NBA
What is the Ideal Price for a Basketball Player?
Through the work I have done with EcoStats, I have been thinking extensively about the relative price disparity between players for the exact same production. For example, Kawhi Leonard earns 10 times more than Pascal Siakam. Can this be justified? Especially if both players provide the same production?
It’s an economic nightmare. The root of all problems in the NBA are trade demands, selfish players padding stats, refusal to play defense, and the list can go on. Also, this question came to mind: what would the ideal price for a basketball player be? The answer is surprisingly easy.
The same.
What if all NBA Players Were Paid the Same?
If you removed economic incentives from the equation — paying a rookie the same salary as a superstar — the point that would be driven home is every player matters equally.
Without proverbial mouths to feed, without having to create a predictable offense centered around the max player(s), without having “some” players expending effort on defense while superstars prefer “load management” days, the notion of TEAM would be pronounced.
How can Los Angeles Lakers coach Luke Walton be adjudicated fairly? Especially when he’s being forced to coach the NBA brand known as LeBron James? For all of LeBron’s impressive list of accomplishments on the offensive end of the floor, he is a TERRIBLE defensive player. And the worst part is that James’ defensive ineptitude has nothing to do with ability — it’s his lack of EFFORT. What recourse does Walton have available to properly discipline a player for dogging it on D when the said brand is essentially his BOSS?
Theory > Practice
The reality is that a professional sports franchise will never pay all players equally. Regardless of any analysis from numbers-driven outsiders like myself.
I could write a master’s thesis. Maybe even win the Nobel Prize for economics and empirically prove the price point for athletes in a complicated series of algorithms. Nothing would matter. The NBA would pretend not to hear the findings while they count out their large stacks of money.
But perhaps this is precisely the problem.
The Stars in the Sky
In a league marketed by its stars, teams routinely throw their philosophies out the window. The media conglomerate, known as the NBA, enables these philosophies. The casualties? The fans who give up hours of their lives every single week, believing in something.
The hopes and dreams of many are placed upon that shining star above us. But upon further inspection, many discover they have been praying to a satellite this entire time.
Ain’t modern life grand?
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@Raptors via Twitter
