Cost-Per-Win

Quick note on a Friday morning ...

Portland's payroll this year was about $79 million, which had them clocking in at roughly third in the NBA. Or, 28th in the NBA if you want to view it the other way around. More importantly, they won 27 games, ranking fifth-worst in the NBA.

It doesn't take a mathematician to realize that a team who spends in the top 5 payrolls but finishes in the bottom-five win percentage isn't managing their money very well. In fact, you can make an argument that, despite haveing the fifth worst record, they were the third least-successful team in the NBA. Here's how.

A $79 million payroll divied by 27 wins means they paid about $2.9 million per win. Awful. But how does the rest of the league compare? Here's the NBA rank of the worst eight teams in the league, based on wins-to-payroll ratio. Check out the dropoff after the"big three" losers and how close the next five are:

1. Knicks $3.2M
2. Hawks $2.924M
3. Blazers $2.917M
4. Hornets $1.973M
5. Lakers $1.895M
6. Bucks $1.894M
7. Orlando $1.890M
8. Raptors $1.857M

Wow. Not only is Portland in top-three worst in the NBA, they're head-and-shoulders above the next worst team. Clearly, the Knicks/Hawks/Blazers trifecta are the three worst-managed team in the NBA, looking strictly at wins-per-payroll. At least we can take solace in one thing: Isaiah Thomas isn't our GM.

In case you're wondering, the best teams in the NBA are the Suns ($737k per win), Spurs ($794k), Nuggets ($892k) and Pistons ($970k).

One final note ... of the top 9 payrolls in the nba, only four made theplayoffs. But conversely, none of the four lowest payrolls in the NBA made the playoffs either. So you need to spend wisely, but you can't be a total miser.

Enjoy the playoffs this weekend.

(And thanks to Andrew at All That Jazz for compiling some of this data).