Last week, I posted a chart showing the Pacers’ Annual Payroll figures for most of the seasons since 1986. At the time, I said I didn’t know quite what to do with it. The reason for that is mostly because the data to put it into any real context is either unavailable or requires a great deal of tedious work to compile.
Still, I did look for a couple of things. First, at the request of both Jared and commenter Bill Sutton, I added inflation adjusted numbers. These used this Inflation Calculator.
Not a huge amount of new info there, though it does look like the payroll was relatively static since 2000 – except for the spike during the middle of the decade.
There were also a couple of questions from Boom Baby. The big driver in the jump from 1996 to 1997 is Reggie Miller, who went from just over $3 million to just under $12 million. However, the Davis boys got raises, too – $4.4 million for Antonio (from $0.8 to $5.2) and $2.5 million for Dale (from $4.1 to $6.6).
The climb from 2003 to the peak in 2006 was not actually due to Jermaine O’Neal’s contract – which was offset by declines in Reggie Miller’s, among others. It was actually the contract extensions kicking in for guys like Jonathan Bender, Ron Artest, Jeff Foster, and Jamaal Tinsley.
Finally, for Chris D., here are your 1986 Indiana Pacers, with a total payroll of $3,758,200 – that’s $7,372,327 in today’s dollars, or about $1.2 million less than the Pacers paid T.J. Ford last season.
| YEAR | TM | Rk | Player | Salary |
| 1986 | IND | 1 | Wayman Tisdale | $ 987,000 |
| 1986 | IND | 2 | Steve Stipanovich | $ 530,000 |
| 1986 | IND | 3 | Clark Kellogg | $ 476,000 |
| 1986 | IND | 4 | Bill Garnett | $ 294,000 |
| 1986 | IND | 5 | Herb Williams | $ 275,000 |
| 1986 | IND | 6 | Quinn Buckner | $ 223,000 |
| 1986 | IND | 7 | Clint Richardson | $ 205,000 |
| 1986 | IND | 8 | Vern Fleming | $ 200,000 |
| 1986 | IND | 9 | Terence Stansbury | $ 160,000 |
| 1986 | IND | 10 | Bill Martin | $ 150,000 |
| 1986 | IND | 11 | Stuart Gray | $ 143,200 |
| 1986 | IND | 12 | Dwayne McClain | $ 115,000 |
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Tim Donahue is an editor and lead writer for 8 Points, 9 Seconds. He lives in Fishers, Indiana, and has been around long enough to dimly remember watching the Pacers play way back in the days of the old Fairgrounds Coliseum. You can find him tweeting about the Pacers @TimDonahue8p9s.
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Thanks for the ’86 payroll! Still amazing. You could live well in Indy on any of those salaries back in ’86 and not too shabby even today.
Funny thing is, it shows you how NBA salaries inflated along with housing prices. (See: http://www.jparsons.net/housingbubble/) So much of the CBA negotiations is really about correcting NBA spending to the new post-housing bubble economy. There just aren’t going to be as many companies buying seats (at any price) for employee incentives and lots fewer folks with the sorts of incomes to buy season tickets individually. For the last few years, I’ve been able to buy decent* tix for MSA-era prices on ebay about a week out from the game. It’ll be interesting.
* “Decent” for me means any seat where I can read the names on the jerseys without binoculars.