Financially baseball is very different from basketball. The discrepancy between high and low teams is not comparable. Free agency is very different. The ability to buy pitchers who can basically buy you games in the playoffs is different. Ironically you're kind of barking up the wrong tree in the right forest. Transactions have had a direct impact on championships but not in the way you think. Bull****/borderline corrupt trades that didn't make sense are what brought gasol to the lakers and garnett to the celtics, which accounts for the last 2 championships won/bought. It isn't necessarily that LA and Boston either spent more money or spent smarter. In baseball money rules, Yankees spend more so they have the best hitters and great pitching. In the NBA you have guys taking less money to go play with this player or that player and a lot of shady backroom stuff going on so Gasol ends up in LA. If you read Lewis' book, Beane wasn't trying to accumulate the best talent in the league. He was trying to keep the A's competitive with a small payroll. The two objectives are very different. As someone else noted, the A's had new ownership who dramatically reduced payroll and flatly refused to spend, he wasn't necessarily going to win World Series with those teams, in fact despite sabermetrics, Beane's teams typically won their division in the regular season (or placed second) then got beat by a big money team... yanks or red sox... in the playoffs Again sabermetrics isn't about identifying the best talent. Everyone knows that Pujols or Cliff Lee are studs. Sabermetrics is finding about finding the next tier, upper middle or low upper guys for CHEAP. Moneyball works for assembling a supporting cast but in the NBA you need stars to win championships (to get calls to give your team a shot if nothing else) No matter how many Battiers and Brooks they find, Les and Morey are still going to have to land the right guy to anchor the team once Tmac and Yao leave and everything depends on that particular decision
Actually, the payroll for this season is 6th highest...Which makes sense if you want to keep a team that has consistently proved results. Given their age, maybe Buford believes in loyalty... Patricia's site has the numbers for past season Relevant stats/numbers ripped from bossu of SpursReport.
