Dukies in the NBA 2019-20

[Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15]

To complete the thought, Miles apparently makes $12.5 million per year.

To complete the story, one reason the WNBA plays in the summer months is so that players can play in pro leagues in Europe and Asia, which occur during traditional basketball months. Perhaps there is better info on overseas salaries for women hoops players, but here are a couple of estimates:

The foreign numbers are very surprising to me. I don't find the low WNBA salaries shocking.

[nmduke2001]

To complete the thought, Miles apparently makes $12.5 million per year.

To complete the story, one reason the WNBA plays in the summer months is so that players can play in pro leagues in Europe and Asia, which occur during traditional basketball months. Perhaps there is better info on overseas salaries for women hoops players, but here are a couple of estimates:

The reason Reali brought it up is because the Washington Mystics had their victory celebration 30 minutes after the final buzzer instead of the traditional parade/party a few days later. The players literally showered and then came out to the court and celebrated with fans. The reason they did that is because many of them are contractually obligated to overseas teams and required to play almost immediately after their WNBA season is over. According to Reali, several players had to fly out later that evening or the following morning. I have no idea if that is true, but if so, that's a tough situation.

Also, sorry for hijacking this thread.

[golfinesquire]

To complete the thought, Miles apparently makes $12.5 million per year.

To complete the story, one reason the WNBA plays in the summer months is so that players can play in pro leagues in Europe and Asia, which occur during traditional basketball months. Perhaps there is better info on overseas salaries for women hoops players, but here are a couple of estimates:

And to complete that thought, the reason so many women players play overseas is that they can make much more money over there. Probably a bit of a chicken and egg thing and I recognize that the WNBA is not profitable. It is hard to really get up for an indoor sport in the summer though, which might be why their profit margin is either net zero or negative.

[HereBeforeCoachK]

To complete the thought, Miles apparently makes $12.5 million per year.

To complete the story, one reason the WNBA plays in the summer months is so that players can play in pro leagues in Europe and Asia, which occur during traditional basketball months. Perhaps there is better info on overseas salaries for women hoops players, but here are a couple of estimates:

and to add to that, the NBA has an 82 game season, and only 34 for WNBA...and of course the playoffs include a lot more games as well. Reali's stat is interesting perhaps but really meaningless, for the reasons above. It's not even close to apples to apples...

[BD80]

Not sure where to put this, so I guess this is as good of a place as any. The other day on "Around the Horn", host, Tony Reali, mentioned that Miles Plumlee will earn more this year than all WNBA players COMBINED. Plumlee is the 81st highest paid NBA player. I understand the economics of the situation (WNBA generates about $60 million in revenue and the NBA is near $7.4 billion), but still that is an interesting stat.

What women's professional sports are profitable?

I would guess tennis and golf, but beyond that? Women's pro wrestling?

It is entertainment. What to people want to pay to watch? There is no "fairness" in profit. Ask the Kardashians.

[arnie]

To complete the thought, Miles apparently makes $12.5 million per year.

To complete the story, one reason the WNBA plays in the summer months is so that players can play in pro leagues in Europe and Asia, which occur during traditional basketball months. Perhaps there is better info on overseas salaries for women hoops players, but here are a couple of estimates:

12 teams, 15 players max., ave salary $50K? yields total payroll of $9 million annually. Miles is killing it with his salary.

[HereBeforeCoachK]

What women's professional sports are profitable?

I would guess tennis and golf, but beyond that? Women's pro wrestling?

It is entertainment. What to people want to pay to watch? There is no "fairness" in profit. Ask the Kardashians.

I agree fairness and profit are different concepts that only intersect occasionally. And it may be more than fair...to the women.. Miles makes, if all the figures are correct, 1/592 of the revenues, while the top players in the WNBA make 1/550 of the revenues each.

