The NBA trading deadline has passed and, as usual, many of the mid-season deals seemed to be driven by salary considerations. At one end of the spectrum, the Knicks added almost $65 million to their payroll over the next four years by bringing in Steve Francis and Jalen Rose in exchange for a few expiring contracts. Conversely, the future salary commitments for New York's trading partners--Orlando and Toronto--are each tens of (U.S.) millions less than they were at the beginning of the season. Detroit has also managed to cut future payroll, saving almost $13 million in the Darko Milicic and Carlos Arroyo for Kelvin Cato deal.

HoopsHype has updated their terrific salaries section to include results from all of the last-minute deals. I've loaded the total team salary commitments by year into a table with sortable columns, which makes it easy to see which teams will have the most flexibility going forward. Click the column headings to toggle the sort.

UPDATE: Matt Watson of Detroit Bad Boys pointed out that HoopsHype is missing several deals. I've added in contract extension estimates for Tayshaun Prince, Mike Dunleavy, Caron Butler, Tyson Chandler, Eddy Curry, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, and a handful of minimum-salary guys.

Team Salaries by Year (includes player options)

Team	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11
Atlanta	$ 42,846,170	$ 31,800,069	$ 23,057,708	$ 19,116,544	$ 16,325,868	$          0
Boston	$ 59,008,034	$ 56,134,673	$ 46,620,991	$ 28,929,397	$  3,413,793	$          0
Charlotte	$ 33,308,932	$ 25,092,120	$ 14,227,306	$          0	$          0	$          0
Chicago	$ 55,523,811	$ 33,087,655	$ 18,708,293	$ 11,063,708	$ 12,225,397	$ 13,509,063
Cleveland	$ 55,069,794	$ 50,813,716	$ 43,002,379	$ 42,841,510	$ 27,371,567	$          0
Dallas	$ 97,653,332	$ 74,208,665	$ 57,431,345	$ 17,410,000	$ 10,112,500	$ 13,075,000
Denver	$ 53,073,023	$ 51,688,662	$ 39,183,945	$ 33,714,826	$ 23,013,636	$ 16,545,454
Detroit	$ 58,873,979	$ 47,246,220	$ 45,436,150	$ 33,583,341	$ 21,696,630	$ 11,405,401
Golden State	$ 57,148,102	$ 64,691,439	$ 61,536,320	$ 64,869,535	$ 41,377,965	$ 37,072,647
Houston	$ 66,285,148	$ 57,239,354	$ 53,347,987	$ 54,122,374	$ 44,269,561	$ 17,040,000
Indiana	$ 80,144,205	$ 69,654,380	$ 45,200,000	$ 41,417,500	$ 37,845,000	$  7,500,000
LA Clippers	$ 51,642,738	$ 42,549,849	$ 31,584,000	$ 33,940,000	$  9,800,000	$          0
LA Lakers	$ 73,360,552	$ 67,613,721	$ 42,089,625	$ 35,821,500	$ 23,034,375	$ 24,806,250
Memphis	$ 67,931,790	$ 56,434,129	$ 38,042,975	$ 41,404,212	$ 39,815,450	$ 25,176,687
Miami	$ 61,471,984	$ 57,114,893	$ 46,654,500	$ 29,978,000	$ 27,100,000	$          0
Milwaukee	$ 60,787,548	$ 59,988,436	$ 29,547,500	$ 31,946,250	$ 34,345,000	$ 25,543,750
Minnesota	$ 58,371,782	$ 55,970,852	$ 57,228,000	$ 51,208,000	$ 24,555,500	$  7,625,000
New Jersey	$ 63,394,429	$ 56,888,095	$ 56,888,095	$ 40,772,000	$ 14,200,000	$ 15,000,000
New Orleans	$ 48,402,007	$ 31,448,605	$  2,500,000	$          0	$          0	$          0
New York	$124,082,763	$133,629,970	$ 74,499,500	$ 72,754,079	$ 36,330,266	$ 22,254,632
Orlando	$ 80,324,368	$ 48,728,221	$ 13,969,900	$  6,864,200	$  7,354,500	$          0
Philadelphia	$ 83,728,288	$ 87,274,167	$ 69,020,392	$ 40,703,427	$ 20,211,115	$ 17,736,303
Phoenix	$ 54,717,893	$ 57,947,451	$ 56,820,187	$ 52,106,000	$ 21,030,000	$ 17,040,000
Portland	$ 60,166,880	$ 59,497,751	$ 36,149,999	$ 23,666,666	$ 25,000,000	$ 17,333,333
Sacramento	$ 60,912,387	$ 56,078,352	$ 46,100,050	$ 50,450,640	$ 27,403,125	$          0
San Antonio	$ 64,643,864	$ 60,949,471	$ 61,216,557	$ 50,448,703	$ 45,508,218	$ 13,500,000
Seattle	$ 50,724,789	$ 47,863,883	$ 34,829,870	$ 37,597,521	$ 28,676,860	$          0
Toronto	$ 57,394,488	$ 38,391,940	$  9,404,416	$          0	$          0	$          0
Utah	$ 57,407,442	$ 42,963,231	$ 37,803,191	$ 35,174,129	$ 38,108,483	$ 17,822,187
Washington	$ 54,529,669	$ 56,225,862	$ 37,404,167	$ 40,517,688	$ 30,069,245	$ 11,181,765

