Guide to Participating in Interactive 2017 NBA Free Agency Tracker
I’ve built a Free Agency tracking excel spreadsheet that allows you to create hypothetical signings and view roster assessments
Jul 22, 2017 · 6 min read

I decided to test a bit more with Excel and combine my passion for this entertaining (or, entertaining at one point) 2017 NBA offseason to create a workbook that records the individual moves, the salaries, and various statistical measures to evaluate (although a bit prematurely) the aptitude of each NBA roster. Here, I’ll give a quick overview of what to expect, so that everyone will know to how have fun with it, if he/she has free time.
Instructions:
- Upon entering, the home page will describe the functions of each of the three relevant pages in the set. It also contains hyperlinks to the default, second & third sets (the fourth set isn’t there right now because it slowed the spreadsheet down considerably).
- Take a look at the default sheet, as it is the most recently updated with free agency signings for each team. (There are a few exceptions, however — the salaries for less prominent players might not be 100% accurate.)
- The “Main Hub”, “FA Available” and “Team Assessment” pages all have their own unique measures and interactive capabilities.
Functions & Capabilities:
Main Hub: Interactive Columns

- First column allows you to choose the team of each NBA player. The selections are already preset such that each player is on his real-life team, but you’ll have the opportunity to tinker with this if you’d like. Therefore, if you want to pull up Set 2 or Set 3 and act as if Gordon Hayward re-signed with the Jazz, in an alternate world, for a max contract, then you’ll have the opportunity.


- Once you sort the players by team affiliations (such that each NBA team and the free agent class lines up alphabetically), there is another column that gives you the ability to set a lineup for any team of your choice — it includes my quirky positional names as well. The choice of position yields a different, rough estimate for that player’s minutes allocation. Starters are generally pegged at 36 minutes a piece, sixth men, 24; other rotation players, 18; bench/reserves, 2. These values could be tweaked a bit.

- You can also interact with the free agents & place them onto rosters, but you’ll also need to visit the “FA Available” tab by clicking one of the “TRY, click here” hyperlinks to assign pre-existing FAs salaries.
Main Hub: Player Statistical Assessments
- For the most part, the remainder of the columns contain relevant statistics, compiled from Basketball Reference & ESPN and organized with Excel’s VLOOKUP so that the correct values correspond to each NBA player. If the NBA player-in-question is a rookie or simply didn’t play in 2016–17, he’ll either have #N/A listed or a more appropriate text value.
- I’ve listed the players’ 2016–17 RPM Wins, 1-year VORP/Salary Quotients (which have been corrected, with cap weights, for optimal team assessments), and regular season JPM values for 450+ players (screenshots below).


- Lastly, if you set a filter onto the Main Hub (by using the Main Menu), then you’ll be able to sort the data set according to various categories and check for the greatest RPM Wins value, TS%, etc.
FA Available: Interactive Columns
- This page is for any pre-existing free agent. To interact with the page, simply pick a desired FA target, assign him a salary in the red column* and check “Yes” in the blank box with an arrow when finished.
- To assign a salary of $5.3 million in 2016–17, simply enter 5.3 into red column.


- Afterward, go back to the Main Hub with the hyperlink and put said free agent on his new team. His salary & VORP measure will appear on the Main Hub worksheet.
Team Assessment Page: Statistics/Evaluations
- The responses on this page are contingent upon the team affiliations in the Main Hub. If you chose to re-assign every NBA player into free agency, then the Team Assessment page will not render any beneficial information. That would take a while to accomplish, and I don’t recommend trying it.
- The sortable team statistics are designed to provide a preliminary source for evaluation in the upcoming season, but because I’ve yet to include estimations for 2017–18 RPM Wins, we won’t have extraordinarily accurate predictions for the upcoming year (rookie RPM Wins are currently zero). So, the NBA teams will likely be ranked as if their players’ production is relatively constant.


- The weighted (experimental) RPM Wins section is recorded given each player’s minutes allocation. If you tinker with a player’s position in the Main Hub and move him from Pace Arbiter to Sixth Man, then the response on the Team Assessment page will also change. If you remember from above, we changed Tyson Chandler’s position (& therefore his minutes allocation, so the RPM (Wins) Weighted Total will change accordingly).
- Despite the lack of predictive power, Golden State and Houston as 1 and 2 on the board, respectively, is a reasonably intuitive result.

- The corrected Salary Quotients, ranked according to percentile, give a great picture of which rosters are created with the most/least adherence to cost efficiency. Once again, if you change the layout in the Main Hub, then the result will change.
- Furthermore, to determine if a roster has notable shooters, I chose to give players with at least 55% TS% AND at least .35 3PAr a value of “yes”; the amount of “yes” responses determine the “# of Notable Shooters”. It’s not a perfect barometer, but a quick glance at roster capability is the goal here.
- Plus-defense is calculated given the status of each player’s positional DRPM z-score. If the z-score is greater than .75 (which was ironically Kawhi Leonard’s value), then the player was considered a plus defender. DRPM isn’t the absolute when it comes to defensive player evaluation, but it gives a reasonable representation of solid defenders and is beneficial to use when computing for 450+ players at once.
With this knowledge, you can really interact with the application/spreadsheet and create as many strange hypotheticals for this offseason that you’d like. Continue to enjoy the remainder of the offseason!
