Check out Part 1 first.
3.2: How Strong is the Correlation?
The large variation lead to the question of if there is even a significant relationship between how much players get paid and how much they produce. Looking at the overall correlation and breaking it up into offensive and defensive win shares shows some interesting results.
3.2.1: Overall Correlation
3.2.2: Offensive Correlation
3.2.3: Defensive Correlation
Section 4: Analysis and Conclusion
Looking at the correlations above, it seems that players are more fairly compensated for their offensive production than their defensive production, but the difference is pretty small. What’s more striking is how weak the correlation is overall, and most players are not fairly paid.
4.1: Overall Variation
Overall there is a very wide range of how much players got paid per win that they produced last season. Andrew Wiggins made more than 100 times as much as Javale McGee per win share.
4.2: Determining the Cutoffs
For the 158 players that met the qualifications, the average amount that teams paid for one of their win shares was $3,160,000. This average happens to fall almost exactly in the middle, with 85 players making more and 83 making less. While this might be the fairest number for players to be paid per win share, constructing an interval becomes harder.
The amount of wins that a team will get in a season is its total payroll divided by how much it pays per win share. In the 2018-19 NBA season, the middle 16 out of 30 teams won between 33 to 50 games out of a possible 82. The lowest of any team was 17 wins, and the highest was 60. I will classify each contract into one of 5 categories:
| Classification | Definition |
| Very Overpaid | Paid at a rate that would make a team the worst in the league |
| Somewhat Overpaid | Paid at a rate that would make a team part of the bottom 25% of the league |
| Fairly Paid | Paid at a rate that would make a team part of the middle 50% of the league |
| Somewhat Underpaid | Paid at a rate that would make a team part of the top 25% of the league |
| Very Underpaid | Paid at a rate that would make a team the best in the league |
Paying $3,160,000 per win share, the average rate, should result in an average win total of 41 out of 82. Using this logic, it winning 33 games would require about
$3,160,000 * 41⁄33 = $3,930,000 per win share. These same calculations can be used to find the rate a team would need to pay in order to win any amount of games. Using the games won by teams from last season, we can find the rates for each category.
We get the following results:
| Contract Rating | Salary per Win Share Interval | Players |
| Very Overpaid | > 7,620,000 | Andrew Wiggins, Tyreke Evans, Avery Bradley, Kent Bazemore, Allen Crabbe, Jonathon Simmons, John Wall Jabari Parker, Austin Rivers, Will Barton, James Johnson, Tim Hardaway, Dion Waiters, Victor Oladipo, Evan Turner, Jeff Teague, Wilson Chandler, Tyler Johnson, Otto Porter, Iman Shumpert, Alec Burks |
| Somewhat Overpaid | 3,930,000 | Zach LaVine, Jordan Clarkson, Rajon Rondo, Wesley Matthews, George Hill, Tristan Thompson, Harrison Barnes, Jeremy Lin, Nicolas Batum, Gordon Hayward, Gary Harris, Trevor Ariza, T.J. Warren, Tony Parker, Gorgui Dieng, Chris Paul, Markieff Morris, Dennis Schröder, Robin Lopez, Evan Fournier, Jared Dudley, Russell Westbrook, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Eric Gordon, E’Twaun Moore, DeMarre Carroll, LeBron James, Paul Millsap, Jrue Holiday, Anthony Tolliver, Kyle Lowry, CJ McCollum, DeMar DeRozan, Aaron Gordon, Robert Covington, Draymond Green, Ricky Rubio, Lance Stephenson, Hassan Whiteside, Marc Gasol, Blake Griffin, Jonas Valančiūnas |
| Fairly Paid | 2,590,000 | Norman Powell, Stephen Curry, Al Horford, Mike Conley, Andre Iguodala, Marvin Williams, Garrett Temple, Klay Thompson, Nikola Mirotić, Serge Ibaka, Ish Smith, Cody Zeller, Enes Kanter, Reggie Jackson, Bradley Beal, Bogdan Bogdanović, Tony Snell, Patty Mills, Kyle Korver, DeAndre Jordan, Kyle Anderson, Maurice Harkless, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Joel Embiid, Taj Gibson, JaMychal Green, Mike Scott, Anthony Davis, Steven Adams, Danilo Gallinari, Kevin Durant |
| Somewhat Underpaid | 2,160,000 | Jimmy Butler, Kelly Olynyk, Paul George, Andre Drummond, Doug McDermott, Marco Belinelli, Terrence Ross, Kawhi Leonard, Wayne Ellington, LaMarcus Aldridge, Ersan İlyasova, Damian Lillard, Rudy Gay, Cory Joseph, Mason Plumlee, Kyrie Irving, Marcus Smart, Joe Ingles |
| Very Underpaid | < 2,160,000 | Derrick Favors, Khris Middleton, Justin Holiday, Nikola Jokić, Tobias Harris, J.J. Redick, Langston Galloway, Fred VanVleet, James Harden, Mike Muscala, Elfrid Payton, Thaddeus Young, Eric Bledsoe, Dewayne Dedmon, Dāvis Bertāns, Danny Green, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Josh Richardson, Jae Crowder, Kemba Walker, Rudy Gobert, P.J. Tucker, Yogi Ferrell, Lou Williams, Bojan Bogdanović, Joe Harris, Darren Collison, Nemanja Bjelica, Jusuf Nurkić, Julius Randle, Clint Capela, Jeremy Lamb, Alex Len, Dwight Powell, Nikola Vučević, Al-Farouq Aminu, Marcus Morris, Jerami Grant, Seth Curry, D.J. Augustin, Patrick Beverley, Reggie Bullock, Ed Davis, Montrezl Harrell, Brook Lopez, JaVale McGee |
All-Star Analytics 