Not surprisingly, New York has the largest committed salary in 2 of the next 3 years, with only Philadelphia edging them out in 2007-08. As noted previously, Golden State is another probable lottery team that has a lot of future money tied up--currently sporting the highest team salary in 2010-11 and the 2nd-highest liability in 2008-09.

The following chart maps total committed salary to current winning percentage:

Thankfully for owners, this graph shows that there is somewhat of a relationship between spending and winning. However, there are some outliers:

• Detroit (red dot) has the best record in the league with only $218 million tied up. This probably won't last too much longer, however, since Ben Wallace will become a free agent at the end of this season, and Chauncey Billups' current contract expires after next year.
• New Orleans/Oklahoma City (teal dot) has a winning record with less than $100 million locked up.
• New York (orange dot) sticks out like a sore thumb. The Knicks are tops in committed salaries ($412 million), but they have the 2nd-worst overall winning percentage so far this year.

Last October, I developed a way of evaluating who would be the best (and worst) rebounders in the league if size weren't a factor, and posted results from the 2004-05 season. With the subject of size bubbling up as a common theme from All-Star Saturday (Dirk Nowitzki became the tallest 3 Point Shootout winner, and it really looked like Nate Robinson became the shortest Dunk Contest winner), this seems to be as good a time as any to look at 2005-06 results.

Paraphrasing my previous post:

To answer the question of who would grab the most boards if all players were sized equally, I ran linear regression analysis against NBA boxscores from the 2001-02 season through the 2004-05 season. I came up with a formula to predict rebounding results (as measured by rebounds per 40 minutes) based on height and body mass index (a measure of girth that factors out height).

Given this formula, I was able to predict each player's expected rebounding output, given his height and weight. I then compared these expected results to actual results from the 2005-06 regular season, to determine who has exceeded (or failed to meet) expectations by the widest margin. I then ranked the players by their size-adjusted rate, which is actual rebounds per 40 minutes divided by expected rebounds per 40 minutes. Average rebounders for their size achieve a size-adjusted rate of 100%. All players with at least 300 minutes played so far were included.

UPDATE: As one reader astutely pointed out, simply dividing the actual rebounds by the expected rebounds led to a bias at the top and bottom of the scale, since variation is not uniform. To correct this, I split the players into subgroups according to their size and performed separate regressions for each subgroup. For each player, the difference between his actual vs. expected rebounds is divided by his subgroup's standard deviation to calculate a new size-adjusted score. As a result of this change, there was some minor movement in each table.

