Building an NBA team: money

Random thought I had, while looking at the Spurs and the Cavs, and what the Cavs need to do to improve themselves on this year, was GMing 101: don't overpay. But ironically, that seems so much more difficult for GMs to keep to than it should, which is a shame for like, 75% of the fans in the country.

Basic math is that, there are 15 players on every team's roster at any given point, barring any extreme cases, like a guy being waived and a team not replacing him, or a team doing the 10-day contract thing and having a little pause as they try to find someone. According to insidehoops.com, the salary cap per team was 'officially $53.135 million' for the 2006-2007 season (the past one). Per average, then, every player should be making 3.54 million, if you were to have a roster filled with blank '50 pointers' to pull up EA game stats (on a scale of 1-99).

It's a bit hard to check per-year salaries for players though, and since I'm not being paid for this I'm going to be lazy and take every contract and simply divide the money by the years on it to figure out how much a player's being paid. It'll be a rough assumption, that the salary cap managers on every team is balancing the year-to-year contract so that when a bunch of people are on the hefty end of the contract, others are still on the light end. Granted, some teams utterly fail at this, but I'm going to kick office incompetence out the window.

Lets take a look at the Spurs, for example, as they've been hailed as the New England Patriots of the NBA.

Of the players hitting the market on their team this year, they had...
(Name, salary, over-under, years left)

Matt Bonner, paid 2 million (~1.5 under average) [FA]
Melvin Ely, 3.3 million (~0.2) [FA]
Mike Finley, 2.7 million (~0.8) [FA]
Jacque Vaughn, 900,498 (minimum salary for a 6-year veteran, ~2.6) [FA]
James White, 398,762 (minimum for rookie, ~3.1) [FA]
Brent Barry, 4.9 million (~1.4 above) [1]
Bruce Bowen, 3.6 million (~0.1) [1]
Tim Duncan, 17.4 million (~13.9) [1]
Francisco Elson, 3 million (~0.5) [1]
Fabricio Oberto, 2.5 million (~1.0) [1]
Beno Udrih, 1.1 million (~2.4) [1]
Jackie Butler, 2.3 million (~1.2) [2]
Manu Ginobili, 8.7 million (~4.2) [3]
Tony Parker, 7.0 million (~3.5) [4]

Five players had above-average salaries. If the number sounds familiar, it should: that's the number of players you can have on the floor at the same time. Essentially, they're paying five players enough money to be starters, and the rest money to be spot-players. But two of them don't start, you say? Logistically speaking, their only real 'mistake' was Brent Barry, whom they signed, if you remember, to be a three-point sniper. He didn't really pan out (which is why they have Finley), but the man was not inept- he regularly netted playtime, even in the Finals, as a spot shooter, which is a big plus. Ginobili's the other one, but I won't bother getting into that. Their rotation at center combined for 1.5 million under, which is incidentally the amount over that Barry and Bowen combine to. Bowen, incidentally, is paid almost like a 50-point player, but that's kind of what he is, being one-dimensional. All of the greens (sorry if you can't see the colours) combine to offset the max contract given to Tim Duncan. No one can really argue against the max contract against a player to Duncan's stature, right? :) Basically, they pay their star player a max contract, their two other studs starting money, and the rest are good, solid players given around or under the average salary on a 15-player roster, with a good balance of veteran minimum contracts and project players (Udrih, White).

I don't know what Robert Horry's contract is, by the way, so apologies for that.

Now I'll take a look at the Cavaliers, and why I feel they're sort of in the dump.

Sasha Pavlovic, 1.4 million (~2.1) [FA]
Anderson 'floptastic' Varejao, 860K (~2.6) [FA]
Daniel Gibson, 398,762 (~3.1) [1]
Ira Newble, 3 million (~0.5) [1]
David Wesley, 1.8 million (~1.7) [1]
Drew Gooden, 7.7 million (~4.2) [2]
Donyell Marshall, 5.5 million (~2.0) [2]
Damon Jones, 4.3 million (~0.7) [2]
Eric Snow, 5.0 million (~1.5) [2]
Shannon Brown, 1.3 million (~2.2) [3]
Larry Hughes, 12 million (~8.5) [3]
Zydrunas Iglauskus, 11 million (~7.5) [3]
LeBron James, 23.5 million (~20) [5]

First of all you should see the relatively large amount of red. They're paying, you've got it, SEVEN players over the 15-player average, and they generally aren't by small margins. Take a look at the players they're paying this money to, too. Drew Gooden is being paid more than Tony Parker, and he's not going anywhere for two years, unless he gets traded. Donyell Marshall makes as much as Elson and Oberto combined, and he gets less total play time than the two of them, with arguably less impact also. Damon Jones gets paid between Bowen and Barry, except he plays as much as Barry, but also plays point guard, which would entail he'd have to, you know, pass the ball, which he sucks at. He also plays the same position as Eric Snow, who makes a ton of money, who also ends up sharing positions as Larry Hughes (when healthy). That being said, the man gets benched tons because of his one-dimensional-ness, but he plays a position that doesn't get called upon to guard the best player against 99% of teams. How many monster scoring pointguards do you see in the league? Two? Baron Davis and Gilbert Arenas, that's probably around it. Oh, and Deron Williams, except he passes well too.

They're also paying Larry Hughes almost twice as much as Tony Parker, and Ilgauskus alarmingly close to Tim Duncan numbers. Oh yeah, their star player is LeBron James, who also makes a tremendous amount of money. The problem stems from the fact that they can't really get rid of these contracts, unless they trade, which would entail receiving a largely similar salary, and they'd also have to find someone dumb enough to grab these bloated salaries. Marshall, Jones and Snow in particular don't seem like they're going to attract too many offers. Snow, incidentally, might be tough for them to move because of his leadership. So they're basically paying him 5 million to be a leader, since you can assume Gibson's being groomed for that PG slot.

