How Much Is a Win Worth to an NBA Team?

Last month, I used J.C. Bradbury's free agent valuation method to determine how many wins the Red Sox expected Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino to contribute to the team in 2013. That worked fine, but suppose we want to build a similar model for the NBA. Again, we'll use the basic system Bradbury outlines in "The Baseball Economist" (ch. 13). Here, Bradbury found a relationship between revenue, wins, and the size of the city a franchise plays in.

All three of those variables are readily available. For city size, we'll use the population of the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) each team plays its home games in, as reported in the 2010 U.S. Census*. Revenue is available through Forbes' Business of Basketball listings. This data is almost exactly one year old -- suggesting that it covers the 2010-2011 season, and not the recent lockout-shortened 2011-2012 season. This is better for our purposes; I don't want the compressed schedules and reduced number of games to interfere with my results.

* - And the Canadian equivalent for Toronto, with the hope that the two have very similar methodologies.

The Big East and the Big Easy

News of the Big East's latest expansions burned up my little corner of the Internet yesterday. Being a Tulane fan, I was happy to hear my alma mater would be movin' on up to the Big East beginning in 2014.

Everyone else, of course, reacted with something between bewilderment and disappointment. To them, the Big East was the desperate drunk guy looking for someone to go home with at The Boot's last call, and Tulane...

GO HOME, BIG EAST. YOU ARE DRUNK.

— Pod Katt (@valleyshook) November 27, 2012

...hey, don't be mean. Tulane is cute and really fun, you guys.

Can't wait for the Tulane-Providence game at the Dunk. What the hell happened to Dave Gavitt's Big East?

— Fran Fraschilla (@franfraschilla) November 27, 2012

Aw, come on, Fran. Well, I'm from Rhode Island, so I'm excited.*

* - Seems like a strange matchup to pick, doesn't it? After all, Providence was IN Dave Gavitt's Big East. They named the floor at the Dunk after Gavitt.

Unusual homerism aside, let's take a look at some possible reasons why Tulane was added, essentially replacing Louisville (who left today for the ACC) and Rutgers (who left recently for the Big 10).