What players should be paid under the salary cap

[captain bill]

We debate how much players "should be paid," but I have seen very little discussion of *how* people come to those numbers. I think frequently we disagree over whether a contract is good or bad, but more often than not it seems like no one agrees on what a certain salary says about how good that player is.

Here's my conclusion of what annual salary corresponds to what type of player (or at least, what those players *should* be paid).

$1-5 million is rookies and veteran discounts
$6-8 million is below-average rotation player
$8-10 million is solid rotation player / role player
$10-15 million is key contributor / all-star
$15 million + is franchise player.

2014-2015 cap is $63.2mm, luxury tax at $77mm.

2015-2016 cap is $66.5mm / $81mm

For conveniences sake, I'll work with the 63.2.

I will assess on the basis of the cap, assuming most owners don't want to hit the luxury, and staying at the cap as a baseline allows for future flexibility, especially when needing to extend rookies and very good veterans - ie, I am assuming that we are building a team under the cap, allowing us to go a little bit over to keep it together, if needed (i.e, I realize 15mm is what a player gets on a *first* max contract- these are year 1 numbers, and this is set off because (1) the cap will keep going up and (2) if you start with getting players on these numbers, you can extend them and give them raise because these numbers are based on the salary cap, giving you plenty of room before you hit the luxury threshold)

13 Man Roster

First, I assume you win with the best 8 man rotation. Let's assume the roster is filled out with 5 guys (non-contributors) making an average of $900,000, for $4.5 million, leaving $58.7mm for the rotation.

Second, you want at least one cornerstone player who will make at or near the max. These guys will make $15-20mm each. Assuming $17mm for this guy, you have $41.7 mm left to play with for the remaining 7-man rotation.

Third, you want cheap talent. Cheap talent comes in two forms: guys on rookie contracts, and veterans giving a "home team discount" or ring-chasing. Spurs used rookies, Heat used vets, Celtics had Rondo, etc. Now, this isn't essential to winning, but if you want to maximize talent within the salary cap, you need these guys. These guys can make anywhere from $1-5 million (although anything above 4 in this category is probably a top-3 draft pick).

Let's assume at least 3 cheapies- 2 rookies and a vet, or some such combo. Average out to $9mm for those three, and you have $32.7 million for 4 roster spots.

Now the big question is how you fill those 4 spots. Split it evenly, and you can give them $8.2 million each. So $8.2 million should be the standard rate for an *average* rotation player.

As an "average," you can then play with that number to get a basic framework:

$6-8million: below-average starter; probably a good place to get good role players with limited but desireable skillets

$8-10million: average to above-average: guys who are almost all-star level but not quite. I think this is where you get specialists: elite 3 point shooters, rebounders, defenders, or what have you. Probably for guys who have relatively few weaknesses, or, if they do have weaknesses, have strengths good enough to make up for them.

$11-15 million: all-stars; guys who will be key contributors to your team and help you win games. Guys who a bad GM will mistake for a max player. Once you hit $15 million, you are enter into franchise player paygrade.

 

[Bricklayer]

Thing is you can't be paying all your rotation players $6-$8mil, or close to it. Most good teams are going to have 2-3 guys at $11+mil each, so half your cap is gone by the time you still have 10 guys left to sign.

Figure a fairly normal structure would be about:
$15mil franchise
$13mil #2
$11mil #3 or rim protector
$6-$8mil x 2 for two extra starters/top support players
-------------
roughly $53mil just with your top 5

then you still need 8 more. try to make half of those super cheap vets, 2nd round picks or whatnot, and if you are very lucky and don't have any dead money you can try to have maybe $16mil to spend on the remaining 4 players who will be guys 6-9 in your rotation. Make one an expensive $6-$8mil guy, but then the others better be rookie scale or mini-MLE guys. Or spread it out more evenly. But in any case they can't all be earning $6-$8mil or you have the absurd entire team full of MLE guys syndrome Petrie was striving for in his last years.

P.S. in our situation Rudy's contract eats up multiple slots, and Landry and JT are unfortunate choices for your $6-$8mil guys. If we can use Collison as one of the 4 final contracts as our starting PG that's a boon, as is having rookie scale SGs. But its still unclear if we can add the third big contract guy until Rudy's contract expires and the $$ get into a more reasonable range.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

What players should be paid? Aside from, maybe, 3-5 guys who are capable of generating revenue wholly independent of what happens on the basketball court, you could make the case that every single one of these guys make vastly more than what they should be paid.

The trouble with saying what players "should" be paid is that the market is completely distorted, largely because of Publilius Syrus' 847th Maxim. It doesn't matter whether I think a player should make less than Y, what matters is if the player thinks so and, just as importantly, whether he'd take less than what he thinks he's worth to play for your team. And, with few exceptions, you rarely see players in their prime end up signing for less than they think they're worth.

I dunno... maybe if you'd posted this in the NBA forum, I'd have been more willing to "play along" but, since this is part of the All Things Kings sub-genre, I find myself incapable of thinking about the topic in the "abstract," but instead only thinking specifically about it in the context of the Kings. And the fact of the matter is, our team is not one that can reasonably have this conversation in the same way that a team in a more desirable market can. A player might say he'd sign for 2-yr/$4M to play in Miami, but that same player might insist on 2-yr/$7M to play in Sacramento. Looking at Brick's proposal, for example, particularly his recommendation for filling out the bench... I mean, it's easy to say that in the abstract but, given Sacramento's historical track record in free agency, what would you say is the likelihood of it being that easy in practice?

