King Kaufman's Sports Daily

NBA free agent madness: What's going on with all these giant contracts for mid-level players? Where is the "Moneyball" revolution in basketball?

July 22, 2004 | Steve Nash signs a $66 million deal with the Suns that will pay him until he's 36, an age at which point guards not named John Stockton simply don't play well anymore. His replacement in Dallas will be Marquis Daniels, a backup last year as a rookie after going undrafted. Daniels signs a six-year contract worth $38 million.

The Jazz sign Carlos Boozer for $68 million and Mehmet Okur for $50 million, both for six years. The Warriors sign career backup center Adonal Foyle for $41.6 million for five years and Derek Fisher, a point guard who would struggle for playing time on most decent teams and may even do so in Oakland, for $37 million for six.

The list goes on and on. Often-injured Marcus Camby, $60 million or more to stay in Denver. Kenyon Martin, $90 million in a sign-and-trade to be Camby's teammate -- on a team that also has Carmelo Anthony and Nene in the frontcourt.

What's going on here? This NBA free-agent season is looking like baseball offseasons used to, with aging, midlevel or unproven players signing long, massive deals. Baseball, thanks in part to a lagging economy and in part to the Oakland A's using sophisticated statistical methods to construct a winning roster frugally, has tightened its belt.

To use the title of the bestselling book about the A's success for want of a better shorthand term: Where is the "Moneyball" revolution in the NBA?

"The difference is the salary cap that we have that baseball doesn't," says Mavericks owner Mark Cuban in an e-mail. "Teams feel obligated to spend that money, and they do. When there is more total salary cap dollars available than there are good players, it's a seller's market, and you get the craziness of this summer."

There's no denying that comparing basketball to baseball doesn't get you very far. That's because both sides of the "Moneyball" equation are very different in basketball than they are on the diamond.

"The science of basketball is not as consistent as baseball," says Dean Oliver, author of "Basketball on Paper," which uses Bill James-style, or sabermetric, statistical analysis on the NBA. Oliver and others who do this type of work point out that baseball is far easier to measure because most of what needs to be measured comes down to a series of one-on-one confrontations between the pitcher and batter. Basketball is a flowing, team game, and it's difficult to figure out how much credit to assign to each player on the floor for a made basket or a defensive stop.

"I hear that when I talk to NBA people," Oliver says. "When I raise the fact that 'Moneyball' is working in baseball, they say, 'Baseball is very different than basketball.' And they're right."

Next page: "The high price of mediocrity": Why hasn't fiscal sanity caught on?