I just wanted to put Okafor's salary within context of other centers with a PER >=13 (thanks to yop for link). The reason behind making this post is Rook's comment about the average NBA salary, $5.5 mil (source: Rook), and PER, 15.0 by definition, as a point for Okafor being overpaid( 13.5mil & 15.1 PER in 2011/2012). The goal is to loosely correlate what a player contributes on the court with respect to salaries. Most importantly: This is just about big men since they come at a premium compared to backcourt players, and i believe it is important to keep that in mind. I'm not going to get in to how silly PER can be(for or against a player).

Here's a google spreadsheet of the link above with salaries added plus some simple stats and a plot of salary/PER at the bottom: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArdUjRvFW9xHdGdhc21fRVVvLUpjNzBWcFFpbERrWVE#gid=0

note: google drive offers poor features, and won't let me make a trendline.

Key points:

• avg. salary (with rookie salary & low mpg, high-PER, & underpaid contracts i.e. koufa included): 9.4 million +- 4.9 million
• okafor's salary: 13.5 million i.e. within std. dev. (Granted the salary std. dev. is huge, so feel free to draw your own conclusions)
• avg. PER, 2011/2012: 17.7 +- 3.0
• Okafor's PER, 2011/2012: 15.3 i.e within std. dev.
• The second spreadsheet, "Rookies & < 20 mpg removed", in the google doc is a parsed list that gives a different perspective, which put's okafor's 2011 PER slightly below std. deviation. Note: Okafor's PER over the last 5 years is 16.6, and only played 27 out of 66 games last season due to injuries.

So what're y'alls thoughts? I'm pumped that we have okafor, and am not concerned about his salary preventing any championship-caliber moves or signings. He apparently has an above average win/48, whatever that means, and I think his skill set compliments both nene & seraphin.

Also, how do i turn off this double space formatting? Makes my post look just silly...