 

[captain bill]

Thing is you can't be paying all your rotation players $6-$8mil, or close to it. Most good teams are going to have 2-3 guys at $11+mil each, so half your cap is gone by the time you still have 10 guys left to sign.

Figure a fairly normal structure would be about:
$15mil franchise
$13mil #2
$11mil #3 or rim protector
$6-$8mil x 2 for two extra starters/top support players
-------------
roughly $53mil just with your top 5

then you still need 8 more. try to make half of those super cheap vets, 2nd round picks or whatnot, and if you are very lucky and don't have any dead money you can try to have maybe $16mil to spend on the remaining 4 players who will be guys 6-9 in your rotation. Make one an expensive $6-$8mil guy, but then the others better be rookie scale or mini-MLE guys. Or spread it out more evenly. But in any case they can't all be earning $6-$8mil or you have the absurd entire team full of MLE guys syndrome Petrie was striving for in his last years.

P.S. in our situation Rudy's contract eats up multiple slots, and Landry and JT are unfortunate choices for your $6-$8mil guys. If we can use Collison as one of the 4 final contracts as our starting PG that's a boon, as is having rookie scale SGs. But its still unclear if we can add the third big contract guy until Rudy's contract expires and the $$ get into a more reasonable range.

Thanks for the response. I'm definitely not married to these numbers but just wanted to get the ball rolling on a conversation (I realize now I probably should've edited that massive wall of text down, I might try to clean it up and re-post it later if that's cool with the mods).

I'm really using this as an ideal- like how we should structure our contracts to maximize our value.

Looking at my original post, I don't think I made my roster breakdown very clear. My 8 man rotation was:

1 max player ($15mm)
3 cheap contributors ($9mm- rookie deals or veteran contracts)
4 guys on salaries totaling $32.7 million (salary cap - max player contract - cheap contracts - benchwarmer contracts)

I came up with $8million as a benchmark, because the *average* of $32.7 million is just a hair above $8 million.

Of course, this is just the starting point. But from reading NBA salaries, I don't think any proven rotation player will take less than $5mm, and if you don't want to break the bank, you shouldn't give any guys more than $15 million (unless they're a legit second banana, borderline franchise guy).

I think, assuming the model of max player + 3 cheap rotation players, $8 million is basically the definition of an "average" rotation player- because if you fill one player of equal talent on the same salary, each on will make $8.2 million within this framework. I realize it's not perfect due to the imperfections of the FA market, but I thought it was interesting as a starting point.

Like I said, that gets you to 8 players. 8 seems to be the magic number for an NBA rotation. If you are building a perfectly efficient roster, the remaining guys should be on VERY LOW deals. I chose an average ideal number of $950,000, meaning those 5 benchwarmers are only taking up $4.5 million, and not eating up cap space. Obviously you want to develop those guys and find a diamond in the rough, but you cannot count on that, and you certainly shouldn't chew up cap space on guys who can't crack the rotation

 

[captain bill]

What players should be paid? Aside from, maybe, 3-5 guys who are capable of generating revenue wholly independent of what happens on the basketball court, you could make the case that every single one of these guys make vastly more than what they should be paid.

The trouble with saying what players "should" be paid is that the market is completely distorted, largely because of Publilius Syrus' 847th Maxim. It doesn't matter whether I think a player should make less than Y, what matters is if the player thinks so and, just as importantly, whether he'd take less than what he thinks he's worth to play for your team. And, with few exceptions, you rarely see players in their prime end up signing for less than they think they're worth.

I dunno... maybe if you'd posted this in the NBA forum, I'd have been more willing to "play along" but, since this is part of the All Things Kings sub-genre, I find myself incapable of thinking about the topic in the "abstract," but instead only thinking specifically about it in the context of the Kings. And the fact of the matter is, our team is not one that can reasonably have this conversation in the same way that a team in a more desirable market can. A player might say he'd sign for 2-yr/$4M to play in Miami, but that same player might insist on 2-yr/$7M to play in Sacramento. Looking at Brick's proposal, for example, particularly his recommendation for filling out the bench... I mean, it's easy to say that in the abstract but, given Sacramento's historical track record in free agency, what would you say is the likelihood of it being that easy in practice?

Oh I agree - the market is definitely distorted. But I think this is a useful tool for looking at a player and asking if he fits within our system. That's why I set aside the money for 4 vet contracts, and then put them in "tiers" based on their contributions (and regardless of position or particular skillset). I think if you do that, you can ask what "tier" that player is in, then you already have your salary range for that player set.

There is then a SECOND question, if that player is in the tier, of whether the player fits with your team or fills a need.

Basically, I would envision the other side to this being a checklist of the skills and abilities you need to bring and filling that, but this sort of takes the guess work out of it by making it a two-step question:

1- can we get the player on a contract the falls within or below his tier? if no, don't sign. if yes, proceed to 2:

2- does the player fill a need for us?

Too often, people just compare players to money that other players got, or get shocked by seeing a big number, without really anchoring what they're willing to pay for a realistic assessment of how much the team should be spending on a given player. I just think this is an interesting starting point to focusing on that, and am certainly open to criticisms and suggestions regarding the numbers I came up with