The NBA season is almost here, and you can feel the energy building. Before the tip-off, let’s take a step back and look at what happened last year through the lens of numbers. Every dunk, every assist, every minute on the court adds up to value, and every contract tells a story. Who gave their team the most bang for the buck? Who was overpaid, underpaid, or perfectly aligned with what they produced? This is the place to break it all down, have some fun, and hype ourselves up for the chaos, the brilliance, and the surprises the new season is about to bring.
To break down value versus pay, I first gathered the numbers. Player contracts were sourced from Kaggle and Spotrac, providing a comprehensive picture of what every NBA player was actually paid last season. On the performance side, I leaned on Basketball Reference for VORP and WS. VORP, or Value Over Replacement Player, estimates how much a player contributed compared to a theoretical replacement-level player. Win Shares, or WS, measure how many wins a player is responsible for adding to their team over the course of the season (Team success does have a tangible impact on this).
Why look at just these metrics and not something else? Points, rebounds, and assists don’t tell the full story. Teams don’t pay players to just fill a box score; they pay them to win. Winning comes from everything a player does to tilt a game in their team’s favor, not just the flashy numbers on the stat sheet. That’s why VORP and WS matter. While VORP captures a player's statistical outputs, WS captures the impact they have on winning. These numbers combine to tell us the role a player plays and their impact on winning.
Analysis
First, let's quantify the value of 1 unit of VORP and 1 WS. This is done by summing the Win Shares, VORP's, and salaries of every player, and then dividing our total salary by both metrics.
Every win share a player adds is worth about $4 million to his team, while each point of VORP carries a contract value of roughly $16.5 million. That means a single unit of VORP is nearly four times as valuable as a win share, a ratio that lines up with league averages of 0.6 VORP and 2.6 WS. To see how these values take shape across the NBA, it helps to look at how both stats are distributed among players.
The graphs reveal that strong win share totals don’t always translate to high VORP. The two stats often pull in different directions, showing how misleading surface numbers can be. Even players who rank below replacement level can still stack up a win or two over a long season, a reminder that impact isn’t always captured cleanly by one metric.
Now that we have done all this, the big reveal.
Every player who provides positive value should be considered a good contract, while players who provide negative value are considered bad ones. Injuries do play a factor, as this is cumulative data, and that is extremely evident based on the names in the bottom left.
Based on the grouping, NBA contracts are largely correct in their valuations of each player. Out of the 460 players in this analysis, nearly 320 of them fall within $10 million (+/-) from the center, and ~400 of them fall within a $20 million cap. Based on the grouping and linear nature of the graph, there are technically only two outlier groups: The two names at the top right of the chart and the few names on the top left.
Everybody else follows the method that a high individual value does correlate with a high team value, something that is often the case. There are groups of players that are not on the same page as this linear relationship, but not quite to the extent of our two outlier groups.
Outliers
Ultra-Elites: Nikola Jokic and SGA are in a tier of their own in terms of the value that they bring to their respective teams, and frankly, no one is close. Their counting stats (VORP) showcase their individual brilliance, and the difference in WS is an indicator of how important they both are to their respective teams.
Individual Production without Wins: Perhaps the most unique group of them all is the one made up of Steph Curry, LeBron James, and Luka Doncic. While each of them provides $20+ million in individual value, they also lose ~$20 million in terms of winning. The only reason something like this could occur is because of a scenario where they are all putting up massive numbers, but the team isn't winning. The Warriors were not having a great season before the addition of Jimmy Butler at the deadline. Luka Doncic played only 50 games this season, likely contributing to his low WS numbers.
Conclusion
Advanced metrics have their flaws and are somewhat arbitrary in the weight that they assign to different measures. However, as a fan of the game, those are the only methods I have of understanding the impact and differentiating between players. Steph Curry is more valuable than Trae Young, but if you looked at just counting stats over the last few years, that wouldn't be fully true.
Whether it be consciously or unconsciously, NBA teams sign players to fairly reasonable contracts (based on this analysis). While your favorite player might not be able to deliver everything you ask from him, more often than not, he will deliver what was expected of him at the time of signing. The true stars of the game are the ones who can outperform the relative expectations of their contract and create surplus value to help your team win it all.
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