It’s a contract year: Will the Jazz improve?

Posted by Andy Larsen on October 14, 2008

‘A Better Boozer?’ (NBAE/Getty Images)

Jazz fans know this upcoming season is a critical one in the history of the franchise, and it’s easy to understand why. Many players on the current roster either have option years after the 2008-09 season (Carlos Boozer and Memo Okur), or are outright free agents (Jarron Collins, Brevin Knight, Ronnie Price, and Paul Millsap). What does that mean for the upcoming season? Some speculate that NBA players play better in “contract years”, due to the sometimes spectacular sums of money received if they perform well. One can certainly point out individual examples, but is it true for a team as a whole?

I looked at all 52 NBA teams who had 6 or more free agents in a single offseason since the year 2000, using ESPN.com’s free agent lists. I found their average win percentages 2 years before, one year before, and the year after the critical offseason. If there is a contract year effect, there should be a boost in the year before the decisive summer. So what happened?

Indeed, there was a small contract year increase. Before the contract year, the teams averaged a .526 win percentage. Two seasons before, the teams averaged a .537 percentage. The contract year boost seems to be 11 percentage points, or about 1 win. The year after the studied offseason, the teams averaged a .519 percentage, a loss of about 1½ wins.

Fans of the Jazz certainly know the playoff implications 1 win can have; it can easily determine who has the all-important home court advantage. In the past two seasons, one more win would have given the Jazz home court advantage against the Rockets. The contract year phenomenon is just one more reason to be optimistic about Utah’s chances this upcoming season.

2 Comments

Jared Conger on October 15, 2008 said:

contract years point towards success.

we could have unprecedented success due to the amount of contract players we currently have.

contracts contracts contracts!

Linda McFarland on October 15, 2008 said:

The contract stuff is nice but I’d like to see them win because they are good and they WANT to.

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