I went into this wanting to examine the effect of large veteran contracts on team building. As I got into it, I realized things were complicated. So I’m starting simple, trying to understand what is good value, where it comes from, and how it contributes to winning.

How Much a VORP Cost?

Here’s our recipe for calculating the cost of a point of VORP:

• Cost of VORP = League total salary / (League total regular season + playoff VORP)

Although it would have been easier to use the league salary cap as our numerator, a more honest accounting needs to include the extra 20% teams generally spend on average. Likewise, playoff production is real production, part of what teams pay for, so playoff VORP was included on par with regular season VORP. This adds roughly 12% to the VORP total.

For last year, the COST of VORP was $5.6b / (298.4 + 36.7) = $16.75m. To make this comparable across seasons, we can measure it as a percentage of the cap, rather than in dollars: $16.75m / $154.6m = 10.8%. Looking at the past 20 seasons, the cost fluctuates around 11% as the salary cap triples:

(* shortened seasons)

This gives us this rule of thumb:

>1 point of VORP costs 11% of the salary cap

If we want to be lazy about it and exclude playoff VORP, it becomes 10%, an even rounder number. So:

>In 2025-26 a fair value contract returned a point of VORP per $16.75m

Searching for Surplus Value

The problem with fair value contracts is that a team made up of them will be average. Here’s team VORP totals for the past season:

Spending your salary cap on fair value contracts gets you to 9 VORP. Spending another 20% on top might push that to 11 VORP, maybe enough to earn a play-in berth. To do better than that and make some noise in the playoffs, you need contracts that generate surplus. Eventual champion Knicks, runner up Spurs, conference finalist OKC, and the upstart Pistons all accumulated double that 11 VORP mark.

Value Over Salary Expectation (VOSE)

Generating surplus team VORP means having a team of players generating surplus value on their individual salaries. We can call this “Value Over Salary Expectation”, or VOSE:

• Total VORP = Regular Season VORP + Playoff VORP
• Expected VORP = Salary / Cost of VORP
• VOSE = Total VORP - Expected VORP

Let’s look at the player’s who generated the most production over expected for their salaries (cut-off 2.5 VOSE):

The massive generators of surplus are Wemby, a possible GOAT candidate on his rookie contract, and Shai and Jokic, two MVPs still in their primes. After a bit of a gap, prime Luka on a 30% contract is next on the list. These are arguably the best 4 players in the game, 2 of whom have won CHIPS ("Who Deserved the CHIP" parts 1, 2, 3, 4), and two who could.

The rest of the list is comprised of young stars on max contracts (Maxey, Cunningham, Barnes), high performers on rookie contracts (both Thompson twins, Duren, Chet, Knueppel), and young players outplaying cheap contracts (Champagnie, Avdija, Pritchard, Gillespie).

The flip side of this is players who produced the least compared to what would be expected for their contracts:

The worst 10 are players with salaries over 20% of the cap who missed games. Of these, we have players not playing much (LaVine and Poole), playing even less than that (AD, Trae, Morant, Sabonis), and not playing at all (Haliburton, Lillard, Kyrie). Only Middleton played a reasonable number of games, but as was the case with many of these players, it was within a ridiculous unserious tanking context.

Further down the list we see a combination of young players on tanking teams (Carrington, Cody Williams, Ace Bailey, Traoré, Dillingham), busts on medium money (DeAndre Hunter, Patrick Williams), good players missing games (Tatum, Garland), and Jalen Green, a young player who missed games and hasn’t yet lived up to his 20%+ contract.

The New York Knickerbockers

Absent from the above list of top VOSE players is any New York Knick. How did they do it?

The answer appears to be: 1) By overspending the cap by 34% ($207m payroll), 2) Peaking in the playoffs, and 3) By having 6 prime-age players with VOSE over 1. All of the Knicks in the playoff rotation returned some surplus, with even Shamet and McBride together contributed another point of VOSE. In a league of teams trying to hit grand slams, the Knicks won it all hitting singles and doubles.

This is the third part of a three-part series, with the first part defining the concept of a CHIP and looking at the seasons between 2000-01 and 2025-26, and the second part examining the seasons between 1975-76 and 1999-2000. This article will investigate the earliest years of the NBA, the period between 1949-50 and 1974-75. I will post another article looking at some methodology changes, to see how that changes the results for the entire history of the league.

Review of the CHIP Concept

In the first part, I argued that the Hall of Fame criteria should be more selective, and that one simple criterion for admission is winning a CHIP:

>CHIP = The Clear Best Player on the Championship Winning Team

To win a CHIP, you need enough help from teammates to win it all, but if one of those teammates is too good, you split the credit. There are no split CHIPs. You need to be the Batman to the Robin, not one of the Wonder Twins. Wonder Twins can enjoy the satisfaction of a team victory, but to get the CHIP, you need to be driving the Batmobile!

