IMHO the NBA is much more incredibly complex than most fans believe. One aspect from a pay for wins standpoint it is a prototypical industry standard in a capitalistic society. How far can you drive down the cost of a win during the season? I believe (but I am to lazy to the check the current figures) it is currently $1.76 million per win. How far under that value can a team get? That is the most critical criteria for judging the front office. To give you an example Parsons may be the best contract in the league. Why? Because he gives the Rockets 4+ wins at under $250K per win. LBJ? He gives the Heat god only knows how many wins for his salary. There is a reason they say that superstars are underpaid. This is the criteria they use. The price per win is what drives NBA franchises. It is the underpinnings of why the LAL was one of the worst franchises in the NBA last season. And it is the driving factor for why Clutch Fans may pine for a LMA or Love, but they will always have their heart broken. Does Morey pay $15 million for a big time power forward yielding 8 wins a season, or does he scour the leagues players to find 4 players who can contribute 2 wins per million dollars? The answer to that question is simple economics. NBA life should be much worse for average players like Al Jefferson. Simple analytics says that he should be paid half of his current salary. But does that stop rich owners from spending their money unwisely? You know the answer to that. Those somehow gaudy offensive numbers cloud many peoples judgment. But basketball is played on so many different levels. Scoring is just one component. So who are the most valuable players in the NBA? Not a difficult question to answer. They are the superstars, those transcendent players who are salary capped and underpaid because their physical ability, skills, heart and mind deliver more wins than one could ever estimate from their salary. Howard is there. Harden also. Perhaps. Second most valuable players? No not the second or third tiered stars like LMA, Love etc. but the journeymen of the NBA who can deliver wins far in excess of their pay scales. Why? Because despite their salary scales. the Love's and the LMA's of this world cannot put a franchise on their backs. They may have excellent box scores, but they will never ever lead their teams deep into the playoffs. They are essentially a second option in search of a superstar, and cost far more than their value to a team already populated by superstars.
I don't think it's that superstars are underpaid so much as non-stars are overpaid. Superstars get paid the absolute max you can give them. It's when a team overrates a role player or non-star and give that player 80% of LBJ's salary to deliver 1/8 of the value.
Where are you getting your numbers from that says Parsons gives you 4 wins and Love/Aldridge are on the same level at 8 wins?
There's so many more factors at play than that. Team chemistry, overlapping games, coaching style, offensive/defensive system, that saying that player X "adds x wins" is ridiculous, even as an approximation.
WS calculated. k Player Pos Age Tm G MP PER TS% eFG% ORB% DRB% TRB% AST% STL% BLK% TOV% USG% ORtg DRtg OWS DWS WS WS/48 6 LaMarcus Aldridge PF 27 POR 74 2790 20.4 .530 .485 7.2 20.9 14.0 13.0 1.2 2.5 8.9 26.5 108 107 4.8 2.3 7.2 .124 8 Kevin Love PF 24 MIN 18 618 17.9 .458 .386 11.5 35.9 23.3 11.8 1.1 1.1 9.8 28.9 99 102 0.1 0.9 1.1 .084 331 Chandler Parsons SF 24 HOU 76 2758 15.3 .584 .567 3.3 13.2 8.3 15.6 1.4 0.9 12.7 18.3 113 108 4.9 2.1 7.0 .121 Completely sorry for the horrendous formatting. I also checked several other metrics and arrived at my estimate of their content. I do not believe that it significantly changes the results. You know all of the usual suspects. Not precise. I apologize.
No. It actually came from a very reputable site. But I do imagine that it can easily be calculated by dividing the NBA teams payrolls by their wins. I prefer to use Google.
lol I dont think JTR was saying that it was a 100% guaranteed figure to go by, but to highlight those contracts are skewed compared to current day value.. These little quirky stats just reinforce people opinions about certain players such as e.g: Chandler
If you are capped in terms of how much you can be paid, that by definition means that you are underpaid. In a truly open market, you would see superstars being paid nearly all of the money and everyone else being paid almost nothing in comparison. This is because the superstars are the true difference-makers and the truly rare commodities, while everyone else is treated like an easily-replaced cog in the machine. You see this dynamic in other sports, such as boxing. Or, if you looked at "college scholarships" like money, it's pretty much exactly what goes on in "amateur" sports. It's the fact that there is a price cap, in combination with a union, which makes the non-stars overpaid. The superstars are in essence "subsidizing" the pay of their non-superstar peers in exchange for other services (such as ensuring that the players as a whole are getting a larger piece of the pie).
Absolutely correct. As fans we can be only so precise. Morey on the other hand will be much more accurate. But no one will approach certainty. However we use the best tools available.
If you are going by Win Shares, Kevin Love rates a lot closer to Harden/Howard than Aldridge. His last 2 healthy seasons were .21 and .223 WS/48, both better than Harden's. I can see your argument for a guy like Aldridge, but Kevin Love is every bit the "superstar" as the other top 10 players. Personally I don't like WS that much. However Love also rates highly in RAPM. Twice the player that Aldridge is in fact.
I cannot disagree with your analysis. But Love had a really bad year last season. And of course Love fits like a glove into the Rockets offense where as Aldridge is just left standing out in the cold. stats.nba players/shotcharts. But I personally have not seen any superstar in Love. But it may just be a difference in perception. Which would you prefer to have given that there is one basketball on the court? Parsons, Garcia, Bev, Asik, Caspi ... Or Love? I obviously failed in this thread if that is not perfectly clear.
That's an easy question. Love, of course. Second round steals, undrafted contributors, and veteran journeymen are easy to find, especially for a skilled evaluator like Morey. Budinger, Landry, Greg Smith, Chuck Hayes to name a few. Asik is valuable, but even then you give him up easily. On the other hand, guys that put up 26 and 13 as a 23 year old are.. generational.
LOL. Not at you of course. But I totally expected that reaction. Love is a great player even though last season he inflicted a serious wound upon himself. But do you think it would be in the Rockets best interest to blow their pay role up to $48 million + for 3 players? Leaving $12 million for roster spots 4-13? I personally cannot see it that way. But of course it is an opinion. Assuming Les is going to consider the greater economic ramifications to going seriously over the cap. No. And I did intend for this thread to be about economics.
What exactly yields more wins on a roster already populated by two superstars? A third superstar or role players? We have polar opposite opinions. And you point to Love's best season of 26 ppg. How is that going to maintain even a shadow of its former self with Harden and Howard on the roster sucking up possessions and the ball? It won't One ball. 105 points per game. We can both do the math.
Underpaid is a relative term and I think relative to the whole of salaries in the NBA, superstars are not underpaid so much as fringe guys(like Rudy Gay - unless it turns out he just needed glasses the whole time) frequently are overpaid based on salary relative to the whole. Remember that only about 30ish players make between 14-30k per year while the vast majority of players in a 460 person league make less than $2k a year. That you say stars are underpaid relative to a completely different set of financial rules doesn't prove anything. You mind as well said stars in the NBA are underpaid compared to stars in the MLB - it's apples to oranges because there is no relative comparison.
Average team salary was $67.1M last season. The cost per win becomes: 67.1/41 = $1.64M/win Parsons win share should be over 5 last season. Since Rockets underperformed by 5 wins according to their point differential of +3.5, his win share re-adjusted to 4+, still a helluva bargain. As for Love, his biggest issue is injuries. Having Love on a team is a $15M gamble. Even at his borderline superstar performance, if he aint healthy, his salary is just eating away the cap. A healthy Love, Harden, and Dwight in the post season will be the favorite to win it all, but a healthy Harden and Dwight, with a bunch of vet min's + rookies will not.
