With the first day of free agency quickly approaching (June 30), I wanted to kick off a new series looking at how much potential players the Sacramento Kings could be targeting should be paid based on their past/future production.
In this series, I am going to look at three different methods (one on each slide) for estimating how much a player should be making next season. To some degree, all of these approaches are similar to the calculus front offices are doing when they are trying to ascertain the value of a particular player. If you haven't already, be sure to check out the first installment of this series on De'Anthony Melton or the second on Miles Bridges.
Today, we will be doing the same exercise for Kevon Looney. A couple of days ago, it was reported that the Warriors are probably going to cut ties with Looney in a cost-cutting move. That will make the three-time NBA Champion a free agent.
With Alex Len and JaVale McGee set to become free agents, the Kings are going to be in the market for a backup center. However, given their salary cap situation, they will likely only want to use their Bi-Annual Exception (BAE) or veteran minimum to fill that need.
This offseason, the BAE is worth roughly 4.7 million dollars (3.3% of the salary cap). Meanwhile, the veteran minimum for a player with nine years of service is a little over three million dollars (2.1%). Are either of those amounts enough to nab Looney? Let's look at three different methods for gauging player value based on production to find out.
(Sidebar #1: For those wondering, I have actually conducted this exercise for Malik Monk. That article can be found here.)
Method #1: A Revised Version of Seth Partnow’s Formula
In his book, “The Midrange Theory,” NBA analyst for The Athletic and former Director of Basketball Research for the Milwaukee Bucks, Seth Partnow, discusses a formula that teams use to estimate a player’s monetary value.
In its essence, the formula involves multiplying how many points a player is “worth” by the amount a win “costs” in a given season. Unfortunately, Real-Adjusted Plus-Minus (RAPM) — a major component in the formula — is no longer available. So, I've revised Partnow’s formula a bit.
The website Dunks & Threes has a statistic called Estimated Wins (EW). Last season, Looney had 1.3 EWs. Next year, with the salary cap being estimated to be around 141 million dollars (per Spotrac), a single win will “cost” roughly 3.4 million dollars. Based on those two numbers, Looney should make about 4.4 million dollars next season (roughly 3.1% of the salary cap).
This number puts Looney right around the BAE/veteran minimum range.