Gary Sutton

So you need to lose gains, whether that's purposely or not so purposely, but that's your only chance to get to the top of the draft.

I did.

I did some analysis on that.

There's there's so so

When I analyzed team payrolls and bumped that up against how well they performed, whether they qualified for the postseason, whether they actually won a championship, there's a little bit of a difference between teams that won a title versus other teams that qualified for postseason play.

So on average, championship teams do spend more on player salaries than other teams that otherwise qualified for the playoffs.

But there's a huge difference between teams that qualify for postseason play and teams that didn't.

So it definitely pays to pay.

And there are some exceptions.

I mean, look at the Knicks.

We were talking about the Knicks just a moment ago.

Okay, so they're an exception.

I mean, for many years, they've spent a lot of money on player salaries, and they haven't won a title since 71.

Yeah.

Okay, so that might change this year.

We'll see.

We'll see.

But they're an exception.

Or you look at a team like...

San Antonio, on the other side, they've been relatively frugal, but under Popovich...