I thought kings would have been well over that figure?? Melbourne too

Yeah it certainly didn't match up with my expectations either. Some very surprising figures.

Do these figures include actual spending or just the marquee numbers attributed to Creek etc. E.g. is actual spend likely much higher?

I would guess actual spending, could be wrong though

Reads as though the actual spend includes actuals for imports and marquees!

The article shows both 'cap spend' and 'actual spend', actual spend is the just the raw total amount of money spent on the roster.

It's where marquee help, United probably had three, where as the cats had Cotton on full wages plus three imports. Phoenix obviously paid very little after their first six and it showed. Some of it still looks dodgy imo, nz had some high quality guys obviously playing for unders.

I knew they'd be low on the list, but Cairns 30% behind second lowest on the overall spend?! Wow...

Yeah that shocked me too. Makes you appreciate that the fact they were a shot at playoffs for so long is very commendable.

The question for the wildcats is how long do you persist with Cotton at current salary without a citizenship. Looking at JJ's money was better spent on 3 elite imports than 1 and half good imports cat's spent last season.

Cotton , whilst a club legend is not good enough to win tough games on his own any more. The talent at the top clubs is just too good. Better balance in the imports would be a better strategy.

Jesus Adelaide....

36ers again wasting a lot of money and I can only hope the new GM and eventual new owners get a clue.

They're paying players like Franklin hundreds of thousands to not play, were paying 3 coaches last year, they've again spent near the most in the league to miss the playoffs, it's a total s**t show there at the moment.

I'm surprised to see Wiley was an expensive import too, I'd of thought the only reason you'd go back to that well was because he was cheaper than most other imports coming through. Hopefully the McCarron deal being over and Dech having 1 more makes them be a bit more sensible on who they throw out big long term deals too.

I know they just gave those deals to Humphries and DJV, you can at least argue they're top line locals, rather than speculative players they're hoping will eventually develop into being worth what they were being paid.

I don't know if people forget but Adelaide had contracts for Franklin / Cleveland it would have contributed to that I'll assume DJV wasn't cheap as well

"The question for the wildcats is how long do you persist with Cotton at current salary without a citizenship. Looking at JJ's money was better spent on 3 elite imports than 1 and half good imports cat's spent last season."


Disagree with this. Lee was a role player who provided inconsistent output. Important at times, not performing or needed at others. Crawford was up-and-down but delivered some very big moments. Doyle obviously a star albeit with an interrupted season.

Cotton was the best player in the league, Doolittle was an outstanding two-way role player, while Usher was obviously a disappointment.

I don't know that Tassie got more out of their imports than Perth did.

If Doyle was down , Crawford stood up and vice versa. When Cotton was down they lost. They went cheap with Usher as they are out of cap. Doolittle is good but more role player and wont give you 20 + 10 boards that an elite 4 would do.

Say what you want about Adelaide but why spend the most but then go with an inexperienced coach. Groan.

TOTAL SPEND FOR 2023-24 NBL SEASON

CASH SPEND

Perth Wildcats
$3,653,800
Adelaide 36ers
$3,285,900
Tasmania JackJumpers
$3,267,000
Melbourne United
$3,160,800
Sydney Kings
$2,975,400
New Zealand Breakers
$2,957,700
Illawarra Hawks
$2,910,100
Brisbane Bullets
$2,805,600
South East Melbourne Phoenix
$2,792,300
Cairns Taipans
$2,094,500

CAP SPEND

Perth Wildcats
$2,407,957.41
Adelaide 36ers
$2,262,445.61
Tasmania JackJumpers
$2,223,102.24
Melbourne United
$2,151,084.79
Sydney Kings
$2,042,070.89
New Zealand Breakers
$1,870,560.05
Illawarra Hawks
$1,809,796.89
South East Melbourne Phoenix
$1,779,641.12
Brisbane Bullets
$1,701,134.77
Cairns Taipans
$1,644,917.69

"Say what you want about Adelaide but why spend the most but then go with an inexperienced coach. Groan."

Perthworld, it was the other way around, CJ was already in place and then it appears they went out and paid way too much for Franklin and possibly Wiley too! Add that to the overpays for McCarron and Dech and you somehow have the second most expensive roster in the league!

At least once Ninnis took over we saw that there was enough talent on the roster to compete fairly well, but I'm pretty shocked that they were the second highest spenders. Heading into last season with the roster they had built, I had assumed that the owner had decided to cheap out on the season because he didn't really believe in CJ!

If you use the JJs as an example, cash spend was 3.26 million, and cap spend was 2.22 million, so was the difference paid on marquee players, just over a million, or have I got this totally wrong.

The total spend was an estimate mate by the journos, the cap value spend was from the NBL. Not sure how good their estimates were.

So who really knows then but it just doesn't add up.

Dunkman - I think a fair chunk of the difference is treatment of imports for cap purposes vs what is actually paid out in cash.

My understanding is that for the purposes of the cap, the $USD value of the import contract is converted to $AUD at 92 cents whereas the actual exchange rate would be something around 67 cents. So, when you convert the cap spend on an import to actual cash spend it is going to be a way bigger number. Olgun has said on his X account that all of the JJs imports were expensive whatever that might be in $USD.

That's 100% correct from you KL. And then as Dunkman mentioned most of the rest of the gap is made up by the difference between marquee salary/cap,

Also, Special Restricted Players and Indigenous Players don't have their salary count to the cap at all, so that would save Illawarra a lot of money with Hyunjung Lee/Hickey/Bayles

Perthworld, it was the other way around, CJ was already in place

Well it clearly looks like imports are earning top coin, even if they aren't that good, the rest going to a few marquees. If you’re below 6-7 on the list you are a poor man.

Pretty sure it's all official data from nbl anonymous. It's supposed to be internal for the teams.

The biggest difference is that what players are paid in cash is reduced pro rata for injury time for the purposes of cap spend. That's why breakers have a big difference... lamb, Jessup, cheatham and wmw all had large reductions to the cap spend for injury time

Sorry Kolzee, it's explained clearly in the article. The salary cap data is from the NBL, where the total spend is an estimate based on a number of factors, which are listed in the article.

Fair call, somehow I misunderstood that!