Basketball Card Saber Metrics: 2010 FA Edition

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Josh Glover



Basketball Card Saber-Metrics: 2010 FA Edition

July 1st has now come and past and the start of free agency has now begun. For fans, years of build-up to this summer’s free agent class are about to pay off. On the flip side, years of ‘build-down’ are about to come to fruition for Team Presidents and GM’s who have been selling every available asset for space to sign a top-tier free agent. In honor of “Summer 2010”, I have decided to take a look at the summer’s top free agents, through the lens of my ‘Basketball Card Saber Metrics’ system. For anyone unfamiliar with this method, please refer to my First Article. In short, it’s a player’s average price per card as listed on Beckett.com. For this issue, I have taken NBA.com’s list of the top 25 free agents*, calculated each player’s PPC, and then re-ranked each player according to my findings on Beckett. Here’s the list, in ascending order:


25. Matt Barnes- 4.08

24. Brendan Hayward- 5.32

23. Joe Johnson- 7.50

22. John salmons- 8.30

21. Josh Howard- 8.71

20. Josh Childress- 9.17

19. Carlos Boozer- 9.35

18. Udonis Haslem- 9.43

17. Ronnie Brewer- 9.94

16. Luis Scola- 9.96

15. David Lee- 10.27

14. Richard Jefferson- 10.69

13. Dirk Nowitzki- 12.64

12. Ray Allen- 13.45

11. Rudy Gay- 13.70

10. Chris Bosh- 14.07

9. Raymond Felton- 14.27

8. J.J. Redick- 15.52

7. Amare Stoudemire- 16.07

6. Paul Pierce- 16.31

5. Yao Ming (opted-in) - 19.90

4. Shaq- 21.48

3. Dwyane Wade- 26.02

2. Tyrus Thomas- 30.15

1. LeBron James- 94.33



Certainly, there are few surprises on this list. Tyrus Thomas’ number was particularly interesting. After crunching the numbers about a hundred times, I realized I wasn’t going to get anything different than 30.15. It’s important to remember that even though this list is based on factual information, the numbers can sometimes be misleading. In any case, this list gives us a real insight into the collectability of some of these players. LeBron, D-Wade, Shaq, and Yao are huge names in the hobby, and it seems like these Beckett numbers reflect that. On the other hand, guys like Joe Johnson, Carlos Boozer, and David Lee, though good players do not carry nearly as much card market value as others, which was reflected by their number placement. All in all, these numbers provide a unique perspective on the current status of the hobby, and the upcoming action that we’ll be seeing this summer.

* http://www.nba.com/2010/news/feature...nts/index.html