Best Size-Adjusted Rebounders (through 2/16/06, min. 300 minutes)

Rank	Player	Height	Weight	Rebs/40 mins	Expected	Size-Adjusted Score
1.	Bonzi Wells	6' 5"	210	9.21	5.15	3.87
2.	Chris Paul	6' 0"	175	6.28	2.65	3.47
3.	Marcus Camby	6'11"	225	14.59	8.95	2.90
4.	James Singleton	6' 8"	215	11.69	6.50	2.66
5.	Reggie Evans	6' 8"	245	14.01	8.95	2.60
6.	T.J. Ford	5'11"	162	4.89	2.28	2.48
7.	Jason Kidd	6' 4"	210	7.60	5.15	2.33
8.	Ben Wallace	6' 9"	240	13.54	9.22	2.22
9.	Tyson Chandler	7' 1"	235	13.32	10.01	2.14
10.	Shawn Marion	6' 7"	228	11.53	7.37	2.13
11.	Bobby Jackson	6' 1"	185	5.09	3.06	1.94
12.	Jeff Foster	6'11"	242	13.81	10.20	1.85
13.	Joe Smith	6'10"	225	11.91	8.43	1.79
14.	Kevin Garnett	6'11"	220	12.21	8.84	1.73
15.	Jannero Pargo	6' 1"	175	4.29	2.60	1.62

Ranking #2 and #6 on the list for this year are a couple of point guards featured in Friday's Rookie Challenge game: Chris Paul and T.J. Ford. Both of these guys play a lot bigger than their size would suggest, and Paul grabs more than twice as many rebounds as he should. Two other diminutive point guards appear further down on the list: Bobby Jackson and Jannero Pargo. A couple of bigger guards, Bonzi Wells and Jason Kidd, are also faring well.

Also included among the top 15 players: a few rebound-only specialists (James Singleton, Reggie Evans, Jeff Foster), and the last 2 repeat rebounding champs (Kevin Garnett and Ben Wallace).

Worst Size-Adjusted Rebounders (through 2/16/06, min. 300 minutes)

Rank	Player	Height	Weight	Rebs/40 mins	Expected	Size-Adjusted Score
316.	Justin Reed	6' 8"	240	4.2	8.7	(2.31)
315.	Pat Garrity	6' 9"	238	4.8	9.1	(2.22)
314.	Mark Blount	7' 0"	250	6.5	9.9	(2.19)
313.	Clifford Robinson	6'10"	240	5.6	9.8	(2.16)
312.	Brian Scalabrine	6' 9"	235	4.6	8.8	(2.14)
311.	Gordan Giricek	6' 5"	210	2.9	5.2	(2.12)
310.	Toni Kukoc	6'11"	235	5.7	9.6	(2.02)
309.	Jason Collins	7' 0"	255	7.0	10.1	(2.00)
308.	Kareem Rush	6' 6"	215	3.6	5.6	(1.93)
307.	Vitaly Potapenko	6'10"	285	7.7	11.3	(1.84)
306.	Matt Bonner	6'10"	240	6.3	9.8	(1.79)
305.	Wally Szczerbiak	6' 7"	244	4.8	8.2	(1.75)
304.	Joe Johnson	6' 7"	230	4.1	7.5	(1.73)
303.	Jarron Collins	6'11"	252	7.8	11.1	(1.69)
302.	Antonio Daniels	6' 4"	205	3.1	4.8	(1.69)

The most striking thing about this list is the fact that 3 of the bottom 15 players were involved in last month's big Celtics-Timberwolves trade.

Besides the notoriously board-phobic Mark Blount, the Celtics unloaded worst overall size-adjusted rebounder Justin Reed. In return, they received another bottom-15 rebounder: Wally Szczerbiak. They also managed to retain the 5th-worst sized-adjusted rebounder: Brian Scalabrine. Of the other players involved in the trade, Marcus Banks, Ricky Davis and Michael Olowokandi are also below-average rebounders for their size, and Dwayne Jones hasn't played enough to warrant a rating.

A couple of requested enhancements were added to the lowpost.net NBA weblog tracker over the past week or so:

• Player and Team pages, presented as 30-day tag clouds. Two benefits here: 1) easy navigation to favorite players and teams, and 2) an extended view into relative popularity.
• A new tracking tool which enables users to create custom RSS feeds to monitor 150+ NBA weblogs for up to 20 players and teams. This could be particularly useful for keeping tabs on fantasy players and prospects.

As always, if you have additional ideas or feedback, feel free to pass them along.

The month of January was filled with super individual performances in the NBA. Besides Kobe Bryant's historic 81-point game, there were 3 other 50-point games (2 more from Kobe and 1 from LeBron James), 22 40-point games, 11 triple-doubles, and a 5x5 effort from Andrei Kirilenko.

