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Season-ending classification

As explained in Statistics Slam Dunk

A season-ending classification assigns a team to a category based on whether it missed the playoffs, reached the playoffs without winning, or won the championship.

A season-ending classification assigns each team to one of three outcomes: No playoffs, Made playoffs, or Won title. It turns postseason results into a categorical variable for comparing team payrolls. section 10.4.3

Use the classification to group teams and summarize payroll:

  • Map numeric flags 0, 10, and 11 to No playoffs, Made playoffs, and Won title. section 10.4.3
  • Calculate mean payroll within each category, format values as dollar amounts, and compare the groups visually. section 10.4.3

NBA payroll comparison

Across 2000–2017 seasons, average adjusted payrolls were about $78M for teams missing the playoffs, $85M for playoff teams, and $88M for champions. A lollipop chart displays these three category means.

How Statistics Slam Dunk covers it

How deep it goes
Defines three categories and demonstrates recoding, grouped means, formatting, and visualization, but does not test causal effects.
Examples
Uses NBA seasons from 2000–2017, numeric outcome flags, payroll means, and adjusted-dollar lollipop charts.
What it assumes
Assumes team-level salary and outcome fields while demonstrating missing-value removal and numeric-flag recoding.
What you can do after
Apply it via R, dplyr, and ggplot2 to recode outcomes, summarize payrolls, and plot category comparisons.
How it connects
Connects playoffs, championships, team payroll, data wrangling, lollipop charts, and inflation adjustment.
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This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Statistics Slam Dunk. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.