Nathan Sliver here with sevenfortyseven.com to assess how messed up our league is. What do I mean by this? As one GM recently told me, "You couldn't find a buyer for Shawn Kemp in this market." Another GM said, "Yeah man, it's pretty gross. People are gunna be forced to compete reluctantly." In other words, it seems like there are a whole lot of teams not trying to win right now. Well, me being me I wanted to see how gross it is.
Methodology
I took the total player ratings of every player on every team since 1990. Then I ranked them highest to lowest within each team year. I then only included the top eight player rankings from each team. To put it more succinctly, I totaled the eight highest total player ratings per team per year.
This Year
First, let's look at this year's teams. This gives us a decent idea of whether or not the top eight ratings is a good method. At the top you see the contenders, LA, Milwaukee, Sacrament, etc. At the bottom you see, well, the bottom dwellers, Chicago, Golden State, Dallas, Portland, etc. So it looks good.
- 2008.GIF (40.49 KiB) Viewed 1407 times
If this year is high on tanking teams, we'd expect to see a long low tail to the right. I'll admit, the tail isn't as long as I thought it might be so I figure I'd better compare it to other years to get a feel for how bad the competition is this year.
Summary Stats
- Summary Stats.GIF (24.57 KiB) Viewed 1407 times
This was the point when I knew this year was messed up.
The 25th percentile team is the lowest it has been since 1991! In fact, the total is the lowest it has been since 1991. Back in 1991 the league was still in ramp-up mode, there was not a plethora of stars to be had. It is worth nothing that there are only 47 blue players in the league this year, the lowest total since 1990 but there are 79 green players compared to 67 in 1991 and 199 yellow players compared to 159 in '91 and only 36 employed orange players compared to 97 in 1991. What does all this mean, probably that the good teams are deeper than ever before.
Distributions
So what does this look like? Here is how the distribution of top eight team ratings has changed over the past four years.
- 4 year change.GIF (25.06 KiB) Viewed 1407 times
There are now
6! with top 8 rating totals under 6200. That is the most teams that bad ever. More even than 1990. Why now? Do people really covet Steph Curry that badly? I don't think so. I think it is a solid draft year coming up, including the Chef. I also think that the salary cap plays a heavier part than ever in teams' decision making so maintaining young low wage talent is important. What does the future hold? I think we'll see an influx of talent that will raise the number of good players but I think we will continue to see more bad teams in the league.
