It’s always good to get maximum value out of your roster in any sport, but there wasn’t a single team in the National Basketball Association got as much value out of its players in the 2014-15 season quite like the Atlanta Hawks.

With the Hawks preparing to tip off their first-round matchup against the Brooklyn Nets Sunday evening, I dug into the numbers to see exactly how successful this team has been during a franchise-record 60-win season. They spent just over $58 million on their entire roster this year, meaning they were paying less than $1 million per victory – an astoundingly low number in this day and age.

By comparison, the New York Knicks, who went 17-65, paid nearly five times more per victory than the Hawks.

(Also read: Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed turns down friendly wager with Brooklyn president)

Below is a spreadsheet I developed that ranks each team based on how much they paid per win in the 2014-15 season. Salary data came from Basketball-Reference.com.

The teams highlighted in yellow are the 16 squads that made the playoffs.

This is yet another metric that shows how much the Hawks have overachieved. The team they’ve put together was underappreciated – at least for the first few months – and underpaid.

Expect that to change in the offseason, when contracts expire and players start looking to re-up after an extremely successful season, especially if this team goes deep into the playoffs.

Image: AP/Jason DeCrow

Follow @Sean_Breslin

Back to home page