Initially I thought that all NBA teams were created (on funded) equally, however upon doing more research it appears that there is quite a gap in the league's spending between the top and the bottom. More on this in a future post. For today I wanted to do a line by line comparison of the Mavericks and Heat to see where the money was going and if there was a significant difference between the "Big 3" versus Dallas's singular star. (Aside - I don't know if this was intentional or not, but it was an interesting homage or reference to the Dallas Cowboys singular star logo.)
As expected the bulk of the Heat's spending went into the top three. Everyone already knows this though. What I found interesting though was how much the Maverick's 4th through 9th players make in comparison to the Heat's same players. You can see in the plot how big the gap is, in many cases well over two to three times the money. Beyond that, the salary for slots two and three, the only ones held by the Heat, aren't as big of a gap as one might think (roughly $5.5 million total)
I think that the main reason for this difference in spending levels between the teams comes from the disparity between how much the Heat (~$68 million) and Mavericks (~$90 million) pay out each year. You're looking at nearly $22 million in difference or in player terms, Caron Butler and Jason Terry. Perhaps the Heat were at a disadvantage more-so because of the spending differences than the lack of a point guard or dominant inside presence. If the Heat were to drop that extra money on players, to catch up to the Mavericks, those holes could have been filled. It will be interesting to see if this spending difference issue is addressed during the impending NBA lockout.
Sources: Team and Player salary pages from www.hoopsworld.com and www.hoopshype.com
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