Posted by felonius on 5/18/2013 3:19:00 PM (view original):
the minutes thing is almost meaningless by itself but indicative of other causal factors - that other guys in the league are getting more bang for their buck for instance - but are/were they? you'd have to go back and look at how all the other teams fared in that regard
and while the FTA/FTM thing probably was a factor it doesnt address either the 'steals opposite effect' or 'assists meant nothing' results
Yea it's a bang for the buck thing, look how much Wilt costs and his Cost per minute is high, but he's worth every penny and no one else can get that kind of production from a guy no matter the cost.
I will say this the data backs up vance, but we have to keep in mind that the better players cost a lot more per minute, so by default the best teams get more expensive minutes and have less left over at the end to purchase excess minutes.
Here is what I found by looking that the last $52 league:
Ave min for the middle ten playoff teams (drop the high and low): 20,374
Ave min for middle ten non-playoff teams: 20,878
Correlation between minutes and wins: -.8124
Playoff team ave minutes: 20.358
Non-playoff ave minutes: 20,946
Only two teams with fewer than 20,300 minutes missed the playoffs
No team with more than 20,899 made the playoffs
Of the 14 teams that drafted more than 20,600 minutes only 4 made the playoffs
Of the 10 teams that drafted 20.355 minutes or fewer only 2 missed the playoffs
So, Vance you are right for the most part, but I think it all comes back to paying as much as you can on a per minute basis, and the fact that as a general theory the more you have to pay per minute the more production you will get per minute.