Image by Katrina.Tuliao via Flickr

After last week’s overview of the various sizes of markets both in population and income, now is the time to see just how successful basketball wise these various markets have been where it matters most for fans: on the court.

I’ve reviewed the last 13 years of All-NBA, All-Defensive and All-Star selections since the last lockout. The All-NBA with three different teams gives 15 slots a year, the All-Defensive with two teams gives 10 slots and the All-Star squads give normally 24 spots, but with injury replacements the amount varies from year to year.

After finding out how many selected players each team has, I will then borrow a method used by my HP cohort, Noam Schiller, to determine how they got there: drafted, traded or free agent.  For our purposes, draft day trades will count as “drafted” and sign-and-trades will count as “free agent”.

This week’s analysis will focus upon the All-NBA Team selections.

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Photo by lakpuratravels via Flickr

“We are asking you to embrace this issue because the hard truth is that our current economic system works only for larger-market teams and a few teams that have extraordinary success on the court and for the latter group of teams, only when they experience extraordinary success. The rest of us are looking at significant and unacceptable annual financial losses.”

Via “How ‘small market’ owners took control” by Brian Windhorst

That’s a mere snippet of an outstanding article by Windhorst detailing the genesis of the current lockout. Small-market owners were squirming back in 2006 for a chance to right the system and prevent any further economic detriment to their teams. And that was during relatively good economic times. Then came the Great Recession and the small-timers buttressed their resolve and were joined by new allies (Robert Sarver and Dan Gilbert, prominently).

For months now, I’ve been racking my mind on a way to really get a feel for what makes a market large or small and what gives it potential for profit. Finally, I’ve come up with something to put my mind at ease for the time being, but it’s by no means the end-all-be-all of a complex subject.

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