Does Performance Equal Pay?
NBA players are among the highest paid of all professional athletes. While many factors contribute to this, such as the structure of the National Basketball Association and how it negotiates contract deals with its players, it is still a shock how much some of these players are getting paid. To emphasize this point, in 2016, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck signed a record breaking NFL contract for $87 million guaranteed salary, and yet, seven NBA players surpassed that amount within 24 hours of free agency. Even within the NBA itself, there is a huge discrepancy where low-production, relatively unknown NBA players are signing deals for at least $30 million compared to others that are good, well-established players. How is that possible? With this project, I want to find out if NBA players are being paid these impressive salaries based on how well they actually play. In this op-ed, I decided to analyze one of the top-paid and one of the worst-paid NBA players of the 2019–2020 season in relation to their performances in order to argue which player(s) are being overpaid or underpaid.
To begin, here’s a list of the top 30 highest-paid players of 2019–20.
I created a bar graph to visualize the data.
Stephen Curry is currently the highest-paid player with a salary of $40,231,758, followed by Chris Paul, $38,506,482 and Russell Westbrook, $38,178,000. These are the numbers that these players earn in just one year.
Next, I am going to look at the current PER ranking during this 2019–20 NBA season. “The PER sums up all a player’s positive accomplishments, subtracts the negative accomplishments, and returns a per-minute rating of a player’s performance.” It’s basically how the players are being efficient when they are on the court. These numbers will increase when players score, obtain positive stats like assists, rebounds, blocks, and steals and the numbers would decrease when players create turnovers or miss free throws or shots. I chose this curriculum of statistics instead of points per game, minutes per game or any other positive statistics because the teams prefer players who are being efficient in both offense and defense instead of just scoring a lot of points.
I created a bar graph to better visualize this data as well.
Giannis Antetokounmpo is at the top of the ranking with 33.34, followed by Luka Doncic, 32.96, and James Harden, 32.27.
To avoid unconscious bias, I eliminated players that haven’t had a chance to play this year due to injury from the top 30 salary list. These players include: John Wall, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson.
I created a separate excel sheet to analyze if the top-paid players are actually performing well this current season. If the players are listed in the top 30 salary as well as the top 30 PER current ranking, I marked them 1. If they are in the top 30 salary but not in the top 30 PER current ranking list, I marked them 0. Among the 30 top-paid athletes, 15 of these players (excluding the 3 injured players I mentioned above) also made the top 30 player efficiency rating. Although the discrepancy in top-paid athletes who did not make it on the top performing list (12) can be explained by injury status, years established in the NBA, high profile, etc., 15/27 (55.56%) players are paid well and performing well. Arguably, this isn’t quite the number you would expect when you see the names of famous NBA players in the top-paid salary list. Even though the percentage is just over 50%, normally you would expect the number to be at least around 70–80%.
Now, the inconsistency of these statistics based on the players’ salaries influenced the analysis of who is the best performer that is being paid less than the usual top-paid athlete, and who is the worst performer that is being paid more than the usual top-paid athletes this season.
Who is underpaid?
This is Giannis Antetokounmpo, who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks. His salary is 24.16 million USD and his PER rating is 33.34. To support this claim, I also looked at his fantasy ranking, which is calculated based on his detailed statistics per game.
I picked Giannis Antetokounmpo as the best case of an NBA player who is paid significantly less than most other players, but is a top performer. His salary is only $24.2 million in comparison to Stephen Curry’s $40 million salary. Antetokounmpo is not even ranked within the top 30 highest paid players, yet has a score of 33.34 in terms of the Player Efficiency Rating (PER) which puts him in the number one spot as the most efficient player in the NBA right now. In addition, Antetokounmpo’s current Fantasy ranking is #5 which reinforces his position as a top performer. Giannis Antetokounmpo also won a MVP award last year. He is 25 years old so he still has a long way to go in his basketball career. Based on his statistics and performance, he has high potential to become one of the highest-paid basketball players.
Who is overpaid?
This is Chris Paul, a 34 years-old veteran who plays for Oklahoma City Thunder. His salary is $38.51 million and his PER rating is 20.55. I chose Chris Paul to exemplify the worst case where a player receives a very high salary but does not perform well. The top 10 salary chart indicates that Paul is ranked number two as the highest paid NBA player of the season, just under Stephen Curry. However, looking at his Player Efficiency Rating (PER) shows that he is ranked #41 which falls far below Giannis Antetokounmpo signaling that he is not a very efficient player. In comparison to Antetokounmpo, Paul’s Fantasy ranking is also far below at #40.
Conclusion:
Based on my data analysis, I would argue that the performance of NBA players is not equivalent to their salaries. The analysis of the best and worst case above shows that players that are performing very well are not necessarily among the highest paid, and players that are not performing very well are among the highest paid. Hence, it can be concluded that NBA players are subject to being overpaid or underpaid in regards to their salaries not aligning with their performance.
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