Before criticizing the dollar figure of a contract, do this.

Wish I could still pay 50 cents for a coke. Everywhere I go its a buck twenty five.

 

It didn't double in a year. It's at $94 mil. It hasn't been $47M since 2005.

That said, 2005 is a great reference point for me since that was about when I actually started worrying about cap math. So I actually have been dividing everything by two as a reference point. Just don't do that to compare to last year.

 

I may be wrong but cap was 71 mil last year.
This year is 94.
That is 23 mil Or a 32% difference.

To put that into perspective, that is like arguing that the cost of college education is expected to increase a lot in the next few years, you shouldn't complain about paying that rate now.

So many illogical things that I'm not sure if serious thread.

 

Bima covered this in his tweets but it does need to be repeated. Thanks OP. The contracts of the middle class in the NBA are way, way up... but it's all relative. The true max players are not being paid what they are worth, even with the cap bump. Look at how much LeBron, Curry, Harden and others are making versus what they generate in revenue and value for their teams.

 

50% increase is not the same as dividing by 2 for new contracts. 50% increase means 3/2 of what it used to be. If you want the equivalent value before the increase, you multiply the value by 2/3.

Anderson's $20M is equivalent to a $13.3M contract, not $10M.

 

Good thread.

Salary cap was at about $58 million for 6 straight seasons (2008-2014), and so people tend to think in those terms when deducing the dollar value of a player.

The 2014/15 increase to 63 million certainly saw some increase in salary, but not a drastic one.
Last season we started to see 'crazy money' contracts, with the cap increasing to $70 million.

It's going to $94 million this season. That's a huge jump. A 55% increase from the $58million number that rotates around a lot of people's heads. And the projection is that it will jump over $100million ($107ish for the next 4 seasons).


So $20 million is still a large contract (approx 4/5ths of a max), but anything under $10million for a legitimate NBA starter is starting to look like a good value deal.

 

basic math , not for everyone tho.

 

Someone needs to make a "NBA Salary Cap Perspective" tool / site where you enter in an annual salary it tells you what the equivalent annual salary would have been in a previous year. Just go by percentage of cap.

 

while the OP has a point, the contracts this offseason actually are crazy. at least relative to the cap. why? because when the cap goes up faster than the raises that the players currently contract get, then that inflates the contracts for free agents beyond just the increase in the cap.

for example, if the cap were at 100M, the average player got a 6% raise (the average of the 7.5% raise for resigning and 4.5% raise for signing with a new team), and the cap went up 6%, and each team had 25M in expiring salaries, what would happen?

New Cap = 106M

Player's Under Contract = 75M * 1.06 = 79.5M

Money for Free Agents = 106M - 79.5M = 26.5M

Average Raise for Free Agents = (26.5M - 25M) / 25M = 6%


So the raise for free agents is the same as the raise in the cap. but what happens if the cap goes up 34% like this year?


New Cap = 134M

Player's Under Contract = 75M * 1.06 = 79.5M

Money for Free Agents = 106M - 79.5M = 54.5M

Average Raise for Free Agents = (54.5M - 25M) / 25M = 118%


so free agents don't just get a 34% raise from the cap going up 34%, they get a 118% raise! now all sorts of things could change some of these numbers. if there were more free agents because they structured their contract to become free agents this offseason, that would smooth things out. bird rights probably change things. teams only spending up to the floor instead of all the way to the cap changes things. but basically, it's not just the cap change, but how different the cap change is from the normal contract raises that affects things. a flat cap year over year might actually result in a pay cut for the free agents. free agents this offseason might be so overpaid (relative to players under contract) that they'll still be overpaid even when the cap goes up again next year.

 

Blah, blah, blah