[TheOldBattleship]

Tweaking the conversation back to Zion: here's a really great article about some of the practical specifics of how Alvin Gentry and the Pels plan on using the rookie on the scheme/play level. Gentry and the Pelicans ballhandlers (Holiday, Lonzo, Ingram, and Alexander-Walker) have already shown a knack for getting Zion the ball on the move towards an open lane, which is a good sign (part of that is that it doesn't take much for a lane to be open for Zion, of course). But that was the big concern for the Pels team this year: that the lack of shooting would cramp the spacing and make life tough for Zion. It's fair to say, though, that that hasn't happened much so far, and the playcalling is a big reason why.

[Dr. Rosenrosen]

Tweaking the conversation back to Zion: here's a really great article about some of the practical specifics of how Alvin Gentry and the Pels plan on using the rookie on the scheme/play level. Gentry and the Pelicans ballhandlers (Holiday, Lonzo, Ingram, and Alexander-Walker) have already shown a knack for getting Zion the ball on the move towards an open lane, which is a good sign (part of that is that it doesn't take much for a lane to be open for Zion, of course). But that was the big concern for the Pels team this year: that the lack of shooting would cramp the spacing and make life tough for Zion. It's fair to say, though, that that hasn't happened much so far, and the playcalling is a big reason why.

Was just about to post this when I saw you already had. Great find. Excellent article for anyone that hasn’t check it out. Highly recommended.

[elvis14]

Tweaking the conversation back to Zion: here's a really great article about some of the practical specifics of how Alvin Gentry and the Pels plan on using the rookie on the scheme/play level. Gentry and the Pelicans ballhandlers (Holiday, Lonzo, Ingram, and Alexander-Walker) have already shown a knack for getting Zion the ball on the move towards an open lane, which is a good sign (part of that is that it doesn't take much for a lane to be open for Zion, of course). But that was the big concern for the Pels team this year: that the lack of shooting would cramp the spacing and make life tough for Zion. It's fair to say, though, that that hasn't happened much so far, and the playcalling is a big reason why.

If only the Pelicans had a veteran 2 guard who could shoot the 3, move well off ball, make good decisions and be a consummate professional to help...

[HereBeforeCoachK]

if only the pelicans had a veteran 2 guard who could shoot the 3, move well off ball, make good decisions and be a consummate professional to help...

...iswydt....

[dukelifer]

Watching R.J. struggle to finish around the hoop. Just not big enough. He will need to develop a mid range game at this level.

[awhom111]

Not sure where to put this, so I guess this is as good of a place as any. The other day on "Around the Horn", host, Tony Reali, mentioned that Miles Plumlee will earn more this year than all WNBA players COMBINED. Plumlee is the 81st highest paid NBA player. I understand the economics of the situation (WNBA generates about $60 million in revenue and the NBA is near $7.4 billion), but still that is an interesting stat.

A few important facts that have continually gotten lost in the narrative:
-We do not actually know the WNBA revenue. The figure that has been passed around is an estimate based on some assumptions that various people have actively argued are wrong.
-The WNBA CBA does not negotiate salary as a percentage of revenue (other than having a mechanism for increasing salaries if revenues increase). This protects players from falling revenues (which may hurt NBA players in the future if revenue from China decreases enough). Given that the last CBA was negotiated in a period of instability with teams folding and one of the big name teams becoming insolvent around that time, this is a fully understandable way of arranging salaries. The league appears to be in a stronger position now and looks like it should be able to at least keep this number of teams so players do feel like they are going to make gains in this negotiation.
-The WNBA offers some non-cash benefits that NBA teams do not. While they might not seem significant in comparison to the NBA, they do add a reasonably large percentage to their total compensation.

That is an interesting way to look at it...Reali's stat.

Assuming your revenue stats are correct, and I have no reason to doubt them, that means the NBA generates 123 dollars for every single dollar the WNBA generates. When it comes to P/L, I would bet the difference is even greater given that I don't think the WNBA is profitable, and the NBA is, or most teams are. I don't know how that reflects on the Miles Plumlee stat, which is more math than I have time to do at the moment - but is another interesting stat.

