Garnett vs Russell

[eminence]

That’s good info. I think the counterargument is that, with professional basketball not being nearly as lucrative as it is now, talented people might not even have ended up pursuing basketball to the point of playing in college. You’re saying you doubt people were turning down basketball scholarships, and that’s probably largely right, but there is no basketball scholarship if the person simply never opted to devote a lot of time and effort to becoming good at basketball.

At some point the counterargument should offer evidence of such.

What were these talented (read tall, probably black) men pursuing instead? Athletics (namely basketball for tall men) was one of the first dreams/goals for black kids in large part because it was their first real high salary opportunity (directly in sports or through attaining a college degree). The speculated tech/etc equivalent white-collar opportunities were non-existent for black men without a college degree in the 50s/60s.

Approximately 3-4% of non-white (mostly black) men born '30-'34 attained college degrees.

[eminence]

I'm not arguing the NBA talent pool hasn't expanded vastly from the very early days - if we took '51 as the baseline my estimate is that it approximately doubled by the late 50s and tripled by the mid 60s almost exclusively due to acceptance of black athletes. Since then, that expansion has dramatically slowed and scaled roughly with population*. I'd estimate approximately ~4x since 1960, so ~8x since the 51 baseline, as talked through earlier.

I am arguing financial incentives have driven virtually none of this (okay, maybe the international expansion due to funding international marketing/exposure), because they *are* relatively inelastic. Between scholarships/salaries/racism the 60s NBA was already a 99th percentile career option for black men.

*=population that has the potential to play NBA level basketball, the NBA being super popular in China has done almost nothing to expand the NBA talent pool, while the expansion of basketball in Europe and the very beginnings in Africa are adding to the talent pool

[Djoker]

Just want to say that any discussion of salaries should be inflation adjusted. For instance, Bill Russell was making $100k starting in 1965. That's not a lot of money today but back then when you could buy a 3 bedroom house for $20k, that was a **** ton of money. Maybe equivalent to a $5 million salary today in terms of purchasing power. Still well short of what today's superstars earn but it's not peanuts.

[lessthanjake]

That’s good info. I think the counterargument is that, with professional basketball not being nearly as lucrative as it is now, talented people might not even have ended up pursuing basketball to the point of playing in college. You’re saying you doubt people were turning down basketball scholarships, and that’s probably largely right, but there is no basketball scholarship if the person simply never opted to devote a lot of time and effort to becoming good at basketball.

At some point the counterargument should offer evidence of such.

What were these talented (read tall, probably black) men pursuing instead? Athletics (namely basketball for tall men) was one of the first dreams/goals for black kids in large part because it was their first real high salary opportunity (directly in sports or through attaining a college degree). The speculated tech/etc equivalent white-collar opportunities were non-existent for black men without a college degree in the 50s/60s.

Approximately 3-4% of non-white (mostly black) men born '30-'34 attained college degrees.

I think it was still the case back then that for the vast majority of potentially extremely talented basketball players, trying to play professional basketball made the most financial sense. But people don’t always make the absolute optimal life choices, especially when they’re young, and they also have other life interests and considerations that affect the choices they make. The more that playing basketball is just many orders of magnitude more lucrative than anything else the person could possibly do, the more they’ll be driven to it above other interests they may have, and the more they’ll put in the time and effort to make the most of their potential. I think there surely were guys with a lot of talent back then who probably *should’ve* really pursued playing basketball professionally, but who didn’t quite have enough incentive to actually end up doing it (or to end up focusing on it as much as they needed to in order to get good). I just think it basically has to be true that professional basketball being more lucrative has an effect, even if it was the case that, for virtually all potentially talented players, professional basketball was a good decision compared to the other options.

The one thing I’d note about this, though, is that there may be reason to believe that the people who didn’t end up in professional basketball due to this probably never would’ve become *very top-tier* players. After all, if basketball makes the most financial sense and you’re still not motivated to do it and put lots of time and effort into it, then you almost certainly don’t have the combination of work ethic and love of basketball that is essentially required to end up being a truly great NBA player. That said, there may be people who could’ve had the work ethic and love of the game, but never even really picked up basketball almost at all, who might’ve done so if it was so astronomically lucrative that trying it out is a complete no-brainer.

