Freelance Friday: Tracking 2016 Free Agency Movement

Freelance Friday is a semi-regular feature hear at Nylon Calculus where we solicit and accept submissions from the broader analytics community. Today’s piece features an interactive free agent movement tracker from Corey Jones. Corey Jones is a recent graduate of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, PA where he studied Business Intelligence and Accounting. He is passionate about data visualization. His work can be found here or on Twitter @Coreyj34

Questions, comments or submissions for Freelance Friday can be directed to TheNylonCalculus at gmail dot com.

With the Larry O’Brien Trophy handed out and 2016 draft complete, the NBA has moved on to the frenzied period of free agency. As an avid NBA fan, I wanted to create an engaging way to keep tabs on the all the moves that unfold during free agency. So, this year, I decided to make a tool to keep track of all the signings and allow one to see what deals stand out from the rest in terms of contract dollars:

The 2016 NBA free agency is headlined by Kevin Durant’s decision to head west and join forces with Steph Curry and the Golden State warriors in the Bay Area. Durant signed a 2-year, $54 million deal. Other teams made major moves to resign players like the deal the Memphis Grizzlies inked to lock up Mike Conley Jr. for five years, $153 million — a whopping $30.6 million per year. DeMar DeRozan and Andrew Drummond are also both staying put, signing 5-year deals with the Toronto Raptors and Detroit Pistons respectively.

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The free agency period is a chaotic time in the NBA, and with the salary cap increasing, there has already been over three BILLION dollars dished out to 80 players. If you are trying to keep track of your team’s moves or all the moves across the NBA, take a look at my NBA free agency dashboard below. This tool keeps a running total of the number of contracts signed along with the total amount of money for the deals. The tool also maps the movement of players throughout the league and provides the contract details for each player.

If you are interested in quickly seeing how much money is being committed to players this year across the league, the distribution on the lower third of the dashboard shows total contract value (or dollars per year) for all the new contracts. The stars are getting paid: Durant and Wade each signed 2-year contracts that are worth more than the total contract value of 13 of the 14 players who signed 3-year deals and are worth more than the total value of six of the 4-year contracts*. The aforementioned Conley deal is the largest contract, both in total dollar value and in dollars per year.

(* as of 7/11/16)

This dashboard will stay updated as the free agency period progresses, so check back to see the new signings and how teams are positioning their roster for the 2016-2017 NBA season.

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