The Waive and Stretch: Teams' Cap Utilization Rates, Free Agent EPVs, GM Exit Interviews
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 think might find it interesting. Let's get into it!
What Caught My Attention This Week
Just How Much Of Each Teams Cap Did They Utilize On The Court?
This past week, I kicked around the idea of trying to come up with a way to see just how much of each teams’ total cap spend was actually utilized in the season. For my purposes, I measured utilization in regular season games played. All players were allocated a portion of their respective teams cap for 82 games, aka their salary/cap hit for the season. If a team had all 15 players play in all 82 games of the regular season and did not have any dead cap on their books, then their utilization rate would have been 100%. Obviously, that would never be the case with limitations around active players for games, player injuries, rotations etc. But I wanted to see which teams were getting the most out of how much they were spending for the season in terms of just playing in basketball games. So to figure out the total utilized amount by player, I simply just took each player’s games played on the season divided by 82 games and multiplied that by their cap hit for the season, then added that up by team.
However, I did have to adjust for a couple things. First, a dead cap hit on a teams books. In some cases, a team waived a player and took a dead cap hit before that player played a single game for that team. No adjustment needed there, that amount is completely “unutilized”, a sunk cost. But in some cases, a player was waived after playing some games for a team. I had to calculate how much of that dead cap hit amount was “utilized” up to that point in the season. Take Ben Simmons for example. He was allocated almost $40 million of the Brooklyn Nets cap this season for, in theory, 82 games. He only played in 33 games for them. So his unutilized amount, or “True Dead Cap Hit” I calculated as 49/82 * 39.2 million, his cap hit for the year.
I also had to adjust for trades. Because players could have been traded mid-season, I had to adjust for how much of that players cap hit for the season should be used to calculate the utilization rate applicable to each team. See the table below using Luka Doncic as an example.
Basically, I just had to split the cap hit for what percent of the season was spent on each team, and then figured out the games played % for the two teams. Finally, I had to adjust for players signed mid-season. This one was simple enough, I just had to change how many games said players were eligible to play depending on when they were signed during the season.
The below chart is the end result from the season. The Sacramento Kings and the Minnesota Timberwolves led the league with a utilization rate (utilized amount / total cap spend) at a rate of just over 85%. Only three teams were below 50% on the season, and they were the Philadelphia 76ers (45%), New Orleans Pelicans (44%), and Toronto Raptors (35%). Obviously, teams that are tanking are going to have lower utilization rates with their players with bigger cap hits generally play less games towards the end of the season. Ditto with teams who suffered a lot of injuries to their players with bigger cap hits.
Free Agent Estimated Player Values (EPVs)
I’ve brought back the Estimated Player Values (EPV) for this years free agent class. As of now, I’ve included all players with player and team options as well, though these will update once decisions are made on these options. Just like last year, you can toggle the “Years” column from 1-5 and it will update the EPV columns accordingly. You can also filter by Position, free agency type, or incumbent team. You can find the full list here.
NBA Decision Maker Exit Interviews
With The season over, team exit interviews and end of season pressers are starting to roll in. I always try to catch the video of all the general managers/lead decision makers for every team to see if anything can be gleaned with respect to a team’s plan heading into the offseason. I’ve compiled a Youtube playlist where I’ve added every one of these videos that I have been able to find. I’m going to continue adding to this playlist as more seasons end. Some quotes that have caught my eye so far:
Zach Kleiman, Memphis Grizzlies
We need to have a very open mind from a team-building standpoint on what we can do to put this group in the best position that we can going forward, but it doesn’t matter, it hasn’t been good enough… I don’t think we can look back at this series and this season and say, “oh we’re close”. No, we’re not. There’s a lot of work to be done. I need to be open minded on multiple respects.
Justin Zanik, Utah Jazz
The main reason that we have acquired our assets and been very disciplined about our flexibility is to be ready for any opportunity. If there is a great opportunity out there to quote unquote speed it up, we have the ability to do that. That part I’m not in control of, that’s the market. But we’ve positioned ourselves over the last couple years to be ready for that. I also don’t know what time or when those become available… But the organization is aligned to our first goal, and that’s to build a championship competitive club that can go deep in the playoffs for a long time. So, if those opportunities where we can kind of speed it up and do that, we’ll do it. And if they don’t, the flexibility allows us to do it at any time.
Will Dawkins, Washington Wizards
We haven’t put a timeline on when we want to get there. We want to make sure we’re providing the runway for guys to take off and play young players, and I think we did that this year and we will continue to do that next year. You saw the young lineups, you will continue to see that next year as well.
Sean Marks, Brooklyn Nets
(On sustained success under new CBA) I do think that its important to have some guys under contract that you control the contracts. You drafted them, you developed them, and they got to their second contract under your watch. You know, its difficult when your trying to acquire max level talent on max contracts, right? Those days are probably gone of going and getting 2-3 max free agents, that’s going to be difficult to do.
Jeff Peterson, Charlotte Hornets
I hate to sound like a broken record but I can’t emphasize enough. When you try to skip steps and you go overpay a free agent or you make a trade that completely jeopardizes your future, it can handicap you and you’ll be stuck for a long time. I would say we’re still in the premature stages to build this thing the right way.