Determining NBA Free Agent Salary from Player Performance
By Joshua Rosen
NBA teams have the opportunity each offseason to sign free agents to alter their rosters. Using only regular season per game statistics, I examine the best method of calculating a player’s appropriate salary value based upon his contribution to a team’s regular season win percentage. I first determine which statistics most accurately predict team regular season win percentage, and then use regression analysis to predict the values of these metrics for individual players. Finally, relying upon predicted statistics, I assign salary values to free agents for their upcoming season on specific teams. My results advise teams to rely heavily on Player Impact Estimate (“PIE”) when predicting their teams’ win percentage, and to seek players whose appropriate salaries would be significantly more than their actual season–long salaries if the free agents were to sign.
Advisor: Kent Kimbrough, Peter Arcidiacon | JEL Codes: C30, Z2, Z22 | Tagged: Free Agents, Salaries, NBA
The New Landscape of the NBA: The 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement’s Impact on Competitive Balance and Players’ Salaries
By Nicholas Yam
The National Basketball Association (NBA) passed a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) in 2011 that introduced many changes to the structure of the league. The purpose of those changes was to improve competitive balance among the league, allowing smaller market teams to better compete with larger market teams. Many of the changes targeted the league’s salary cap and teams’ ability to pay players. This paper aims to determine whether competitive balance in the NBA improved under the 2011 CBA. The paper also determines which types of players’ salaries were affected the most. The results showed that competitive balance did not improve under the 2011 CBA. However, the results showed that higher performing players were paid proportionally more money than lower performing players following 2011 CBA.
Advisor: Peter Arcidiacon | JEL Codes: Z2, Z20, Z22
