Low-budget Jazz exceed expectations

By Terry Brown
NBA Insider
Tuesday, April 13
Updated: April 13
12:25 PM ET

What does a 7-foot-3 Lithuanian with a fetish for Mexican food have in common with a No. 3 all-time scorer in UConn history?

Well, Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Ray Allen are both the token maximum salary players on their respective NBA teams, and their respective NBA teams fall right smack in the middle our last Power Outage of the 2004 regular season.

Instead of just counting wins or stats or salaries to come up with a new category, we decided to combine them to see which teams, or rather which front offices, or rather which franchises, are doing the best jobs while having different agendas.

You see, we didn't want to confuse an owner like Mark Cuban with the likes of Donald Sterling. Or a player like Sam Cassell at $5.2 million this season to Damon Stoudamire at $14.3 million. Everybody's spending money. Everybody's making money. We wanted to see who was spending it and making it the most efficiently in scoreboard terms.

In this case, we counted up the records, added up the salaries and calculated what each team in the NBA paid to get a win.

For example: The Seattle SuperSonics have a team salary of $50.6 million. With their current winning percentage, they should finish with 37 wins. That means they paid about $1,367,000 per win. The Cavaliers have a team salary of $46.5 million and should finish at 34 wins. That also equals about $1,367,000 per victory.

Consider that the average team salary in the NBA is $55.5 million and the average win total is 41, then the average cost per win would be right around $1,353,000.

And that leaves Hey Zeus and Z as your average token max players at $13.5 million a season.

Top 5
1. Utah Jazz
Cost per win: $658,000 (43 wins for $28.3M)
They weren't supposed to win 20 games much less 30, so how in the world are we talking about 40-plus for a team that started Carlos Arroyo, Gordan Giricek, Andrei Kirilenko, Tom Gugliotta and Jarron Collins on Monday night. The Jazz lost Karl Malone and John Stockton. They lost their top returning scorer from last year, Matt Harpring, who went down in game No. 31 of an 82-game schedule and never returned. They lost more than $8 million in salary space on Greg Ostertag, who had 19 games in which he scored double digits and 58 in which he didn't. They lost a lottery pick after making the playoffs for the 20th consecutive time last year. No LeBron. No Carmelo. No Jason Kidd trade or Shaquille O'Neal signing. Just 12 guys you still couldn't pick out of a lineup or spell their names. Head coach Jerry Sloan deserves a raise, Coach of the Year honors and a new John Deere cap. Guess which one he wants most.

2. San Antonio Spurs
Cost per win: $835,000 (56 wins for $46.8M)
They used to joke around that you could surround Tim Duncan with four guys from the stands and the Spurs would still be competitive. Well, the Spurs weren't kidding. They took Emanuel Ginobili, Radoslav Nesterovic and Hidayet Turkoglu when their own mothers couldn't pronounce their names. They gave the ball to a point guard from France. They started Bruce Bowen, a career six-point per gamer, at small forward and told him to shoot. Now, not only are they are the defending NBA champs with the second-best record in the Western Conference, but also the 22nd-ranked team in terms of salary right between the Magic at $47 million and the Cavaliers at $46.5 with enough cap space to sign a blue chip free agent. Can we get another four volunteers?

3. Denver Nuggets
Cost per win: $837,000 (43 wins for $36M)
When your best player is a rookie and making a slotted salary of only $3.2 million, then that whole principle of the draft and the worst teams getting the top picks is still valid. Especially when that top pick is one year away from winning an NCAA title and less than 24 hours away from guiding your franchise to the playoffs after a nine-year absence. In 10 years, I don't know if it's going to be harder to convince people that Carmelo Anthony WAS the third pick of the draft or that he WASN'T Rookie of the Year.

4. Indiana Pacers
Cost per win: $958,000 (60 wins for $57.5M)
Sixty wins already this year and they've still got Jermaine O'Neal locked up until 2010 and Ron Artest until 2008. That is, perhaps, the next best thing to Shaq and Kobe back when Shaq and Kobe were still collecting NBA titles. But let's not forget that it took them four years together before they won their first title. These guys just finished year 2.5.

5. Detroit Pistons
Cost per win: $979,000 (54 wins for $52.9M)
Another year, another 50 or so wins for the boys from Detroit and now they get to pick between Mehmet Okur and Rasheed Wallace or both during the offseason. No one on the team made more than $6.5 million this season. None of the starters that began the season in Detroit are up for free agency. And no one seems unhappy with their current location on the map or in the rotation. We can only hope they've learned from the last time they sat in such good fortune and got to choose between Darko Milicic and Carmelo Anthony.

Bottom 5
29. Orlando Magic
Cost per win: $2,510,000 (19 wins for $47.7M)
Grant Hill. Grant Hill. Grant Hill. The fact that he was never able to heal his ankle was not his fault. The fact that we will remember him for that ankle and not the six glorious years in Detroit is. The Magic signed him to a $92.8 million contract and the body count now lists a general manager, head coach, small forward and, quite possibly, their shooting guard who has led the league in scoring the last two years and counting but often can't stand straight from the burden. Two years ago, they wrote off Hill's $11 million. Last year, they wrote off $12 million. This year, they wrote off $13 million. When does the madness end? They say pride goeth before the fall. They, obviously, haven't been watching the Magic.

28. Atlanta Hawks
Cost per win: $2,267,000 (28 wins for $63.5M)
Shareef Abdur-Rahim has come and gone. Glenn Robinson has come and gone. For goodness sakes, Isaiah Rider has come and gone. And in that time, they haven't been able to decide if Jason Terry is the point guard or shooting guard or if Terry Stotts is their past head coach or future head coach or if anybody actually owns this team to make those decisions. Dominique Wilkins in the front office, though, is a good start . . . er . . . restart as the case may be.

27. Chicago Bulls
Cost per win: $2,265,000 (23 wins for $52.1M)
Jerry Krause was here.

26. Phoenix Suns
Cost per win: $2,244,000 (29 wins for $65.1M)
Next year, the Suns will have a lottery pick. Next year, they'll have some space to grab a free agent off the market. Next year, they'll still have Amare Stoudemire, Shawn Marion and Joe Johnson on the roster. Next year became the only thing anyone in Phoenix wanted to talk about once Stephon Marbury and Anfernee Hardaway became last year before this year was done. The problem, though, is that Tom Chambers and Kevin Johnson and Charles Barkley were also next years who became last years.

25. New York Knicks
Cost per win: $2,166,000 (39 wins for $84.5M)
Allan Houston ($15.9 million) he's our man, if he can't do it no one can. Antonio McDyess ($13.5 million) he's our man, if he can't do it no one can. Stephon Marbury ($13.5 million) he's our man, if he can't do it no one can . . . bridge . . . chorus . . . repeat next year.