2025 Student Case Competition: NBA Player Acquisition: Cost-Benefit Analysis & Visualizations

Congratulations: The year is 2023, and you’ve just landed your dream job at one of the 30 National Basketball Association (NBA) franchises after graduating with your accounting degree. The team you’ve joined didn’t make it past the first round of the playoffs last year, but your new manager has big plans to improve the team’s performance this coming season.

“We missed out on capping off our playoff success last year with a finals championship, but with a sensible player acquisition strategy, I’m confident we can reach that pinnacle this year or the next,” says Janell Mount, your manager, who brought you on board because of your experience in visualizations.

“I’m glad we’ve got you to help us identify weaknesses and areas for talent acquisition,” she says. “We have a lot of work to do—so let’s get to it!”

Background and Company Description

Professional sports have always been very competitive—and have only become more so with the rise of Big Data. Since the 2003 publication of Moneyball, Michael Lewis’ book about the Oakland Athletics’ use of data in professional baseball, professional sports teams have been actively looking to use data to gain competitive advantages.

The team you’re working for is one of 30 NBA franchises (which team you choose is up to you). The team’s goal each year? To win the NBA championship, of course. (You can read more about the history and playoff history of your team in Appendix A.)

Having the right players makes a championship win more likely. Each team can have a maximum of 15 players on their roster at a given time. Thirteen of those players can be active in any one game, so a few players can make a big difference.

The team makes money from ticket sales, sales of luxury suites, arena naming rights, local television and radio contracts, merchandise sales, advertising and sponsorship, and league-wide media deals.

According to Sports Illustrated, costs for operating the franchise include:

• team staff costs (coaches, basketball operations staff, and medical staff)
• team non-staff costs (e.g., chartering planes, practice facility, hotels, catering, uniforms)
• business operating expenses (e.g., debt service, marketing, legal, accounting, human resources, executive salaries, rent, insurance)
• player salaries (Note: There is a salary floor and salary cap. To avoid that complication, we’re assuming there is “Cap Room” on your team. If you want to find the current cap situation and factor that in, it is above and beyond the case.)

Successful large-market teams also pay a luxury tax and revenue share with less profitable small-market teams, which are defined as those with a market area of less than 2.5 million TV households.

Table 1 (PDF download) shows an average financial statement for a small-market team and a large-market team:

You’ve spent the last two days with the team training and onboarding. You got a polo shirt with the team logo that you’re going to proudly wear out this weekend. Your lifelong dream has been to work for an NBA team, so you’re living the dream. You’re excited to review the team statistics and uncover areas of need. You watched a lot of games last year, and you think you know the gaps, but it will be interesting to back that up with analysis.

Your Assignment

Your job is to efficiently use the resources your team has available to acquire the best players who will round out your team. To do this, you need to prepare visualizations that allow the organization to find those players, ideally at affordable rates.

After you’ve done that, you will review individual player statistics and find a player (or players) who will fill your team’s needs. You have some ideas of who would be a good fit, but you know you need to back that up with analysis.

To help you do this, you’ve been given a database of all the players in the league with their current salary, any salaries they’re contracted to earn in the upcoming years (see NBA player data), and stats for the past season (see data dictionary).

Use this information to prepare a presentation to give to your team’s general manager. In your presentation, recommend between one and three players that she should work to add to your team during this offseason (ignoring the salary cap).

In your presentation, make your case for why that player—or those players—would be an asset to your team, and how they would help the team fill current gaps.

Data Available

There are the traditional player statistics, such as points, steals, and turnovers. Using your visualization software, you can calculate other statistics, like shooting percentages. A good first step is to compare your team to the other teams in the league on metrics that are important for success. In preparation for this, you think you might want to listen to a couple of NBA-related podcasts that talk about critical success factors for teams.

You know that teams win games by scoring the most points. This is easier to do when they:

• don’t turn the ball over
• block shots by the other team
• play as a team and assist each other
• rebound misses
• make more of the shots they take

Players foul out of a game when they commit six fouls. If they foul a player on the other team while he’s shooting, the fouled player will get to take two free throws (if he missed the shot) or one (if he made the shot). When a player is fouled and gets to shoot from the free throw line, a basket is worth one point. During play, when a player makes a basket inside the three-point line, that’s worth two points. When they shoot outside that line, that’s worth three points.

You loved playing basketball in high school, and you reflect back on all the rules and the strategy that your coach taught you. Take shots! Make shots! Protect the ball. Rebound!

Approach the Assignment with an Analytics Mindset

You snap back to reality from reliving your glory days. You need to focus on how to do the best analysis. As part of your onboarding, you learned that the organization has developed a focus on an analytics mindset. Your training included an overview of how they approach unstructured decision problems. You review those notes now:

1. Ask the right questions. You know that you want to find players who will fill in gaps on your team—and for a low cost. You come up with three important questions to answer:
   1. What are your team’s gaps? You can find that out by answering, “Where does this team rank on important statistics?”
   2. Who are the players who are currently successful on those metrics? You will have to look at many players on multiple dimensions to find players who would be a good fit.
   3. What would you have to pay them to get them onto our team?

2. Extract, transform, and load the data. You’ve been given a large data set. Load it into your visualization software program. Review the data dictionary. Be sure you understand the variables. Is the data set complete? Do the data make sense? What should you do with missing values? Is there other data you can obtain to add to the data set?

3. Apply appropriate analytical techniques. Execute calculations and comparisons. Prepare worksheets with the statistics of note and put them in dashboards as appropriate.

4. Interpret and share the results. Combine the worksheets and dashboards into a linear and comprehensible story (or stories). Use annotations to assist the general manager in understanding your results and analysis.
   1. Reminder: The first slide of your presentation should provide an overview of your recommended player additions. It shouldn’t be a mystery novel—lead with your recommendations.
   2. The second slide should share your agenda.
   3. Subsequent slides should show all the analysis you’ve done to support your recommendations.
   4. The last slide is your conclusion, and should summarize your recommendations.

Discussion

After reviewing your notes, you circle back to talk with Janell to be sure you know exactly what she is looking for. She says that a small team can be greatly impacted by a few key players. She thinks the team currently has a great core, but she is looking to add one to three players to fill gaps on your current team.

She has an idea what the gaps are (also from watching the games last year), but she wants to see where the team stacks up compared to other teams. She says that she might be biased regarding which statistics really matter to winning.

She goes on to explain that the team has personnel scouts who evaluate players that can be acquired through trades or free agency. The players those scouts have been recommending all have really high salaries and are being pursued by many other teams. She thinks that we can “find some hidden gems” by doing things a little differently.

“That’s what you’re here for,” she reminds you. “With your data analytics background, you can pore over the stats and find someone that will be a great addition to the team. Just like Brad Pitt did.” When you give her a questioning look, she says, “You know, in the movie Moneyball!” Oh, right—you nod in understanding.

After Janell leaves your office, you pack up for the day. Your plan is to go home and watch Moneyball, and plan which famous actor is going to portray you when the story of your team’s glorious ascent to the NBA championship on the back of your data analytics skills is made into a movie. Tomorrow, that story begins.

You nod off to sleep thinking about your new job. You’re going to compare your team to the other teams in the league and see where they have strengths and weaknesses. After that, you’ll analyze players for their strengths and find a few who have strengths that will overcome team weaknesses—and can do so at a reasonable salary. Your last waking thought is, “I’m going to get paid for this?”