HartfordWhalers wrote:
Conclusion:
There is indeed a sizable correlation between winning % and salary. It persists year over year, as demonstrated beautifully several posts above. However, the confounding factor is that the same teams tend to be both winning and spending money year over year, raising the question as to whether increasing salary is significant on it own. Team salary is more closely correlated with last years winning percentage then this years, and last year's winning percentage is highly significant on this year's winning percentage. The end result is that while a positive coefficient is found on this year's salary, it isn't statistically significant.
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holy guacamole!
if you could assign a coefficient for how much of your analysis I understood, it would not be statistically significant
anyway, I'm missing why the apparent fact that some teams that consistently spend also consistently win, really "calls into question" the significance of increasing spending. Actually, I understand that, I'm just not clear on the connection between the statistical certainly you outline and the question you raised. And when I re-read what I just wrote there, I'm not sure I'm making any sense.
Maybe the point is that there is an unarguable correlation between spending and winning, but there are so many variables it's difficult to identify any template you could apply to individual teams
* For instance, Toronto spent less money in the season they signed Hedo, then the season before, yet their wins went up from 33 to 40. But it's pretty clear the spending on Hedo did the franchise no good
* OKC has a bunch of players on rookie deals...a bunch of players good enough to secure a lot of wins. But because of those rookie deals, OKC has been getting wins at a bargain-basement price. Once all the rookie deals expire and the extensions kick in, the cost of OKC's wins will escalate significantly while their winning percentage probably won't. So any statistical model that accounts for OKC's cheap wins the last 2 years but not for their expensive wins the next 2 years is signiicantly skewed, no?
* Portland dug themselves a giant salary/luxury tax hole with the Scottie Pippen/Rasheed/Sabonis teams. It took years for them to reduce salary, but in several of those years, they had some of the worst records in the league, even while paying luxury tax. But their goal wasn't winning in those years, it was rather collecting lottery picks, and getting out of salary hell. And as the bad contracts expired, and Portland's rookie deal players improved, the Blazers winning increased even as their spending dropped. So effectively, Portland's presence in the statistical models skews the stats against the correlation in question.
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In other words, those anomalous examples I'm using significantly skew the data in the opposite direction then the correlation in question. And those are just 3 examples. But none of those examples are spending templates for long term success unless part of the template is getting incredibly lucky in the lottery (or in Portland's case, unlucky)
it seems we know there is an definite correlation between spending and winning but that variables make it difficult to judge the significance or land on a consistent template
But since spending can secure wins, and since big market teams do have inherent revenue-producing advantages over small market teams, it's pretty hard to deny the logic in at least trying to level the field between markets. Obviously, it's legitimate to debate which mechanisms can level that field, or if there are realistic mechanisms that would work considering the shortage of truly great players. But for some here to continue to deny that a correlation exists is just nonsense.
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