Once again, I've computed one take on the best and worst performances from the past month below. As usual, the ratings are based on John Hollinger's Game Scores formula; see November's breakdown for an explanation.

Best Performances (January 2006)

Player	Date	Min	FG	3P	FT	Reb	Ass	PF	St	TO	Blk	Pts	Score	Outcome
Kobe Bryant	1/22	42	28-46	7-13	18-20	6	2	1	3	3	1	81	63.5	Win
Allen Iverson	1/11	44	16-25	1-3	13-17	3	9	5	4	2	0	46	41.3	Loss
LeBron James	1/14	44	18-28	5-8	5-5	7	8	1	1	1	0	46	40.9	Loss
Rashard Lewis	1/11	44	12-18	4-5	17-20	5	2	2	2	3	1	45	38.2	Win
LeBron James	1/21	43	19-35	4-8	9-11	5	8	4	2	3	0	51	37.8	Win
Baron Davis	1/28	39	9-15	2-4	9-11	8	16	0	2	1	0	29	36.3	Win
Chauncey Billups	1/03	43	9-15	4-6	15-17	2	9	3	2	1	0	37	36.0	Win
Elton Brand	1/16	47	10-24	0-0	15-17	14	4	2	2	1	7	35	35.5	Win
Carmelo Anthony	1/23	38	13-16	1-1	10-12	6	3	0	1	1	2	37	35.5	Win
Kobe Bryant	1/19	44	17-35	4-12	13-13	9	4	2	1	4	0	51	35.0	Loss

Naturally, Kobe's 81-point game tops the list, with a Game Score that was more than 50% higher than the next best effort. It was the best overall Game Score in the league since Michael Jordan's 69-point, 18-rebound game in 1990.

Continuing the trend noted in last month's post, almost all big games led to team wins, but another huge Iverson performance failed to translate to a 76ers win on the 11th. This time, AI had 46 points, 9 assists, and 4 steals, but his team still lost to the visiting Jazz.

Kirilenko's 5x5 (at least 5 points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks) on the 3rd demonstrated extraordinary versatility, but it didn't yield an exceptional Game Score--that performance only ranked 60th on the month.

Worst Performances (January 2006)

Player	Date	Min	FG	3P	FT	Reb	Ass	PF	St	TO	Blk	Pts	Score	Outcome
Kyle Korver	1/16	28	0-7	0-4	0-0	4	0	3	0	3	0	0	-7.9	Loss
Luke Jackson	1/14	19	0-7	0-3	0-0	2	1	3	0	3	0	0	-7.4	Loss
David Harrison	1/24	19	2-8	0-0	1-9	5	0	6	0	4	0	5	-7.1	Loss
Othella Harrington	1/11	9	0-3	0-0	0-2	1	0	4	0	2	0	0	-6.2	Loss
Ricky Davis	1/16	45	0-8	0-3	0-0	1	5	2	0	3	0	0	-5.6	Loss
Rasho Nesterovic	1/07	15	0-3	0-0	1-2	1	0	4	0	3	0	1	-5.4	Loss
Hakim Warrick	1/16	9	0-3	0-0	0-2	5	0	4	0	3	0	0	-5.2	Loss
Vince Carter	1/23	29	2-14	0-5	1-2	6	3	4	1	4	0	5	-5.1	Loss
Pat Garrity	1/04	19	0-5	0-3	0-0	1	0	2	0	1	0	0	-5.0	Loss
Othella Harrington	1/25	16	0-2	0-0	0-0	1	0	2	0	3	0	0	-4.9	Win

January also had its fair share of poor performances, capped by Korver's 28 minutes of futility on the 16th, which now qualifies as the worst performance of the season.

Other notes:

• More fuel for Bill Simmons' campaign against Doc Rivers: despite the fact that he was arguably playing the worst game of his career, Ricky Davis logged a whopping 45 minutes in one of his last games as a Celtic.
• 3 of the 10 worst performances of the month were posted on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
• David Harrison's 2-8 shooting from the field on the 24th was bad, but his 1-9 shooting from the line that night was even worse.