Last July, Steve Curry becomes highest paid player of all-time with 201 USD million contract, which means more than 34 M USD by year, which is higher than Jordan earned in 1998 when he got it for a modest sum of 33 M USD. The salary issue will always be a controversial subject. A TV sports newscaster used these words to refer to Curry's contract: "Curry won the contract forever and ever." The next study describes how the salaries of NBA players have evolved over the past 26 years, with data scraped from https://www.basketball-reference.com. Also describe the salary evolution of the MVPs, as well as what a franchise pays for the full staff of players and what the champion teams invest for the same concept: salary to the worker.
How much does the highest paid player earn? How much does the MVP earn? These two questions are answered with plot 1. The red line represents the evolution of the best paid in the NBA, we can immediately see that they are, in this order: Steve Curry (GSW, 2017-28) and Michael Jordan (CHI, 1997 -98) who lead the rank. We can also see that the salary of the MVPs (blue line), is usually below the maximum and that only 4 times they are the best paid: Robinson (1994-95), Jordan (1997-98), O 'Neals (1999-00) and Garnette (2004-05). This ratifies the value that Jordan had and that lasted for a long time, that is to say, to have the MVP and that he be valued by its price, also remember, in both seasons (96-97 and 97-98) Jordan led Bulls to win the championship, Will Curry do the same for next season?
The next topic of interest is: which team makes the largest investment per year in the entire NBA for salaries?; in plot 2 we can see two curves, the red one represents this item, we see that in 1992 Boston Celtic was the team that made the biggest investment in salaries. Similarly, we found that the largest investment in all NBA history was made by NY Knicks (126.6 M USD) recently overcome by the Cleveland Cavaliers (127.3 M USD). Also worthy of attention is what the champions teams are investing, the blue line tells us: with less investment than the greater investment you can achieve a championship. Only 4 times champion team became the most paid: The Chicago Bulls (1996-97 and 1997-98), L.A Lakers (2009-10) and Clevaland Cavaliers (2015-16).
A good reference to this salaries it would be the average salary of NBA players. Plot 3 is a chart of boxes, each box represents a season, these summarize the statistic of the salaries that earn the players in the season, basically this graph represents an alternative to observe the average and dispersion of salary in one season. For the least experienced statisticians, I will explain these results in detail.
Let's begin by observing the crosses (+) that extends above each box, these are "extraordinary" values that exceed the "normal" values, it mean, they are cases of players whose salaries exceed the typical range of the average salary; you can get details on this point in: 1 and 2. We see, for example, that in 1992 only 17 players were considered the "best paid", it was from the 1996-97 season when this number exceeds twenty, rising up quickly to 51 in the 1999-00 season, maximum number that was not repeated but until the last season. To give the reader an idea of the main meaning of these boxes, think about them as the bulk of the NBA salaries. So we can see that the green line traces the annual advance of the average salary among all players, besides, it hasn’t increased significantly, peaking at 4.85 M USD (2013-14 season); a curious fact is that three years before, Dereck Rose, in his third year in the NBA won the MVP, Chicago paid him 5.54 M USD.
Finally, what happens to the average salary spend on NBA teams? Plot 4 has an analogous interpretation to the graph of boxes of the players' salaries (figure 3). Similarly, the boxes summarize the salary expenses of the teams, one box per season. The length of the box with his mustaches included, represent the dispersion of this expenditure, we see that there is an apparent explosion from the season 96-97, I mean, it increases the difference between those who spend the most and those who do not. This graph does show a significant change in the average salary expenses. This happens so mentioned in the previous paragraph: increasing the number of players that are labeled as "better paid" and therefore teams are pushed to increase this spendings.