To recap the methodology and criteria for earning a CHIP:

• Measure Win Shares plus VORP, double for playoff games
• Compare the second best player’s total to the first’s
• The best player is Batman if his teammate (Robin) scores less than 81% of his total
• If the second best player scores 81% of the first’s total or better, they are Wonder Twins
• Only Batman gets the CHIP

Reviewing our examples:

In the example of the 2024-25 Thunder, J-Dub’s score is only 49% that of Shai’s, a clear Robin performance. This makes Shai the Batman, earning him the CHIP.

Shai: 🪙

The 2013-14 Spurs had two relatively equal contributors, with Duncan easily clearing the Robin Threshold with 95%. Kawhi and Duncan were Wonder Twins here, splitting credit for the title, and neither getting a CHIP.

Applying this idea to the past 51 seasons of NBA basketball, we had 33 Batman/Robin seasons, and 18 Wonder Twin Seasons. Here’s a summary of the CHIPS winners for the seasons 1975-76 to 2025-26:

Season by Season: 1949-50 to 1974-75

This leaves the early years of the NBA. This is a period where the league drops from 17 teams down to 8 then eventually builds back to 18, competes against a rival ABA, and where black players go from completely excluded to a majority of the league.

Let’s step through these initial seasons and see who were the Batmans, Robins, and Wonder Twins in the NBA’s early years. Who earned CHIPS?

After three BAA seasons, the NBA kicks off with 17 teams in 1949-50, then quickly slims down to 9 by 1953-54. Mikan is the Batman of this early period, winning four titles and three CHIPS, interrupted once by the Rochester Wonder Triplets of Arnie Johnson, Risen, and Wanzer, and once by his own teammate Mikkelsen creeping over the Robin Threshold in 1951-52.

Mikan: 🪙🪙🪙

A worn out George Mikan retires, and Dolph Schayes wins a CHIP for Syracuse, then Neil Johnston and Paul Arizin win as Wonder Twins for Philadelphia. A 22-year-old Bill Russell joins the Celtics, and supports Wonder Twins Sharman and Cousy to bring the first of many trophies to Boston. Then Hagan and Pettit slip one in for Saint Louis over the Celtics, while Russell is still on his way up.

Schayes: 🪙

Even in an eight or nine team league, this eight season run by Russell and the Celtics is an incredible feat. The six year Russell-Jones Batman-Robin run is particularly amazing, equalling Jordan and Pippen’s six Batman-Robin seasons. Black players now account for a third of the NBA.

Russell: 🪙🪙🪙🪙🪙🪙🪙🪙

Russell’s reign is finally brought to an end by Wilt in 1966-67. Then the Celtics win two more with Wonder Twins Howell and Havlicek joining Russell as team leaders. Walt Frazier and Willis Reed team up to give the Knicks their first title, and then second-year phenom Kareem Abdul-Jabbar puts in a Batman performance with sidekick Oscar Robertson to win it for Milwaukee. The league has grown to 17 teams.

Chamberlain: 🪙
Abdul-Jabbar: 🪙

35-year-old Wilt Batmans Gail Goodrich and 33-year-old Jerry West to bring LA their first title. Then Frazier, Havlicek, and Barry all win their only CHIPS for the Knicks, Boston, and Golden State. The recording of steals, blocks, and offensive/defensive rebounds means that VORP becomes available from 1973-74 onwards.

Chamberlain: 🪙
Frazier: 🪙
Havlicek: 🪙
Barry: 🪙

Cashing in the CHIPS

Counting up the CHIPS from the league’s first 26 seasons, this is what we get:

When it comes to winning, Russell is the titan of this period, walking away with 8 consecutive CHIPS. With little competition in the league’s mostly white period, Mikan is the dominant figure. Wilt and Kareem (with his CHIP from 1979-80) also join the multi-CHIP club. Frazier, Havlicek, Barry, and Schayes all win one CHIP, cementing their legacies as players who carried their teams to championships.

It’s difficult to know how to value these CHIPS against those earned in more recent eras. Mikan dominated the first few years of the league, but there were few players of note for him to compete against. Russell’s 8 titles in a row were an incredible achievement, but the league did only have 8 teams. Towards the end of the period, CHIPS were won in a league splitting talent with the ABA. This needs a deeper look, but until I do that, these players beat whoever was in front of them, and a CHIP is a CHIP.

In the first part, I argued that the Hall of Fame criteria should be more selective, and that one simple criterion for admission is winning a CHIP:

>CHIP = The Clear Best Player on the Championship Winning Team

>To win a CHIP, you need enough help from teammates to win it all, but if one of those teammates is too good, you split the credit. There are no split CHIPs. You need to be the Batman to the Robin, not one of the Wonder Twins. Wonder Twins can enjoy the satisfaction of a team victory, but to get the CHIP, you need to be driving the Batmobile!

