Are the 2017 Pistons the highest-paid team ever to miss the playoffs?

Uncle Mxy · Post #1 » by **Uncle Mxy** » Sat Apr 15, 2017 1:44 am

Has any NBA team been paid more than $115 million and not made the NBA playoffs?

Alexander · Post #2 » by **Alexander** » Sat Apr 15, 2017 2:07 am

The Knicks used to have some crazy high payrolls when they were awful. http://www.shamsports.com/2014/07/complete-history-of-nba-luxury-tax.html
In 06-07 they paid 45 million in luxury tax and finished 33-49 with Isiah coaching. http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/NYK/2007.html

Inflation is an issue here. I'm sure this is all relative as the cap changes and salaries follow. I think it'd be more accurate to ask in terms of % of cap utilization.

Mr Peanut · Post #3 » by **Mr Peanut** » Sat Apr 15, 2017 8:39 am

Uncle Mxy wrote:Has any NBA team been paid more than $115 million and not made the NBA playoffs?

Our team salary for the most recent season was $106 million, not $115 million. I assume you've used the Hoopshype salary page as your source and they've put Josh Smith's full $14M salary for this season but his contract was actually stretched and we're only paying just over $5M per season against the cap.

Uncle Mxy · Post #4 » by **Uncle Mxy** » Sat Apr 15, 2017 9:09 am

Yes, i used Hoopshype. Even at $106 million, though, are we still the highest-paid team to never make the playoffs?

The luxury tax doesn't go to the players, though. It makes the TEAM more expensive, of course.

Yes, it'd be more accurate to account for inflation, but the rise of the cap has exceeded inflation:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/contracts/salary-cap-history.html

Mr Peanut · Post #5 » by **Mr Peanut** » Sat Apr 15, 2017 1:11 pm

Tried to look it up but there's not a lot of sites that have historical team payrolls. And I think even if the Pistons were the highest paid team ever to miss the playoffs it's not entirely representative as you mentioned because the salary cap is so much higher now than it was 2-3 years ago and if you adjusted for that I'm sure there's plenty of teams that were paid more to be a losing team.

This site is pretty informative: http://www.basketball-reference.com/contracts/

What I glean from that is that Portland's payroll is currently higher than ours and they barely squeezed into the 8th seed and they're projected to pay $140 million(!) when McCollum's extension kicks in next season. The Magic, Mavericks, Knicks and Hornets are all only paying a few million less than us and also missed the playoffs.

Post #6 » by **Snakebites** » Sat Apr 15, 2017 2:31 pm

Again, right now the teams that have crazy high payrolls just happen to be the teams who's key players have become free agents at this time. Ask the Wizards how excited they are to be shelling out max deals to Bradley Beal and Otto Porter.

In time just about everybody's payroll is going to look crazy high.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really bummed out by how expensive a crappy team we have. But looking at numbers the way that's being done in this thread isn't correct.

Uncle Mxy · Post #7 » by **Uncle Mxy** » Sun Apr 16, 2017 11:14 am

Yes, I know why the numbers are the way they are.. Yes, I can apply context, nuance, and all that stuff. But, that's not how it came to me.. I first uttered "The Pistons are the highest-paid players ever to miss a championship" during halftime at the last game at the Palace, as I was ranting about our losing ways at one point. Seeing Drummond and Ellenson posing with the Pistons legends kinda ticked me off for a bit -- they don't belong on the same stage, especially when we were losing. I didn't fact-check it at all. It just came out. Afterwards, I figured "naaah... there had to be some team like the Knicks that did this recently". I did some Google-ing, didn't find evidence to the contrary, and posted this.

Given the escalation of payrolls in sports, there's bound to be some recent teams in their leagues that has this cross to bear. We own this now. *sigh* But, I''m the kind of guy who wants the Pistons to go 96-0 and watch the other team get blown off the court, who doesn't mind watching the scrubs come out when my team is ahead by 50 at the start of the 4th quarter.