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          NBA mailbag: Should the league prevent top buyout players from signing with the best teams?

          • Kevin PeltonApr 10, 2021, 07:00 AM ET
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            • Co-author, Pro Basketball Prospectus series
            • Formerly a consultant with the Indiana Pacers
            • Developed WARP rating and SCHOENE system
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          Time for another edition of the NBA mailbag.

          Throughout the NBA season, I will be answering your questions about the latest, most interesting topics in basketball. You can tweet me directly at @kpelton, tweet your questions using the hashtag #peltonmailbag or email them to peltonmailbag@gmail.com.

          This week we take a look at:

          • Investigating whether the quality of players available via the buyout market is getting better over time

          • DeMarcus Cousins and Rajon Rondo, together again

          • A possible application of the Elam Ending

          Should the league be more preventative in avoiding top talent becoming available in the buyout market? It does seem like the talent of the buyouts goes up slightly every year.

          -- James B.

          This question comes in the context of the recent debate about whether the buyout market needs changes after Blake Griffin and LaMarcus Aldridge signed with the Brooklyn Nets and Andre Drummond signed with the Los Angeles Lakers, giving those star-studded teams former All-Stars making the veteran's minimum.

          As my ESPN colleague Bobby Marks tweeted, buyout players flocking to big markets isn't typically what we see in practice. Remarkably, neither New York team had signed a buyout player in the past 10 seasons before the Nets' additions, while the Lakers have seen nearly as many players (three) head elsewhere after buyouts as they've signed (four) over that span.

          Still, the question of whether more talented players are coming free is worth exploring. With some help from Bobby, I compiled a list of players who were signed by another team quickly after being waived midseason since the 2011-12 season. I included players who didn't technically give back any money via buyout because the value for the team signing them is still the same. I did not include players signed to 10-day contracts or the one player (Jordan McRae) who agreed to a buyout only to be claimed off waivers.

          Let's look at a few measures of the quality of these players over time.

          In that chart, WARP is my wins above replacement player metric, a bottom-line estimate of the value players provide their teams. Win% is the per-minute version of that rating, akin to ESPN's real plus-minus.

          Clearly, the buyout market has improved since the middle of the past decade, when the players available were more likely to be performing at a sub-replacement level -- that is, worse than we'd expect from a player called up from the G League or otherwise signed for the minimum. Over the past five seasons, teams are doing better on average with buyouts than going that route.

          Within those five years, however, the trend doesn't seem to be escalating and this season doesn't remotely stand out. Just two players available this year (Drummond and Gorgui Dieng, whose signing with the San Antonio Spurs didn't draw the same kind of scrutiny) rank among the top 25 players over the past decade in terms of pre-buyout WARP.

          So why the reaction we've seen? The teams involved are surely a factor. So too are the big names. Aldridge, Drummond and Griffin have combined for 16 career All-Star appearances, shattering the previous high for a buyout market in the past decade (nine in 2016, with seven-time All-Star Joe Johnson and two-timer David Lee). Marco Belinelli and Ersan Ilyasova were more valuable players when they were bought out in 2018 but didn't have the same kind of name recognition.

          I also wonder if the Win% column tells us something important. You see, it's not adjusted for position like WARP is and it does reveal an all-time high. As centers, Aldridge and Drummond face a higher standard to create value because the replacement level at the position is so high -- as evidenced by the quality play Brooklyn has gotten from 2019 second-round pick Nicolas Claxton. That's not immediately obvious from a cursory glance at the per-game stats of Aldridge and Drummond, which remain impressive-looking.

          Still, I think the biggest issue is there's a great deal of attention on the buyout market during a quiet period on the NBA schedule after the trade deadline that gets quickly forgotten come playoff time when these players rarely contribute much.

          In the past decade, just four players from the buyout market have produced more than 0.2 WARP in the playoffs: Boris Diaw for the 2012 Spurs, Kris Humphries for the 2016 Hawks, Ilyasova for the 2018 76ers and Marvin Williams for the 2020 Bucks. Collectively, buyout players have rated worse than replacement level in the crucible of the postseason. Is that really something worth legislating?

          With the help of ESPN Stats & Information, I passed your question along to the Elias Sports Bureau, which found that Cousins and Rondo have indeed tied an NBA record.

          To refresh your memory, before Cousins signed a 10-day contract to join the LA Clippers shortly after they added Rondo at the trade deadline, the two Kentucky products teamed up with the Sacramento Kings (2015-16), New Orleans Pelicans (2017-18) and last season with the Los Angeles Lakers. (Cousins never played for the Lakers because of his ACL tear but was on the roster through February.)

          Elias found four previous sets of players who had been teammates with four different teams, one of which predates the league's being known as the NBA:

          Amusingly, Gatling and Weatherspoon played together only with the Cavaliers despite the fact that they both teamed up with Jackson four times and were actually traded to Cleveland together. Gatling was both acquired and dealt by the Heat during the same offseason.

          Cousins and Rondo are unique in modern NBA history in having played together four times without ever getting traded together, a claim only Hermsen and Schulz in the league's early days can match.

          I think the Elam Ending for NBA overtimes certainly passes my "any chance" rule. Starting with the score automatically tied solves one of the biggest dilemmas of the Elam Ending, which is where to set the target so as to both give the leading team an advantage but also give the trailing team a chance to come back. As an additional benefit, using the Elam Ending only for overtime wouldn't disrupt the usual number of TV timeouts the same way doing so in regulation could.

          Realistically, I think we're looking at a slow progression for the NBA with the Elam Ending. I expect we'll see it in the G League before we see it expand in the NBA beyond the All-Star Game and more likely in a one-off tournament than a regular-season game. Eventually, however, I do think overtime could be one possible step in the process.