To recap the methodology and criteria for earning a CHIP:

• Measure Win Shares plus VORP, double for playoff games
• Compare the second best player’s total to the first’s
• The best player is Batman if his teammate (Robin) scores less than 81% of his total
• If the second best player scores 81% of the first’s total or better, they are Wonder Twins
• Only Batman gets the CHIP

Reviewing our examples:

In the example of the 2024-25 Thunder, J-Dub’s score is only 49% that of Shai’s, a clear Robin performance. This makes Shai the Batman, earning him the CHIP. Shai: 🪙

The 2013-14 Spurs had two relatively equal contributors, with Duncan easily clearing the Robin Threshold with 95%. Kawhi and Duncan were Wonder Twins here, splitting credit for the title, and neither getting a CHIP.

Applying this idea to the past 26 seasons of NBA basketball, we had 14 Batman/Robin seasons, and 12 Wonder Twin Seasons. Here’s a summary of the CHIPS winners for 2000-01 to 2025-26:

Season by Season: 1975-76 to 1999-2000

That covers the most recent 26 years of NBA history. But what about the 25 years before that, the period between 1975-76 and 1999-2000? Will the model hold up?

Let’s go season by season, and see who was worthy of the CHIPS:

The mid-70s open with two Batman centers with Robin power forward sidekicks. Cowens and Walton win their only CHIPS. Wonder Twins Hayes and Unseld beat the Sonics and win the Bullets their only title. Then the Sonics strike back at the Bullets, with Gus Williams playing Batman.

A new era of NBA basketball begins, introducing Magic Johnson as Robin to Abdul-Jabbar’s Batman, and Larry Bird as Wonder Twin to Cedric Maxwell. The Lakers and Sixers battle it out over the next two seasons, with Magic Robining Kareem, and then Moses doing the same to Dr. J for his only CHIP.

Bird wins two CHIPS with trusty sidekick McHale, with a Magic/Kareem Wonder Twins job sandwiched in the middle. As Kareem fades, Magic grows into a dominant force, winning two more CHIPS with Worthy and Byron Scott as Robins.

The Celtics/Lakers reign finally comes to an end at the hands of the Bad Boy Pistons, team efforts led by Isiah, Laimbeer, and Dumars. No CHIPS given. The Jordan era kicks off with a Three-peat, with archetypal Batman Jordan supported by archetypal Robin Pippen each of the 3 seasons. Jordan wins 3 CHIPS.

Air Jordan takes a chiller and gives someone else a turn, Olajuwon steps up to win 2 CHIPS. Jordan decides to play basketball again and wins 3 more. Pippen is his Robin for a 4th, 5th, and 6th time. Incredible.

Jordan retires again, and two new forces emerge in Duncan and Shaq. Duncan and Robinson team up to beat the Knicks, then Shaq claims Batman with Kobe still on the way up. Shaq gets a CHIP.

Cashing in the CHIPS

Counting up the CHIPS from this period, we have:

The multi-CHIP stars define 80s and 90s NBA basketball greatness. Jordan’s amazing twin peaks career yields six CHIPS, and Magic, Bird, and Olajuwon cement their legacy as stars among stars. Moses, Kareem, and Shaq also join the pantheon with Batman seasons. Although Walton’s career was cut short by injury, his peak makes him a credible addition to this list.

Unlike with the first part, we see some soft spots in Cowens and Gus Williams. It raises the question if all CHIPS are created equal, or whether you need to treat each era differently. The late 70s was a weak period for the league, and I don’t think winning in an 18 (or 9!) team league is the same as with 30 teams. This will require its own investigation.

I have an obsession with player legacy and Hall of Fame criteria. I think the Hall of Fame should only include players who were in some way the best. The easiest way to be recognized as the best is to win a CHIP:

>CHIP = The Clear Best Player on a Championship Winning Team

A player who wins a CHIP has cemented their legacy. To win a CHIP, you need enough help from teammates to win it all, but if one of those teammates is too good, you split the credit. There are no split CHIPs. You need to be the Batman to the Robin, not one of the Wonder Twins. The CHIP goes to the guy driving the Batmobile.

Methodology

How do you determine the best player on the championship team? Winning a championship means winning enough games in the regular season to get to the playoffs, get an advantageous playoff seed, advance through the crucible of 3 playoff rounds, and then finish the job in the finals. The best player is the one who contributed most to that overall effort.

