D-League Players vs. Late First Round Picks: A Surprising Result

Andres Perezchica grew up in California and was at UC Berkeley during the Warriors’ We Believe era. He then studied a master’s program in Finance in Monterrey, Mexico, where he became intrigued by the growing field of Sports Economics. He is currently living back in California. During the 2009-10 NBA season, the Golden State Warriors tied a league record for call-ups from the NBA D-League with five. These five players combined to produce 0.81 wins (numbers taken from the Wins Produced site of Andres Alvarez). Over the course of their time on the team, they earned a combined $1.164 million. However, last year the Warriors employed three other players that had gone undrafted and got their start in the D-League. These eight players produced 9.6 wins and were paid $6.07 million. This comes out to 1.58 wins per million dollars. This Warriors team is a very good example of how useful the D-League can be to an NBA team.  One wonders, can this possibly be a cheaper alternative t...