Hi, I’m Allen, one of the creators of DeepVision Fantasy. We’ve built a browser-based platform for fantasy basketball decisions, with category analysis, simulations, and roster optimization for drafts, trades, waivers, and matchups.

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Fictional 2025-26 demo league - Week 15 matchup simulator

The screenshot is from a fictional 2025-26 demo league in our Week 15 matchup simulator, not a real league. But you can connect to your own league and run similar analysis for any matchup throughout the season.

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I’d especially like to know: Was it clear what to try first? Did an analysis help you think through a real decision? Where did you get stuck or stop trusting the result? I’ll be here to answer questions and hear the criticism.

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:

Season	Salary cap	Total salary	Total VORP	Salary per VORP	% of cap
2006-07	$53.1m	$1.9b	332.0	$5.8m	11.0%
2007-08	$55.6m	$2.1b	339.9	$6.1m	10.9%
2008-09	$58.7m	$2.2b	334.9	$6.4m	11.0%
2009-10	$57.7m	$2.1b	333.4	$6.4m	11.0%
2010-11	$58.0m	$2.0b	333.1	$6.1m	10.5%
2011-12*	$58.0m	$2.0b	277.0	$7.2m	12.4%
2012-13	$58.0m	$2.1b	337.0	$6.3m	10.8%
2013-14	$58.7m	$2.0b	338.1	$6.0m	10.3%
2014-15	$63.1m	$2.2b	334.4	$6.5m	10.4%
2015-16	$70.0m	$2.4b	333.7	$7.0m	10.1%
2016-17	$94.1m	$3.0b	331.3	$8.9m	9.5%
2017-18	$99.1m	$3.3b	331.9	$10.0m	10.1%
2018-19	$101.9m	$3.6b	333.8	$10.9m	10.7%
2019-20*	$109.1m	$3.8b	290.2	$13.0m	11.9%
2020-21*	$109.1m	$3.8b	299.5	$12.8m	11.7%
2021-22	$112.4m	$4.1b	339.2	$12.0m	10.7%
2022-23	$123.7m	$4.5b	330.7	$13.6m	11.0%
2023-24	$136.0m	$4.9b	334.9	$14.6m	10.7%
2024-25	$140.6m	$5.2b	338.0	$15.3m	10.9%
2025-26	$154.6m	$5.6b	335.1	$16.8m	10.8%
Avg					10.8%

(* 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:

Rank	Team	Regular season VORP	Playoff VORP	Total VORP
1	OKC	22.0	4.4	26.4
2	SAS	19.4	6.8	26.2
3	NYK	17.6	6.2	23.8
4	DET	18.7	3.3	22.0
5	BOS	18.9	1.6	20.5
6	CLE	14.0	3.7	17.7
7	HOU	15.7	0.8	16.5
8	DEN	15.5	1.0	16.5
9	CHO	15.5	—	15.5
10	MIN	13.3	2.1	15.4
11	TOR	12.8	1.3	14.1
12	LAL	12.1	1.1	13.2
13	MIA	12.9	—	12.9
14	ATL	12.3	0.4	12.7
15	ORL	11.1	1.4	12.5
16	PHO	11.6	0.5	12.1
17	LAC	11.3	—	11.3
18	POR	10.0	0.8	10.8
19	PHI	9.4	1.3	10.7
20	GSW	9.8	—	9.8
21	NOP	4.9	—	4.9
22	DAL	4.5	—	4.5
23	CHI	4.2	—	4.2
24	MEM	3.4	—	3.4
25	MIL	2.2	—	2.2
26	IND	1.2	—	1.2
27	UTA	0.5	—	0.5
28	SAC	-0.9	—	-0.9
29	BRK	-1.9	—	-1.9
30	WAS	-3.6	—	-3.6
	Total	298.4	36.7	335.1
	Avg	9.9	1.2	11.2

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):

Player	Age	Cap %	VORP	Expected	VOSE
Wemby	22	8.6%	8.0	0.80	+7.20
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander	27	24.8%	9.0	2.29	+6.71
Nikola Jokić	30	35.7%	9.8	3.30	+6.50
Luka Dončić	26	29.7%	6.6	2.75	+3.85
Tyrese Maxey	25	24.5%	5.4	2.27	+3.13
Amen Thompson	23	6.3%	3.7	0.58	+3.12
Jalen Duren	22	4.2%	3.5	0.39	+3.11
Julian Champagnie	24	1.9%	3.1	0.18	+2.92
Chet Holmgren	23	8.9%	3.7	0.82	+2.88
Deni Avdija	25	9.3%	3.7	0.86	+2.84
Ausar Thompson	23	5.7%	3.2	0.52	+2.68
Cade Cunningham	24	30.0%	5.4	2.77	+2.63
Scottie Barnes	24	25.0%	4.9	2.31	+2.59
Payton Pritchard	28	4.7%	3.0	0.43	+2.57
Collin Gillespie	26	1.5%	2.7	0.14	+2.56
Kon Knueppel	20	6.5%	3.1	0.60	+2.50

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:

Player	Age	GP	Cap %	Total VORP	Expected	VOSE
Khris Middleton	34	63	21.5%	-0.9	1.99	-2.89
Tyrese Haliburton	—	0	29.5%	0.0	2.72	-2.72
Zach LaVine	30	39	30.7%	0.2	2.84	-2.64
Anthony Davis	32	20	35.0%	0.7	3.23	-2.53
Jordan Poole	26	39	20.6%	-0.4	1.90	-2.30
Trae Young	27	15	30.0%	0.5	2.77	-2.27
Ja Morant	26	20	25.5%	0.1	2.35	-2.25
Damian Lillard	—	0	23.7%	0.0	2.19	-2.19
Kyrie Irving	—	0	23.6%	0.0	2.18	-2.18
Domantas Sabonis	29	19	27.4%	0.4	2.53	-2.13
De'Andre Hunter	28	45	15.1%	-0.6	1.39	-1.99
Patrick Williams	24	72	11.6%	-0.9	1.07	-1.97
Bub Carrington	20	82	3.0%	-1.6	0.28	-1.88
Cody Williams	21	67	3.7%	-1.5	0.34	-1.84
Jalen Green	23	32	21.7%	0.2	2.00	-1.80
Darius Garland	26	45	25.5%	0.6	2.35	-1.75
Ace Bailey	19	72	5.9%	-1.2	0.54	-1.74
Jayson Tatum	27	16	35.0%	1.5	3.23	-1.73
Nolan Traoré	19	56	2.5%	-1.5	0.23	-1.73
Rob Dillingham	21	65	4.3%	-1.3	0.39	-1.69

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?

#	Player	Age	Cap %	Total VORP	Expected	VOSE
1	Jalen Brunson	29	22.6%	4.5	2.09	+2.41
2	Mikal Bridges	29	16.1%	3.9	1.49	+2.41
3	Josh Hart	30	12.6%	3.2	1.16	+2.04
4	OG Anunoby	28	25.6%	4.0	2.36	+1.64
5	Karl-Anthony Towns	30	34.4%	4.8	3.17	+1.63
6	Mitchell Robinson	27	8.4%	1.8	0.77	+1.03

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.