And how do you determine that? Awards such as MVP, Finals MVP, or placement on an All-NBA team combine performance with popularity and narrative. So we will need to turn to trusty all-in-one impact measures: flawed, but impartial, and easy to get off of Basketball Reference! Here’s our recipe:

• Win Shares plus VORP
• Playoffs count double

That’s it. Win Shares and VORP are cumulative, rather than per-minute measures, so they measure a player's overall contribution to winning, combining quality and durability. This accounts for a player’s contribution to the slog of the regular season, with extra weight put on playoff performance. It's difficult to fluke into a high score on this. Here’s Shai in 2024-25:

2024-25 Shai
RSWS + RSVORP + 2*(POWS + POVORP)
16.7 + 8.9 + 2*(3.9 + 2.2) = 37.80

Now that we have a way of measuring who the best player is, how do we determine if that player is *clearly* the best? The clear best player has a total score significantly greater than his best teammate. How significantly? It has been suggested that player value tiers roughly track a Fibonacci sequence (ratio φ = 1.618), so Tier Three might be a 3, Tier Two a 5, and Tier One an 8.

A player with impact metrics 1/φ (62%) of another’s is an archetypal Robin in the Batman/Robin metaphor. But where’s the line? Let’s say half way between those two:

>Robin threshold: (1 + 1/φ) / 2 = 0.809 = 81%

A player with impact metrics below 81% of their teammates’ is a Robin, making their superior teammate the Batman. 81% or above, the players’ impacts are similar enough to make them Wonder Twins.

In the example of the 2024-25 Thunder, J-Dub’s score is only 49% that of Shai’s, a clear Robin performance. This makes Shai the Batman, earning him the CHIP.

The 2013-14 Spurs had two relatively equal contributors, with Duncan easily clearing the Robin Threshold with 95%. Kawhi and Duncan were Wonder Twins here, splitting credit for the title, and neither getting a CHIP.

Season by Season

Ok, let’s go through each season this century and see who was worthy of a CHIP:

After Shaq played Batman in 1999-2000, the millennium opens with Kobe narrowly joining Shaq for 2 seasons of Wonder Twins. After Wonder Twinning with David Robinson 4 years earlier, Duncan puts in the ultimate Batman performance (Robinson Robin Factor = 0.33) in 2002-03. The Pistons win with an ensemble cast in 2003-04, then Ginobili’s performance rises to Duncan’s level the following year.

Wade earns a CHIP in 2005-06, and Duncan is back in the Batmobile in 2006-07. Timberwolves-era Garnett would have been un-twinnable, but slightly post peak he needs Paul Pierce’s help to bring the Celtics a title. Missing out on the CHIP with Shaq a few years earlier, this time he teams up with Pau Gasol for another 2 seasons of Wonder Twins titles. Kobe gets all of the credit, but the impact metrics say that Pau was his equal.

After being doubted his whole career, Dirk is knighted with a CHIP, securing his legacy. The Heatles were more like Destiny’s child, with LeBron in the Beyoncé slot, two CHIPs for King James. A new Batman emerges in Curry, standing head and shoulders above his awesome group of teammates.

LeBron counters with his own Batman performance to beat the Warriors, his 3rd CHIP. The Warriors win two more, with Curry and Durant Wonder Twinning the first, and Durant carrying a less than healthy Curry on the second. It’s hard to give Durant the CHIP after joining an already mighty Warriors team, but the model is the model. Former Spurs Wonder Twin Kawhi changes teams to get his first CHIP with the Raptors. Then the bubble Lakers win in the ultimate Wonder Twins performance, even if LeBron got most of the credit.

Three Batman seasons from Greek Freak, Chef Curry (his second), and The Joker. Then Brown wins Finals MVP for the Celtics, but the impact metrics say that Tatum and White were the main engines behind the Celtics’ title. OKC wins it all with a great young team, but Shai is the clear best player by a mile.

I developed this before these playoffs, and I was pretty pleased with it! For the most part, it passed the smell test over 25 reps. This result is the most challenging, with the model making Wonder Triplets of Towns, Brunson, and Anunoby. But it’s hard to not see Brunson as the best player, engine, leader, and psychological backbone of the Knicks. I suppose the team was built around his strengths and weaknesses, even if he was the main character, his teammates played huge roles. But 45 points to Brunson in the final game, and 2 for Towns? Yikes.

Cashing in the CHIPS

If we count up the CHIPS, this is what we end up with:

This is basketball royalty, with these players having an unimpeachable case (except for maybe Durant?!) for greatness at the highest level. The three multi-CHIP guys occupy a stratum above the rest, the biggest winners in the game.

Some great players missed getting a CHIP, either by being a Wonder Twin (e.g. Garnett, Ginobili, Tatum), or never being on a championship team (eg. Paul, Harden, Nash). The toughest omissions are Kobe and Brunson, who didn’t get the analytic nod, but meant so much to their massive markets, earning their immortality by being the right guy in the right place at the right time.