Batum and Salary - a Comp

Batum and his pending Restricted Free Agency (RFA) is a hot topic here on Blazersedge, and projections of reasonable offers are all over the board. Recently, a short discussion with Oden Mad, Oden Smash! and Magnum sparked the question of how to define value. Oden Mad, Oden Smash! proposed that only a small handful of players in the $8M-$11M salary range "earn" their contract. It is a market value question - where I counter that the proper question isn't whether a small number of outliers (higher than normal production for a given salary range) defines "value" - but rather the question is how much bang for the buck is necessary for a salary that individually consumes 20-25% of the available cap?

Incidentally, $10M represents 17% of a $58M cap, but close enough.

Magnum posted the question of being able to look at a comprehensive list of players in a given salary range and evaluating value based on the list.

Here you go (after the jump). The salary list, with exception notes, is based on 2011/2012 data courtesy of Storyteller's Contracts. Also courtesy of Smirnoff 100 + xEnergy Fruit Punch.

I limited the list to salaries between $6M and $10M, taking a few liberties wherever I pleased. I personally chose this range because I feel it represents both the appropriate player comps and Batum's likely future salary (don't see him getting $11M a year).

The average salary of the following list is $7.9 million (42 players). There aren't very many players in that range that one could say are clearly better than Batum.

(salary in millions)

Hinrich: 8.1

Marvin Williams: 7.5

Rondo: 10.045

Allen: 10

Tyrus Thomas: 7.3

Diop: 6.9

Rose: 6.9 (going to be $15.5)

Varejao: 7.7

Walton: 5.9

Kid: 9.6

Odom: 8.9