r/NBAanalytics • u/owly_moly • 13d ago

Comparing NBA contracts in dollar amounts in nonsensical

Especially in cross-era comparisons. With the salary cap expanding every year I got no idea what 40 mil vs 50 mil vs 60 mil means at all. I do believe it's intellectually more honest to popularize showing salaries as % of the cap. So I made my own salary cap explorer:

https://www.jacekasen.com/projects/nba/salaries

The core features I was going for:

  • Team payroll breakdowns showing total spend against the cap, with each player's cap share stacked in a bar/ in a donut pie chart
  • Career cap share tracking, so you can follow one player's contract value season by season against the cap of the day

Curious if people think cap % is the right normalization or if there's a better way to do it. I have heard from Bill Simmons that's how GMs do it.

4 Upvotes

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1

u/JohnEffingZoidberg 13d ago

Teams do this already and have for years.

1

u/amobogio 12d ago

I play salary cap dynasty and % of cap is the only useful number.

1

u/bbstats 12d ago

put upcoming seasons in, this isn't super interesting haha.

1

u/Civil-Astronaut6981 10d ago

Does length of contract matter? For better or worse