NBA players studying film and having the game “slow down” for them as they gain experience), I don’t expect players to become more coachable or for longevity to increase. I think physicality could be one of the first traits to start to regress as players age, then maybe hustle is next. Leadership will be the interesting one in my mind — leaders do seem to be ready to lead relatively early in the NBA, but that’s not always the case — some players do pick up the mantle later in their careers, especially while they are young on a team with a older core group of players.

In a game modeled after real-life basketball in the NBA, it makes sense for intangibles to be the most commonly occurring. The majority of players in the league aren’t superstars — they are role players; there are 15 players on every roster for 30 teams, but only 5 start for each team. Role players seem to carve out a niche in maybe two or three basketball categories, but they usually embody more of the intangibles in order to stay in the league. These players tend to have a high basketball IQ, be good locker room presences, find ways to further perfect their niche skill(s) over time, and can bring a hustle-mentality off the bench.

After the intangibles, a significant drop off takes place as we move into the nine basketball skills. Perimeter defense (296–6.58%) and interior defense (212–4.71%) are the most commonly occurring of the basketball skills — which makes sense in my mind. In terms of basketball, I view being able to play defense well as being more similar to an intangible attribute than having a solid jump shot. What you see, though, is that finding players that excel at perimeter AND interior defense should be rare. And it is — I only found 17 Swoopsters that have both IDEF and PDEF in their top 3, so if you have one of those, that could truly be a wildcard for you in shutting down a talented scorer and could prove to a difference maker in tournaments.

Next are four shooting categories: 2 Point Interior scoring (193–4.29%), 3 Point shooting (157–3.49%), Free Throws (129–2.87%), and 2 Point Mid Range scoring (123–2.73%). My big takeaway here is that finding players that can get to the line at-will (and hit their Free Throws!) could be a bit of cheat code in Swoops — there’s no foul limit, so you could live in the bonus, and foul shots neutralize stud defenders. Mid Range is one that I’ll dive into later, but with the way of the world shifting to the 3 Point shot, I thought there might be a larger gap between 3 Point specialists and those with Mid Range. I think most GMs would lean towards having players with the long-range specialty, but something tells me that having a legit Mid Range shooter is going to prove very effective versus talented defenses.

I found it somewhat interesting that offensive rebounding specialists (119–2.64%) were actually more common than defensive rebounding specialists (113–2.51%), but the margin is super slim and could easily shift back after the next mint. I only found 13 Swoopsters that had both OREB and DREB in their top three (less than 1%), so players that clean the glass on both ends of the floor are extremely rare.

Passing (70–1.56%) being the least commonly occurring attribute within Swoops may seem surprising to some, but it’s important to realize that the attribute displays as “Assist” in OpenSea — so it’s not simply just “passing,” but it’s setting up teammates for scoring opportunities. I wouldn’t be surprised if having a playmaker on the floor led to shooters hitting a higher percentage of shots because it’s a higher quality shot that has been created versus shots in a more stagnant offense. Because of the rarity, I think we should all be coveting Swoopsters that excel at Pass. As of writing this article, only one player is listed for sale with Passing in the top three, and it is their top trait.

Side Note

Before starting to look at some of attributes separated by the prospect ratings, I thought it would be interesting to try and figure out how many Swoopsters have all intangibles in their top three traits, and how many have all basketball skills in their top three. I couldn’t figure out a great way to do this, so I could have missed some in counting it manually, but this is what I saw:

501 Swoopsters have all intangibles as their top three attributes (33.4% of the population, but only 25.33% in 5-stars).

37 Swoopsters have all basketball skills as their top three attributes (2.47% of the population).

It’s important to realize that Swoopsters aren’t finished products, and because attribute ratings can increase or regress after each season, I expect many more Swoopsters in the long-run will have their top three attributes be all basketball skills. However, heading into Season 0, I suspect having one (or more) of those 37 Swoopsters that excels in three basketball skills could put a GM in an advantageous position. In case you were wondering, no Swoopsters currently listed for sale have all basketball traits in their top three.

With the attribute breakdown taken into account along with only 37 Swoopsters specializing in all basketball traits, could Swoopster-1029 be amazing?