They have two key free agents this year, Pavlobrick and Floptastic, but they're both, ironically, two of their three cheapest players. That doesn't quite add up. They'll get the contracts of Newble and Wesley off at the end of next year, and they'll probably look forward to getting Newble's 3 million off the blocks, but that's still a fairly paltry sum they have to really "improve" their roster. They either have to be vicious scouts, extremely lucky, or they won't really improve much except their depth, by signing backups and/or projects.

What the Cavs are probably going to have to look forward to, then, is the time when Marshall/Jones and Snow have their contracts expire in... two years. Also rejoice, Cavs fans, at the fact that Gooden is going to be paid Ginobili money in two years if they want to keep him. Hughes and Z-Man's contracts aren't going anywhere, either, which means, pretty much, the Cavs already have their three-headed pig. Banking on those two and LeBron on caring them, the rest are simply role players. Oh wait, Hughes and Z-Man aren't that great. Cavs are basically paying those three TWICE AS MUCH as Parker, Manu and Duncan. Something's very wrong there. Of course, the Spurs have the luxury of saying "we're going to win, so please take one for the team and play for less," which their players do. So we'll give the Cavs a slight benefit of the doubt.

I don't know Scott Pollard's contract, for the Cavs.

Comparably speaking, I'm going to look at the LA Clippers, a team that's good but not that great, because they haven't been able to punch through the big mountain.

Jason Hart, 835,810 (~2.7) [FA]
James Singleton, 641,748 (~2.9) [FA]
Elton Brand, 13.7 million (~10.2) [1]
Sam Cassell, 6.5 (~3.0) [1]
Will Conroy, 398,762 (~3.1) [1]
Paul Davis, 398,762 (~3.1) [1]
Shaun Livingston, 3.5 million (~0.0) [1]
Corey Maggette, 7.5 million (~4.0) [1]
Quinton Ross, 0.7 million (~2.8) [1]
Aaron Williams, 1.8 million (~1.7) [1]
Yaroslav Korolev, 2.0 million (~1.5) [2]
Cuttino Mobley, 8.4 million (~4.9) [3]
Tim Thomas, 6.0 million (~2.5) [3]
Chris Kaman, 7.1 million (3.6) [5]

It's a surprisingly decent make-up, at first glance. Six red numbers, which is better than the Eastern Conference team that made the finals, and only one player over 10 million, which is Elton Brand, who's definitely worth it. Plus, he comes in fairly cheap, costing less than Tim Duncan. Arguably, this is a relative bargain, because Brand might actually be better than Duncan right now, but the man is due for a new contract (if he hadn't already gotten one over the past year), which would give him +15%, as Gilbert Arenas noted. Still a relative bargain for the impact he has. His front-court mate Kaman clocks in at 7.1 million and is locked up for the long haul also, meaning they have a stud front-court for 20 million, or slightly less than Lebron James. Not bad.

So why aren't they an elite team? Quality vs. money. They have seven players who make average or more. Two of them are point guards. Two of them are shooting guards. Their 50 year old point-guard makes at least 3 million more than he should, at least judging from last year's performance, which proves sentimentality is overrated.

Flipside is, he did help them hover while Livingston was out, and he provides leadership, so it's not completely blown money- I'd say, judging from comments that were made leading up to and after the signing, the Clippers knew what they were getting from Cassell. Livingston, given his performance, is overpaid, but that's just his rookie contract talking, so free pass there, but the money vs. the amount he plays and the impact he has when he plays suggests heavily that he's overpaid.

Now you have three players who're paid over the average- two shooting guards and a small forward. Tim Thomas is overpaid, but since he is a starting player and he's the only really reliable SF on that lineup, free pass. Maggette and Mobley? Neither of them are really in the realm of Ginobili and others, they're more to the tune of Brent Barry, except with less self-control and some character issues. They're each being overpaid by like, 3 million, which combines for six million. Not to mention at least one has to be benched, unless it's Tim Thomas being benched, in which case they're still paying at least 6 million for a bench player who's not a difference-maker, like Barbosa or Ginobili. That's why they absolutely needed to trade one.

Only one team in the NBA really "succeeds" without true depth, and that's the Phoenix Suns, who succeeded, but can't get over the playoff hump because their players run out of gas. Now look at the guys in the green. Notice anything? If anything, you should notice they're all paid rubbish, a side-effect of the two excess bench-warmers and the ever-injured point-guard, and as a result they don't offer very much productivity. Hate putting money on impact, but when you don't have money, it's very hard to grab impact players. Like I said before, you have to be extremely good at scouting dirt cheap impact labour (ala Dan Gibson), you have to be lucky (like the Spurs) or you're just pretty screwed. This fact, combined with the fact that the players the Clippers pay aren't all that great, adds up to a team that's just plainly not that good, and they won't get much better anytime soon unless they unload contracts.

Judging by the money they're paying and the expiring contracts, they essentially have to build around Brand, Mobley, Kaman and Thomas, with perhaps Livingston being re-signed, although it's a big question-mark of whether he can stay healthy or not. Is it doable? Yes. They're fortunate that the big contracts of Cassells and Maggette are expiring next year (unless they re-signed Maggette last season, I don't remember, I just remember him being in trade rumours), which means they unload a lot of cap space, meaning they can get a fresh start at building a team around those four. Still, this is going to be a lost year.