[One_and_Done]

Just want to say that any discussion of salaries should be inflation adjusted. For instance, Bill Russell was making $100k starting in 1965. That's not a lot of money today but back then when you could buy a 3 bedroom house for $20k, that was a **** ton of money. Maybe equivalent to a $5 million salary today in terms of purchasing power. Still well short of what today's superstars earn but it's not peanuts.

I adjusted for inflation.

[One_and_Done]

I have never heard this version of economics where the salary increases 30,000%, and the number of available jobs triples, but it supposedly has little to no effect on the number of people pursuing said job.

[lessthanjake]

I have never heard this version of economics where the salary increases 30,000%, and the number of available jobs triples, but it supposedly has little to no effect on the number of people pursuing said job.

In economics terms, what’s being posited is basically just that the labor supply of top-tier basketball players is quite inelastic. And it’s not totally crazy to think that that’d be the case, when we consider that the other options for the relevant people were almost certainly substantially less lucrative even in the lower-paying era. That said, I don’t think it’s totally inelastic (for reasons I’ve discussed in this thread), so I do think there’s an effect here.

[Special_Puppy]

Just want to say that any discussion of salaries should be inflation adjusted. For instance, Bill Russell was making $100k starting in 1965. That's not a lot of money today but back then when you could buy a 3 bedroom house for $20k, that was a **** ton of money. Maybe equivalent to a $5 million salary today in terms of purchasing power. Still well short of what today's superstars earn but it's not peanuts.

It's $1 Million today FWIW https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

[One_and_Done]

I have never heard this version of economics where the salary increases 30,000%, and the number of available jobs triples, but it supposedly has little to no effect on the number of people pursuing said job.

In economics terms, what’s being posited is basically just that the labor supply of top-tier basketball players is quite inelastic. And it’s not totally crazy to think that that’d be the case, when we consider that the other options for the relevant people were almost certainly substantially less lucrative even in the lower-paying era. That said, I don’t think it’s totally inelastic (for reasons I’ve discussed in this thread), so I do think there’s an effect here.

It's crazy. Part of why it's crazy is that many athletes have the option of playing multiple sports, and when one is so much more lucrative that's a huge factor. Another reason it's crazy is that many great players, e.g. Steve Nash, are not 7 foot behemoths who naturally trend into sporting pursuits. In 1950 the parents of a potential Steve Nash might tell him 'you're wasting your time on this nonsense, you need to focus on your career'. It's also nonsense because the whole world is now drawn to your league for the money.

The biggest reason it is silly has nothing to do with the choices of an athlete already playing ball though. There are so many guys who would never think to play basketball if the average salary was 40k today, which is the inflation adjusted version of 1950 salaries. If that was the salary, Tim Duncan would never have messed around playing ball after a hurricane wrecked his swimming pool in the Virgin Islands. He'd probably have just focused on study while it got fixed. Today there are hundreds of millions of dollars invested into finding guys like Tim Duncan or Hakeem or Mutombo. There are programs set up to keep guys like Iverson or Stephen Jackson off the street. There are kick backs and dodgy guys giving big money to these kids, to keep them out of trouble and on the straight and narrow.

There are programs to train kids earlier than ever, and to see if they have the right skills. Many great players would never be discovered at all if there wasn't so much money at stake. Even today, with all the money involved, the scouts often get it wrong and draft the wrong players. Imagine how bad that was in the 50s and 60s. Many of the players in the league were probably the wrong ones, because a backwater process missed the right ones and they never got a shot.

[One_and_Done]

Just want to say that any discussion of salaries should be inflation adjusted. For instance, Bill Russell was making $100k starting in 1965. That's not a lot of money today but back then when you could buy a 3 bedroom house for $20k, that was a **** ton of money. Maybe equivalent to a $5 million salary today in terms of purchasing power. Still well short of what today's superstars earn but it's not peanuts.

It's $1 Million today FWIW https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Inflation is intended to calculate purchasing power. Russell's $1 mill salary in 65 is irrelevant for a kid who was entering the league at the same time Russell did, because that kid and their family were making decisions about whether to have their son play ball based on 50s salaries. When 'Rill Bussell', a 'could have been great player' was 16 in 1950 his parents might have told him 'the average salary is only 40k in 2025 money, you need to be serious'. Ideally Rill would have been treating this like his potential job, and training every day, several years before 16 tbh. It's too late at 16 to develop some skills (e.g. a Kyrie handle).