One big difference is that the WNBA has to pay way more for coaches compared to player salaries than the NBA does. There are plenty of college teams which pay their third assistants more than the WNBA maximum salary and WNBA head coaches have left their teams for pretty poor college head coaching jobs. WNBA teams have generally tried to get around this by hiring people who are not threats to leave for college jobs, but given the options that coaches have, they have to pay pretty well to attract ones that are not terrible and even then they have made plenty of clunker hires recently. For the teams that don't share ownership with NBA teams, they also have to pay their business and operations staff competitive salaries as they also have other options in sports and elsewhere. This is why my half-joking solution is to ban coaching and use player-coaches instead.

To complete the thought, Miles apparently makes $12.5 million per year.

To complete the story, one reason the WNBA plays in the summer months is so that players can play in pro leagues in Europe and Asia, which occur during traditional basketball months. Perhaps there is better info on overseas salaries for women hoops players, but here are a couple of estimates:

Nobody has to disclose those foreign salaries so usually we only find out about them when somebody is not paid and sues for their salary. The league we do know is South Korea, which pays around $125,000 post-tax per season (the men's league there pays foreigners around two to three times that). Usually they attract WNBA players, but often not starter level players even though the pay there is completely reliable due to the teams being owned by big banks, a problem players in other countries face. One thing to note is that we are now in a period of decrease for available overseas salary. Chinese salaries are fine, but they generally only sign foreign post players. Turkey and Russia, the two highest paying countries in general, have both had economic issues and as a result, team sponsors have had to cut their budgets and one Turkish team dropped out of the league shortly before the season.

The foreign numbers are very surprising to me. I don't find the low WNBA salaries shocking.

People often wonder about this and my best current explanation that sort of helps Americans understand it is that in most of the world, there are no high school or college sports. As a result, the professional sports there fill the role that high school, college, and professional sports play here. Just like wealthy fans help fund Duke's tennis teams, which don't charge fans to watch them, local governments and wealthy businesses and individuals fund women's basketball and many other sports (including men's soccer, which is certainly not operated as a profitable enterprise in many of the places that it is popular) and the clubs often don't spend any resources on trying to gain any revenue. Last season, I compiled attendance numbers on the French league and collected some ticket price information since that is the league that is most like an American professional league and showed that they are getting nowhere near the revenue from fans as even the worst performing WNBA teams and I am collecting more this year. One of the common misconceptions is that women's basketball is popular among fans in these countries or that it is treated on an equal footing with men's basketball there. Other than a few isolated success stories, most of these teams draw very, very few fans. A couple countries, like Hungary, do probably have comparable spending on women's basketball compared to men's basketball, but generally speaking, the budgets for men's teams in any given country is significantly higher than women's teams there.

The reason Reali brought it up is because the Washington Mystics had their victory celebration 30 minutes after the final buzzer instead of the traditional parade/party a few days later. The players literally showered and then came out to the court and celebrated with fans. The reason they did that is because many of them are contractually obligated to overseas teams and required to play almost immediately after their WNBA season is over. According to Reali, several players had to fly out later that evening or the following morning. I have no idea if that is true, but if so, that's a tough situation.

Also, sorry for hijacking this thread.

Hey, Miles Plumlee is not going to get mentioned for much else soon so I suppose he will take it. A couple of the players who flew out immediately are foreigners who are taking a break in their home countries before going to other countries in Europe. The players in question have sufficient leverage due to talent level to get a little break before playing. Two of the players on the losing end did play today, less than a week after Game 5 of the Finals. This all is an advantage of shortening the start of the playoffs as players get eliminated faster and get more of a break before going overseas.

[TheOldBattleship]

Fantastic first half of preseason action for Quinn Cook: 10 minutes, 5/7 from the field for 13 points, 2 rebs, 2 assists, and some wow-level shooting both off the dribble and off the catch. He really looked great out there. Scored at all three levels running the pick-and-roll, made some nice confident decisions with the ball, and was absolutely fearless running the offense. He's the type of guy that that team needs: someone who is confident enough in his game to be willing to take pull-up threes off the dribble even with superstars around him. He's absolutely going to see serious minutes and be a big part of whatever success the Lakers have this year.

