I was just now reading this in Coon:
Performance incentives are classified as either “likely to be achieved” or “not likely to be achieved,” and are only included in team salary if they are “likely to be achieved.” The league office determines what is likely and what is not. Their guideline is whether the criterion was achieved in the previous season. For example, if a player had seven assists per game the previous season, then an incentive based on seven assists per game would probably be classified as “likely to be achieved,” but an incentive based on eight assists per game would probably be classified as “not likely to be achieved.”
Incentives must be structured so that they provide an incentive for positive achievement by the player or team, and are based upon numerical benchmarks (such as points per game or team wins) or generally recognized league honors (such as MVP or all-NBA first team). The numerical benchmarks must be specific — e.g., a bonus may be based on the player’s free throw percentage exceeds 80%, but may not be based on the player’s free throw percentage improving over his previous season’s percentage.
…which brought to mind the following:
When I ask Morey if he can think of any basketball statistic that can’t benefit a player at the expense of his team, he has to think hard. “Offensive rebounding,” he says, then reverses himself. “But even that can be counterproductive to the team if your job is to get back on defense.” It turns out there is no statistic that a basketball player accumulates that cannot be amassed selfishly. “We think about this deeply whenever we’re talking about contractual incentives,” he says. “We don’t want to incent a guy to do things that hurt the team” — and the amazing thing about basketball is how easy this is to do. “They all maximize what they think they’re being paid for,” he says. He laughs. “It’s a tough environment for a player now because you have a lot of teams starting to think differently. They’ve got to rethink how they’re getting paid.”
The issue of these contractual incentives is not a trivial one as they bear cap implications. (I did not include the text of that part for the sake of simplicity, but click the link to read more.) But I wonder – if the Rockets most likely do not base incentives upon conventional measures, and are also tight-lipped about their proprietary metrics – how does the league determine the likelihood of their incentives?