[lessthanjake]

I have never heard this version of economics where the salary increases 30,000%, and the number of available jobs triples, but it supposedly has little to no effect on the number of people pursuing said job.

In economics terms, what’s being posited is basically just that the labor supply of top-tier basketball players is quite inelastic. And it’s not totally crazy to think that that’d be the case, when we consider that the other options for the relevant people were almost certainly substantially less lucrative even in the lower-paying era. That said, I don’t think it’s totally inelastic (for reasons I’ve discussed in this thread), so I do think there’s an effect here.

It's crazy. Part of why it's crazy is that many athletes have the option of playing multiple sports, and when one is so much more lucrative that's a huge factor.

But we aren’t talking about a scenario where one sport got way more lucrative than before while the other sports didn’t get more lucrative. All sports were paying way less in Russell’s era than they do now. It’s not like the NFL and MLB were paying millions back in Russell’s era and the NBA was alone in paying far less than today. Nor is it like other sports are paying 1960s salaries today. Sports as a whole has gotten far more lucrative. There may be some relative differences in terms of what sports have increased by the most, but the general story is the same across the board. The bigger issue here is whether people simply decided not to play sports back then due to sports being less lucrative.

The biggest reason it is silly has nothing to do with the choices of an athlete already playing ball though. There are so many guys who would never think to play basketball if the average salary was 40k today, which is the inflation adjusted version of 1950 salaries.

You’re not talking about a question that should be assessed by mere inflation adjustment. Inflation adjustment might tell you the absolute purchasing power someone had in today’s terms. But you’re ignoring the fact that the average purchasing power in the US at the time was way lower. The real GDP per capita (i.e. inflation-adjusted income per person) in 1960 in today’s dollars was $19,000. Today, it is like $70,000. (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA). In other words, relative to other jobs at the time, a job in 1960 that would pay $40,000 in inflation-adjusted terms would be more like $150,000 in today’s terms, when discussing it in relative terms to other jobs at the time. And that’s the relevant question here, since it’s a question of what the opportunity cost is of playing basketball. If the non-basketball options are good enough, then people won’t play basketball. It’s much harder to imagine that that’d be the case for something that pays the equivalent of being paid $150,000 in today’s terms, than it is for something that pays the equivalent of $40,000 in today’s terms. By putting it merely in inflation-adjusted terms, you’re effectively assessing how good a salary in 1960 would be relative to today’s job market. That’s obviously a flawed approach. And this is not even getting into the fact that the very top talent made way more than that $40,000 number back then (though I grant you that that may not be entirely relevant when a lot of the relevant decision points would be before someone could know if they’d fall into that bucket).

[One_and_Done]

In economics terms, what’s being posited is basically just that the labor supply of top-tier basketball players is quite inelastic. And it’s not totally crazy to think that that’d be the case, when we consider that the other options for the relevant people were almost certainly substantially less lucrative even in the lower-paying era. That said, I don’t think it’s totally inelastic (for reasons I’ve discussed in this thread), so I do think there’s an effect here.

It's crazy. Part of why it's crazy is that many athletes have the option of playing multiple sports, and when one is so much more lucrative that's a huge factor.

But we aren’t talking about a scenario where one sport got way more lucrative than before while the other sports didn’t get more lucrative. All sports were paying way less in Russell’s era than they do now. It’s not like the NFL and MLB were paying millions back in Russell’s era and the NBA was alone in paying far less than today. Nor is it like other sports are paying 1960s salaries today. Sports as a whole has gotten far more lucrative. There may be some relative differences in terms of what sports have increased by the most, but the general story is the same across the board. The bigger issue here is whether people simply decided not to play sports back then due to sports being less lucrative.

The biggest reason it is silly has nothing to do with the choices of an athlete already playing ball though. There are so many guys who would never think to play basketball if the average salary was 40k today, which is the inflation adjusted version of 1950 salaries.

