Salary Cap, Organizational Gap, and Catch-up in the Performance of NBA Teams: A Two-Stage DEA Model Under Heterogeneity

This paper evaluates National Basketball Association teams performance using a two-stage approach under a metafrontier framework. Our approach decomposes overall efficiency into salary-cap and on-court efficiency. Organizational gaps between different organizational structures are calculated as well. The introduction of the salary cap as an important element for a competitive market preventing monopoly formation allows the examination of the effects on different types of performance. Findings reveal that teams experience increased performance while organizational gaps decline. Moreover, a [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] convergence analysis reveals convergence patterns. Finally, the catch-up index denotes that the speed of convergence increases, especially after the salary cap policy implementation.

Card collection: An examination of whether yellow and red cards affect base salary under Major League Soccer’s salary cap

We examine the effect of card (yellow and red) collection on player remuneration under the salary cap in Major League Soccer (MLS). The data contain 1478 observations of 731 players under contract between 2015 and 2019. Though the number of yellow cards a player collected had a significant impact, the number of red cards collected was not found to be a significant factor. On average, when a player has accumulated more than eight yellow cards over the course of the regular season, his salary was dropped substantially. If a player receives more than two red cards, his salary was decreased. A key result was that players who were aggressive without crossing the line to the point of being ejected from the field of play received comparatively higher salaries.

The Causal Effects of Early-Career Playing Time on the Fourth-Year Performance of NBA Players

Recent shifts in professional basketball have led teams to place more urgency in drafting as well as possible. Draft picks must play out their initial years under team-friendly contracts that provide teams with increased salary cap flexibility. Yet, while this urgency has led to widespread discussion and research of how to improve teams' draft decisions, little attention has been given to identifying what teams can do to maximize the performance and potential of their draft picks once they are added to their roster. However, theories of learning and ecological psychology suggest that giving young players as much playing time as possible should lead to concrete improvements in their development and future performance. In this study, I test this causal theory by evaluating the relationship between the minutes a player receives in their first two seasons in the NBA and their fourth-year performance using a novel method of propensity score weighting that enables weighting for continuous treatment variables. I find that players who receive more minutes in their first two seasons have better fourth seasons and make larger jumps from their first two seasons to their fourth season, controlling for a broad set of potential confounders. These results have important implications for teams as they develop organizational strategies for the short- and medium-term.

College Coaching and Salary Restrictions: Using Law to Teach Current Events in the Classroom

Each year, the college football season ends with hiring and firing moves. These transitions raise questions about the million-dollar salaries prevalent in college sports. Current events like this tend to dominate classroom conversations. Navigating these issues and their relation to class content can be challenging. Although the amount of money spent on coaches is not surprising, any discussion to provide new strategies may not be legally viable. For example, when students propose ideas about limiting coaching salaries, they may not realize the legal implication of that action. This case study uses the legal case-study model to address questions related to intercollegiate athletic coaching salaries and the possibility of a salary cap. Providing legal application in other courses will address these questions for both students and for faculty members who might not have the legal background to answer these questions.

Collective Bargaining in a Basic North American Sports League Model With Broadcasting Revenue

The general firm/trade union bargaining literature is brought to bear on a specific North American sports league model, where talent supply is perfectly inelastic and profit-maximizing clubs receive local (gate) revenue plus an equal share of league broadcasting revenue. Club and player representatives negotiate a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) on the levels of local revenue sharing, salary cap, and salary floor. Results characterize the set of efficient bargains and the Nash bargaining solution and show how they are affected by increases in broadcasting market size, focusing on player salaries, competitive balance, the content of CBA documents, and comparisons with laissez-faire.

A mathematical optimization framework for expansion draft decision making and analysis

In this paper, we present and analyze a mathematical programming approach to expansion draft optimization in the context of the 2017 NHL expansion draft involving the Vegas Golden Knights, noting that this approach can be generalized to future NHL expansions and to those in other sports leagues. In particular, we present a novel mathematical optimization approach, consisting of two models, to optimize expansion draft protection and selection decisions made by the various teams. We use this approach to investigate a number of expansion draft scenarios, including the impact of “collaboration” between existing teams, the trade-off between team performance and salary cap flexibility, as well as opportunities for Vegas to take advantage of side agreements in a “leverage” experiment. Finally, we compare the output of our approach to what actually happened in the expansion draft, noting both similarities and discrepancies between our solutions and the actual outcomes. Overall, we believe our framework serves as a promising foundation for future expansion draft research and decision-making in hockey and in other sports.