Win Shares per Salary Dollar

I pulled data from the basketball-reference.com on players' 2012-13 win shares (WS), which reflect an estimate number of wins that a player contributed to his team last season, and on salary for the 2013-14 season. If a player's salary is not yet determined then I used the amount he will be charged against his team's salary cap. I divided 2013-14 salary by 2012-13 WS to get some rough estimate of the dollar per win a team can expect from a player assuming he performs identically next season as he did this season (and plays the same amount of games and minutes).

First a few points on win shares. The more a player plays the more likely he is to accumulate a larger WS. The statistic is not standardized thus injuries that cause a significant loss of game time or general low playing time adversely affect WS. (Basketball-reference.com does provide a standardized WS per 48 minutes of play where the top 5 are: LeBron [.322], Durant, [.291], CP3 [.287], Jeremy Evans [.208], and Tyson Chandler and Chris Andersen [.207]. Darko Milicic has the lowest--an astounding -.779--which suggests that extrapolating his 5 minutes of play in 2012/13 to a whole game, his presence on the court would virtually guarantee a loss for his team.)

Dividing WS by salary $ is important because it gives an idea of low cost players who disproportionately contribute to wins. The worst of the worst consists of big name players with negative win shares, like Danny Granger, Drew Gooden, Thomas Robinson, Quentin Richardson, Hedo Turkoglu, Ben Gordon, and Michael Beasely. The next group, the not quite worstest of the worst (but still awful), include players with a 0 WS, like Marcus Camby, Michael Pietrus Al Harrington and Miles Plumleee. Next the five players with the greatest salary to positive WS (basically, the least efficient players in terms of payroll besides those just listed). The dollar value next to the name reflects salary dollar per win:

1. Andrea Bargnani ($118.6 million)
2. Linas Kleiza ($46.0 million)
3. Kevin Seraphin ($27.6 million)
4. Brendan Haywoon ($20.5 million)
5. Daniel Gibson ($18.2 million)

The six (sixth place was added for obvious reasons) most valuable players in terms of salary per WS are:

1. Chanlder Parsons ($132.4K)
2. Nate Robinson ($149.9K)
3. Jimmy Butler ($159.0K)
4. Kenneth Faried ($175.3K)
5. Isaiah Thomas ($176.9K)
6. Andray Blatche ($180.5K)

Another way to look at this is where as to buy (with salary) 10 wins from Andrea Bargnani a team should expect to pay about $1 billion, Chandler Parsons could return the same 10 wins for a little more than $1 million. 

All D v Not All D (1989-90 to 2011-12) per 48

The charts below (click to enlarge) break out conventional offensive and defensive statistics for All Defensive players versus all other players by position category (i.e., PGs, wings, and post players) for every season from 1989-90 to 2011-12. The statistics are standardized on a per 48 minute performance, which gives some indicator as to how these groups would perform over an entire NBA game. (Although fatigue, injury, etc. would likely result in declining play--significantly for some players--as minutes played  approached 48. Thus, this should be viewed as a rough estimate of full-game performance.)

The charts show that over 48 minutes, All Defensive players are better in virtually every offensive and defensive category than are non-All Defensive players. The exceptions are all All Defensive positional categories are slightly more likely to turn the ball over than their non-All Defensive counterparts (which makes sense as they are more likely to possess the ball), and that All Defensive wings average slightly fewer offensive rebounds than their non-All Defensive counterparts. The difference is most stark with post players, where All Defensive post men far outperform their non-All Defensive counterparts, whom over 48 minutes average almost six and a half fouls. These statistics simply present more evidence that All Defensive players are all-around superior players, which should not come as a surprise but may give reason to believe that offensive performance could influence NBA coaches' decision to vote a given player to the All Defense team.