You’re not talking about a question that should be assessed by mere inflation adjustment. Inflation adjustment might tell you the absolute purchasing power someone had in today’s terms. But you’re ignoring the fact that the average purchasing power in the US at the time was way lower. The real GDP per capita (i.e. inflation-adjusted income per person) in 1960 in today’s dollars was $19,000. Today, it is like $70,000. (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA). In other words, relative to other jobs at the time, a job in 1960 that would pay $40,000 in inflation-adjusted terms would be more like $150,000 in today’s terms, when discussing it in relative terms to other jobs at the time. And that’s the relevant question here, since it’s a question of what the opportunity cost is of playing basketball. If the non-basketball options are good enough, then people won’t play basketball. It’s much harder to imagine that that’d be the case for something that pays the equivalent of being paid $150,000 in today’s terms, than it is for something that pays the equivalent of $40,000 in today’s terms. By putting it merely in inflation-adjusted terms, you’re effectively assessing how good a salary in 1960 would be relative to today’s job market. That’s obviously a flawed approach. And this is not even getting into the fact that the very top talent made way more than that $40,000 number back then (though I grant you that that may not be entirely relevant when a lot of the relevant decision points would be before someone could know if they’d fall into that bucket).

Depending on what inflation model you use, some of them factor in purchasing power. Regardless, the difference in salary was astronomical in real terms, and that obviously massively affected whether people were drawn to these sports at a young age, and then how seriously they pursued them, and finally whether they would try to turn pro.

Inflation numbers are never precise, but whether the average salary was worth 40k today or 80k, it's till exponentially higher today compared to the formative years of the league. It certainly wasn't 150k in today's dollars, because even when the salary was higher a decade and more after 1950 players still often worked part-time jobs. Nobody earning 150k USD today needs to work a 2nd job to scrape by.

[FrodoBaggins]

Bill with modern strength & conditioning is an interesting thought. He was 215-240 lbs during his professional career; in-shape peak condition was closer to 225-230. They didn't lift weights back then because it was thought to stiffen an athlete up, robbing him of his suppleness & speed. That myth was soundly busted by the mid-to-late '80s.

I can see him at 250 pounds playing weight. Same as Olajuwon.

[penbeast0]

I have never heard this version of economics where the salary increases 30,000%, and the number of available jobs triples, but it supposedly has little to no effect on the number of people pursuing said job.

In economics terms, what’s being posited is basically just that the labor supply of top-tier basketball players is quite inelastic. And it’s not totally crazy to think that that’d be the case, when we consider that the other options for the relevant people were almost certainly substantially less lucrative even in the lower-paying era. That said, I don’t think it’s totally inelastic (for reasons I’ve discussed in this thread), so I do think there’s an effect here.

It's crazy. Part of why it's crazy is that many athletes have the option of playing multiple sports, and when one is so much more lucrative that's a huge factor. Another reason it's crazy is that many great players, e.g. Steve Nash, are not 7 foot behemoths who naturally trend into sporting pursuits. In 1950 the parents of a potential Steve Nash might tell him 'you're wasting your time on this nonsense, you need to focus on your career'. It's also nonsense because the whole world is now drawn to your league for the money.

The biggest reason it is silly has nothing to do with the choices of an athlete already playing ball though. There are so many guys who would never think to play basketball if the average salary was 40k today, which is the inflation adjusted version of 1950 salaries. If that was the salary, Tim Duncan would never have messed around playing ball after a hurricane wrecked his swimming pool in the Virgin Islands. He'd probably have just focused on study while it got fixed. Today there are hundreds of millions of dollars invested into finding guys like Tim Duncan or Hakeem or Mutombo. There are programs set up to keep guys like Iverson or Stephen Jackson off the street. There are kick backs and dodgy guys giving big money to these kids, to keep them out of trouble and on the straight and narrow.

There are programs to train kids earlier than ever, and to see if they have the right skills. Many great players would never be discovered at all if there wasn't so much money at stake. Even today, with all the money involved, the scouts often get it wrong and draft the wrong players. Imagine how bad that was in the 50s and 60s. Many of the players in the league were probably the wrong ones, because a backwater process missed the right ones and they never got a shot.

And if you've been reading comments by Garnett recently (and ones by Kobe before he died), the system today doesn't actually teach kids how to play basketball. Both blame the AAU system for so many of today's players having no real clue how to play the game and why so many of the top players are now from Europe.

