Weekly Dose of Data Analyst#8— Which NBA Player is the most cost effective during 2019–2020 Playoffs
I want to know which NBA players are the most cost effective during 2019–2020 playoffs.
Data Required:
- All NBA Players’ Salary in 2019–2020 who have played in 2019–2020 playoffs
- All NBA Players’ BPM in 2019–2020 playoffs
BPM is a value used to assess each players efficiency. It is a per-100-possession stat where 0.0 is league average, +5 means the player is 5 points better than an average player over 100 possessions (which is about All-NBA team level), -2 is replacement level, and -5 is really bad.
Its formula can be seen here.
To make the comparison between two better, each players salary has been normalised to fit the range -5 to 10 which is also the range of BPM value.
Summary
The scatter plot below can be divided into four quadrant. Each quadrant’s representation has been summarised as below.
Each data point represent each individual NBA player. Depend on which quadrant they are in, it means different things. If the data point is in quadrants highlighted in green (quadrant 1 & 3), it means the player’s salary roughly fits his efficiency. Conversely, if the data point is in quadrant highlighted in red (quadrant 2 & 4), it means his salary level does not match his efficiency (underpaid or overpaid). Also the arrow direction shows a detailed information based on each data point location in the quadrant.
So it is quite easy to see who is the most cost effective NBA players in 2019–2020 playoffs. That is…..
Donovan Mitchell (Utah Jazz)!!
With 9.4 BPM during playoffs, he only got paid $3.6 Million that year. Players who has similar performance like James Harden and Kawhi Leonard whose salary is about 10 times of Donovan got paid. Upon checking the internet quickly, he recently got a big extension contract ($163 Million for five years)from Utah Jazz. So that basically that has put his yearly salary to the same level as two people mentioned above.
Out of curiosity, also had a look on the least cost effective NBA players, that would be …..
Russell Westbrook (Houston Rocket).
His BPM is -3 which is the performance of an end-of-bench player (worse than bench player), however, his salary in 2019–2020 is almost same as Lebron James ($37 million). On top of that, his salary is one of top salary in 2019–2020. The other two players got paid $38 million this year are Chris Paul, James Harden (who is also from Houston Rocket). I think Houston Rocket management team is going to have a tough time off season, thinking about how to use their money more effectively.
As always, I have made an interactive Tableau workbook for you to play with. Please click this link to access it. You can change each individual NBA player who has played in 2019–2020 playoffs to see their performance vs their salary. Let me know your thoughts.
Data Source
All 2019–2020 NBA player salary:
2020–21 NBA Player Contracts | Basketball-Reference.com (basketball-reference.com)
All 2019–2020 playoffs BPM data:
2020 NBA Playoffs Stats: Advanced | Basketball-Reference.com (basketball-reference.com)
