The Waive and Stretch: NBA Team Excess Spending, Tyrese Haliburton Getting His Own, The Sengun Shot Put, And More
Welcome back to another edition of The Waive and Stretch Newsletter. A quick shameless plug to note that I am looking to work in basketball in any capacity and would love to connect with anyone in the industry or trying to break in. Please feel free to share this with anyone who you might find it interesting. Let's get into it!
What Caught My Attention This Week
A Look At Teams Willingness to Spend
This week, I did some thinking on how we could measure teams willingness to spend money in excess. Since almost every team essentially spends at least to the salary cap these days, there were really two buckets that made the most sense to calculate this: How teams utilized their exceptions (MLE, BAE) available to them to add new salary after being capped out, and to what extent they spent past the salary cap (being driven by using bird rights, extensions, draft picks, exceptions etc). So I calculated out each of these buckets for every team over the last five years, found the averages for each team over that time span and put together the below.
The Y axis shows each teams average amount spent over the salary cap over the last five years. A no brainer here, with the Warriors, Clippers, Nets and Bucks clearly spending the most money. The X axis shows the average percent used of the exceptions that were available to them over the last five years. So, did teams leave any money on the table with regards to not using a portion or all of their MLE or BAE. Really no grand takeaways here, other than the fact that, by and large, the teams who are spending more utilize more of their exceptions to add new salary. Which is pretty common sense for obvious reasons. (One thing to note, this is for the 2019/20 season through the current season).
Three Things To Keep An Eye On This Season
1. Tyrese Haliburton Getting To His Shot Off The Dribble
Tyrese Haliburton has the Pacers top ranked offense humming, as he’s putting up 23.8 points and 12.2 assists per game. He’s leading the league in assists, looking the part as the unselfish floor general running the show. However, whats stuck out to me this year is his ability and willingness to take more off-the-dribble and step-back shots. Even more, he’s been going to it during crunch time in games this season. This skill could be what takes his game to another level, as all the best lead guards do it. It could also be necessary once the Pacers find themselves in the playoffs and the defenses get tougher and take away the easier looks. Given his unorthodox shot form and slower release, this kind of self creation didn’t really seem too realistic for Haliburton coming out of college. But it would seem he’s put in the work and its now paying off.
2. The Sengun Shot Put
If you haven’t heard, the Houston Rockets are 6-3, have a top ten offense and defense, and just took down the defending champ Denver Nuggets. One of the biggest drivers of their stellar play? Alperen Sengun. Sengun is one of three players this season to average at least 19 points, 8 rebounds and 6 assists a game, alongside Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic. Pretty good company. The Rockets have a 13.7 net rating with Sengun on the court, including a stingy 104.3 defensive rating. On offense, he serves as a hub out of the pick and roll where he can finish on the roll or find a teammate. He’s got a very nice floater game, where he can catch on the roll and put up an almost shot put like floater that seemingly goes in every time. According to Cleaning The Glass, about 36% of his shots are coming from that short mid-range area, where he’s hitting those shots at a 60% clip. Pairing this with his ability to pass makes him a deadly weapon out of the pick and roll.
3. The New Orleans Pelicans Two-Ways
No team has had to rely on their two-way players more than the New Orleans Pelicans. Their two way players have played 14.7% of the teams total minutes played so far this season, by far the most in the league. The next closest team is Charlotte at 7.8%. This is largely being driven by the play of Matt Ryan, who has played all 10 games this season and is averaging 23.3 minutes per game. However, since joining the team on a two way, Jeremiah Robinson Earl has played in three games and averaged 21 minutes a game. With Larry Nance now sidelined with injury, he could be in line for a steady diet of minutes. Thirdly, Dereon Seabron has played in fifty minutes across four games, behind both his colleagues but still ninth in total minutes among two way players.
All this to say, the Pelicans have really needed their two way guys. They have been continuously bit with the injury bug, so that makes sense. They also have an open roster spot, and it will be interesting to see if and when they fill it with one of their two way players, which one will it be. It may just depend on their injuries at that point, or which players’ games run out first. They are still in the luxury tax as things stand, so I would expect that they don’t fill that roster spot any time soon.
Estimate Player Value Updates
Current Year Top Ten
Life Of Contract Top Ten