[One_and_Done]

In economics terms, what’s being posited is basically just that the labor supply of top-tier basketball players is quite inelastic. And it’s not totally crazy to think that that’d be the case, when we consider that the other options for the relevant people were almost certainly substantially less lucrative even in the lower-paying era. That said, I don’t think it’s totally inelastic (for reasons I’ve discussed in this thread), so I do think there’s an effect here.

It's crazy. Part of why it's crazy is that many athletes have the option of playing multiple sports, and when one is so much more lucrative that's a huge factor. Another reason it's crazy is that many great players, e.g. Steve Nash, are not 7 foot behemoths who naturally trend into sporting pursuits. In 1950 the parents of a potential Steve Nash might tell him 'you're wasting your time on this nonsense, you need to focus on your career'. It's also nonsense because the whole world is now drawn to your league for the money.

The biggest reason it is silly has nothing to do with the choices of an athlete already playing ball though. There are so many guys who would never think to play basketball if the average salary was 40k today, which is the inflation adjusted version of 1950 salaries. If that was the salary, Tim Duncan would never have messed around playing ball after a hurricane wrecked his swimming pool in the Virgin Islands. He'd probably have just focused on study while it got fixed. Today there are hundreds of millions of dollars invested into finding guys like Tim Duncan or Hakeem or Mutombo. There are programs set up to keep guys like Iverson or Stephen Jackson off the street. There are kick backs and dodgy guys giving big money to these kids, to keep them out of trouble and on the straight and narrow.

There are programs to train kids earlier than ever, and to see if they have the right skills. Many great players would never be discovered at all if there wasn't so much money at stake. Even today, with all the money involved, the scouts often get it wrong and draft the wrong players. Imagine how bad that was in the 50s and 60s. Many of the players in the league were probably the wrong ones, because a backwater process missed the right ones and they never got a shot.

And if you've been reading comments by Garnett recently (and ones by Kobe before he died), the system today doesn't actually teach kids how to play basketball. Both blame the AAU system for so many of today's players having no real clue how to play the game and why so many of the top players are now from Europe.

Leaving aside whether that's true, what they're complaining about is the supposed loss of skill since the 80s or 90s or 00s... not the 60s.

[penbeast0]

The traditional school system with 4 years of college (as required before Spencer Haywood became the first "Hardship case" in the early 70s produced more focus on basic skills and team play. Listen to Kareem talk about Wooden's teaching in the 1960s or Jordan talking about Dean Smith practices when he was at North Carolina in the early 80s.

The modern system in Europe also has a much stronger teaching/development component which is what Garnett and Kobe were comparing the AAU system to.

[One_and_Done]

Basketball players were vastly less skilled when Russell played, and I don't doubt Kobe and KG would agree with that.

[lessthanjake]

It's crazy. Part of why it's crazy is that many athletes have the option of playing multiple sports, and when one is so much more lucrative that's a huge factor.

But we aren’t talking about a scenario where one sport got way more lucrative than before while the other sports didn’t get more lucrative. All sports were paying way less in Russell’s era than they do now. It’s not like the NFL and MLB were paying millions back in Russell’s era and the NBA was alone in paying far less than today. Nor is it like other sports are paying 1960s salaries today. Sports as a whole has gotten far more lucrative. There may be some relative differences in terms of what sports have increased by the most, but the general story is the same across the board. The bigger issue here is whether people simply decided not to play sports back then due to sports being less lucrative.

The biggest reason it is silly has nothing to do with the choices of an athlete already playing ball though. There are so many guys who would never think to play basketball if the average salary was 40k today, which is the inflation adjusted version of 1950 salaries.

You’re not talking about a question that should be assessed by mere inflation adjustment. Inflation adjustment might tell you the absolute purchasing power someone had in today’s terms. But you’re ignoring the fact that the average purchasing power in the US at the time was way lower. The real GDP per capita (i.e. inflation-adjusted income per person) in 1960 in today’s dollars was $19,000. Today, it is like $70,000. (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA). In other words, relative to other jobs at the time, a job in 1960 that would pay $40,000 in inflation-adjusted terms would be more like $150,000 in today’s terms, when discussing it in relative terms to other jobs at the time. And that’s the relevant question here, since it’s a question of what the opportunity cost is of playing basketball. If the non-basketball options are good enough, then people won’t play basketball. It’s much harder to imagine that that’d be the case for something that pays the equivalent of being paid $150,000 in today’s terms, than it is for something that pays the equivalent of $40,000 in today’s terms. By putting it merely in inflation-adjusted terms, you’re effectively assessing how good a salary in 1960 would be relative to today’s job market. That’s obviously a flawed approach. And this is not even getting into the fact that the very top talent made way more than that $40,000 number back then (though I grant you that that may not be entirely relevant when a lot of the relevant decision points would be before someone could know if they’d fall into that bucket).