IDEF as top skills is 2% rarity, as is passing as a third skill, and interior defense as second occurs in 5%. This is an intriguing prospect!

Prospect Rating

All Swoopsters have a prospect rating that is static throughout their career — they are rated on a scale of 1- to 5-stars. Currently there are 450 1-star (30%), 450 2-star (30%), 375 3-star (25%), 150 4-star (10%), and 75 5-star (5%) Swoopsters. You can learn more about the Prospect Rating system and what it means in this article.

While it was interesting to see how attributes played out across the entire spectrum of players, I wanted to see how it varied across the prospect tiers. With only 150 4-star and 75-star Swoopsters, there’s a bigger impact on the percentage change when 1 Swoopster has a certain attribute in their top three than at the 1- to 3-star tier, which accounts for 85% of the population, so I could be making a big deal about nothing — or I could be on to something!

The major discrepancy I wanted to point out here is 2 Point Mid Range (123 total–2.73%). At the 5-star tier, this attribute was actually found in the top three for 20 Swoopsters, which means it appears for 8.89% of the 5-star tier. This was the biggest outlier of any attribute. It appeared for 34 1-stars (2.52%), 28 2-stars (2.07%), 25 3-stars (2.22%), and 16 4-stars (3.56%). With it appearing so much more prevalently at the highest tiers, I think finding players that excel in the Mid Range from the lower prospect tiers could be a bargain find. Just be sure that the IQ for the Swoopster isn’t very low — otherwise you could fall victim to the Swoopster being a high volume, low efficiency shooter from that area, which would mean they are taking lots of attempts at (arguably) the least valuable shot in basketball and not converting enough to warrant playing them.

3 Point shooting appears in the top three for 55 3-star Swoopsters (4.89%), but only 45 1-stars (3.33%), 35 2-stars (2.59%), 14 4-stars (3.11%), and 8 5-stars (3.56%). 3-stars are interesting Swoopsters because they could be borderline elites, and maybe some of the 3 Point specialists have what it takes to be superstars down the road.

Interior defense (6–2.67%) and Perimeter defense (6–2.67%) is a rare top three for 5-star players. My thinking is that this doesn’t necessarily mean 5-star players are bad at defense — they are just so talented at other things, that they don’t specialize on the defensive end. In fact, only 1 5-star Swoopster has PDEF as their top attribute, and no 5-star Swoopster currently has IDEF as their top attribute. And when you think about the NBA today, what superstar player in their prime do you view as having a better defensive game than offensive?

Also like in the NBA, superstars get to the foul line. Free Throws shows up 10 times (4.44%) in the top three for 5-stars, versus 42 times for 1-stars (3.11%), 40 times for 2-stars (2.96%), 21 times for 3-stars (1.87%), and 16 times for 4-stars (3.56%).

The last outlier I found intriguing was Passing among 2-stars (34 times — 2.52%). That’s two times more of then than 1-stars (14 — 1.04%), and three times more often than 3-stars (9 — 0.8%). It’s also significant to the only 6 times it shows for 4-stars (1.33%). 5-stars actually was a little higher frequency (7–3.11%).

Closing Thoughts

It’s vital to remember that attributes are dynamic and will change over time. How much they change won’t be seen until the end of Season 0 (roughly 13 weeks from January 6, 2023), but we are more likely to see an attribute with a 30 rating jump to 40 than we are to see a 92 go to 100. With all Swoopsters hitting their optimal progressions regardless of games played in the beta season (whether they play in 0 games or 1,000), this will give a glimpse into what peak development can look like. However, as of now, we will only learn if a revealed attribute has change — users will not know if unrevealed attributes have increased, regressed, or stayed the same.

It’s also important to realize that we don’t know what impact some of the attributes truly have on gameplay. I can’t really explain today what Physicality will do, but I would speculate that being a high Physicality player could help rebounding against a less physical opponent. However, if paired with low basketball IQ, I could see it leading to problems with fouling.

I’m excited to learn alongside the rest of the community starting in a couple of weeks! What are your key takeaways from the data on attributes?