(Looks like LeBron's game wasn't affected by the ongoing China mess. He's completely dominated this game without looking like he's broken a sweat: 16/6/3/2 on 8 shots, and he's actually trying hard on defense. Nice to have that reminder that when he tries on that end of the court, he's absolutely still a force.)

On the other side of this game, the Warriors have... some defensive issues, we'll say. They need at least one of their defensive big guys to get healthy early in the regular season or they have a real chance of missing the playoffs (they started Marquese Chriss at center in this game, and it went poorly).

[TheOldBattleship]

Fantastic first half of preseason action for Quinn Cook: 10 minutes, 5/7 from the field for 13 points, 2 rebs, 2 assists, and some wow-level shooting both off the dribble and off the catch.

Example: not a whole ton of guys out there pump-faking Draymond out of his shoes before drilling a three. His shot is just gorgeous these days.

[duke96]

Tweaking the conversation back to Zion: here's a really great article about some of the practical specifics of how Alvin Gentry and the Pels plan on using the rookie on the scheme/play level. Gentry and the Pelicans ballhandlers (Holiday, Lonzo, Ingram, and Alexander-Walker) have already shown a knack for getting Zion the ball on the move towards an open lane, which is a good sign (part of that is that it doesn't take much for a lane to be open for Zion, of course). But that was the big concern for the Pels team this year: that the lack of shooting would cramp the spacing and make life tough for Zion. It's fair to say, though, that that hasn't happened much so far, and the playcalling is a big reason why.

Hmm. Makes you wonder why we didn’t do more of this last year.

[budwom]

Hmm. Makes you wonder why we didn’t do more of this last year.

good question, but maybe it's because we didn't have many open lanes to exploit once teams figured out we couldn't shoot worth a lick...

[Billy Dat]

Watching R.J. struggle to finish around the hoop. Just not big enough. He will need to develop a mid range game at this level.

I watched the most of the Knicks all preseason last night and he is definitely not being helped by their poor offensive schemes, but I agree that he doesn't have the explosive finishing ability in traffic.

That was a fun game to watch as the Hawks not only started Cam - who looked pretty good - but also bring Jabari off the bench and, I must say, he was looking rather spry.

[BD80]

Hmm. Makes you wonder why we didn’t do more of this last year.

The college lane is 4' more narrow than the NBA lane, and there is no defensive 3 second violation. Other than that? Beats me.

You don't think our coaching staff would have figured out that simple solution? Shame.

In the NBA, teams have to rotate a man into the lane (from outside the 16' lane) in RESPONSE to Zion's actions. And Zion is MUCH quicker than other bigs and many wings (and some guards).

In college, opponents rotated a player into the smaller lane IN ANTICIPATION of Zion getting the ball coming down the lane. And Zion STILL was extremely effective.

[TheOldBattleship]

The college lane is 4' more narrow than the NBA lane, and there is no defensive 3 second violation. Other than that? Beats me.

You don't think our coaching staff would have figured out that simple solution? Shame.

In the NBA, teams have to rotate a man into the lane (from outside the 16' lane) in RESPONSE to Zion's actions. And Zion is MUCH quicker than other bigs and many wings (and some guards).

In college, opponents rotated a player into the smaller lane IN ANTICIPATION of Zion getting the ball coming down the lane. And Zion STILL was extremely effective.

Just to add to this, a lot of what New Orleans is doing is capitalizing on the shuffling around that happens in or just after secondary transition after Ball or Holiday or Ingram or whoever pushed out in transition and then pulled the ball out. I certainly don't have any numbers to back this up, but in my memory, Duke didn't have as many of those kinds of opportunities last year because when we got out in transition, we generally scored without having to pull the ball back out. Just an absolutely monster transition team.

But agreed with BD80: even for a team with less shooting than is ideal in the NBA, the Pelicans still generate a LOT more space in the half-court than that Duke could last year, and that just opens up so much opportunity for this kind of nifty interior action.