Depending on what inflation model you use, some of them factor in purchasing power. Regardless, the difference in salary was astronomical in real terms, and that obviously massively affected whether people were drawn to these sports at a young age, and then how seriously they pursued them, and finally whether they would try to turn pro.

Inflation numbers are never precise, but whether the average salary was worth 40k today or 80k, it's till exponentially higher today compared to the formative years of the league. It certainly wasn't 150k in today's dollars, because even when the salary was higher a decade and more after 1950 players still often worked part-time jobs. Nobody earning 150k USD today needs to work a 2nd job to scrape by.

Inflation certainly factors in purchasing power—that’s exactly what it’s aiming to measure. But it is not a measure of purchasing power *relative to other incomes at the time*. And it’s the latter that matters when we are talking about incentives to play basketball instead of pursuing other careers.

I’ll just try to illustrate the difference here briefly using made up numbers:

Let’s say I make $100 in 1960. And let’s say that that $100 could buy me 50 widgets. And let’s say you make $1,000 in 2025. And those $1,000 can also buy you 50 widgets. In inflation adjusted terms, we made the same amount of money, because the money we made can buy the exact same amount of goods. However, let’s say that the average income in 1960 is $100, and the average income in 2025 is $4,000. In other words, we’re assuming the average purchasing power in 2025 is 4x higher than in 1960. Even though that $100 income in 1960 is equal in inflation-adjusted terms to the $1,000 income in 2025, a job paying $100 in 1960 would be much more enticing than a job paying $1,000 in 2025.

That’s basically the point I was making. Adjusting for inflation does not adjust for the substantial increase in inflation-adjusted income we have seen since 1960. Basically if two salaries in 1960 and 2025 are equal in inflation adjusted terms, the salary in 1960 would be way more enticing for people, because inflation-adjusted incomes are like 4 times higher now than they were in 1960. If you want to get an understanding of how alluring a salary was in 1960 relative to other job prospects, you probably want to multiply the inflation-adjusted number by about 4.

[Cavsfansince84]

Bill with modern strength & conditioning is an interesting thought. He was 215-240 lbs during his professional career; in-shape peak condition was closer to 225-230. They didn't lift weights back then because it was thought to stiffen an athlete up, robbing him of his suppleness & speed. That myth was soundly busted by the mid-to-late '80s.

I can see him at 250 pounds playing weight. Same as Olajuwon.

I don't think it was fully busted until the late 90's tbh. What I heard back then and what a lot of coaches thought is that lifting weights would ruin a player's shot. It wasn't until the mid 90's that I think it became more normal for nba players to be really doing it in a dedicated way. Karl Malone stood out a lot in the early 90's for doing it. It really exploded in the 00's I would say.

[dygaction]

Just want to say that any discussion of salaries should be inflation adjusted. For instance, Bill Russell was making $100k starting in 1965. That's not a lot of money today but back then when you could buy a 3 bedroom house for $20k, that was a **** ton of money. Maybe equivalent to a $5 million salary today in terms of purchasing power. Still well short of what today's superstars earn but it's not peanuts.

This is like using Jordan's $33M salary in 1998 to infer or gauge the entire NBA, so not true.

The average NBA player salary in 1965 was approximately $10,000.
For context, the highest paid player in the NBA that season was Bill Russell, who earned $100,001.

Player salaries in the NBA were significantly lower in 1965 compared to modern-day earnings. Many players needed to work additional jobs in the offseason to supplement their basketball income. The formation of the American Basketball Association (ABA) in 1967 brought competition for talent and led to an increase in player salaries in the NBA in subsequent years.

An NBA player with average income will need to use two year's salary, without any spending, to afford a 3 bedroom house.