Correlation Between Team Salary and Off./Def. Ratings

[jaebradley]

Using team salary data and team off/def ratings for the past ten years, I was able to construct this graph: http://imgur.com/NvEbGAH

I would expect that as team salaries increase, offensive ratings would increase, and defensive ratings would decrease.

But it seems like this expectation has only occurred recently (i.e. ~2007/2008)

Anybody know why this shift occurred then? Was it that front offices started focussing more on advanced statistics/they hired more John Hollinger's of the world (though J.H. was hired in 2004).

[DSMok1]

Using team salary data and team off/def ratings for the past ten years, I was able to construct this graph: http://imgur.com/NvEbGAH

I would expect that as team salaries increase, offensive ratings would increase, and defensive ratings would decrease.

But it seems like this expectation has only occurred recently (i.e. ~2007/2008)

Anybody know why this shift occurred then? Was it that front offices started focussing more on advanced statistics/they hired more John Hollinger's of the world (though J.H. was hired in 2004).

I think Isiah's Knicks might be single-handedly destroying the correlation!

[v-zero]

They're no exactly setting the world on fire now, either, going after Bargnani.

[Crow]

Part of the shift may be more availability and hopefully more use of analytics. Part of it may be related to changed CBA salary constraints and related impacts.