How NBA assignees impacted the 2014-15 D-League standings

Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

The NBA D-League is truly blossoming into the minor league it was originally created to be. Nowhere is that fact more evident than in the rising number of players being assigned on a year-to-year basis.

As you can imagine, almost all of the prospects sent to the D-League on assignment are first or second year players who teams are developing them now in hopes to profit off their improvement down the road. Lost in the shuffle, however, is the huge impact these assignments make on the success of their D-League clubs.

The average number of assignments over the last three seasons was 188. This season, that number rose to an all-time high of 195 assignments across the league. There are now 17 one-to-one affiliations, which makes things much easier for both the players being sent to the NBADL and the coaches who take them in. In most of these affiliations the minor league team runs the same offensive and defensive schemes, so the transition back and forth can be seamless in many ways.

For the Fort Wayne Mad Ants and head coach Conner Henry, though, things are quite different. There are 13 NBA teams that feed into Fort Wayne and the transition can be a difficult one, as we witnessed with Bruno Caboclo of the Toronto Raptors.

Let’s take a look at how each team fared with and without assignees during the 2014/15 season.

Win percentage for D-League teams without any NBA assignees.

This graphic gives us good insight into which teams were able to come together regardless of NBA assignments. To no surprise, seven of the top eight teams in terms of win percentage made the D-League playoffs, with the outlier being the Fort Wayne Mad Ants who were 11th best on this list but still managed to make the postseason and the D-League Finals.

Win percentage for D-League teams when NBA assignee plays with their team.

Again, notice that six of the top seven teams in terms of win percentage with at least one NBA assignee made the playoffs. Some teams surely improved more than others, but none more than the D-League Champion Santa Cruz Warriors, who won a ridiculous 81 percent (25-6) of their games with an NBA assignee present! Without an assignee the Warriors were a pedestrian 10-9. It’s safe to say that assignees had a monumental impact on their season outcome.

Win  percentage improvement for D-League team when NBA assignee plays.

This final graphic is quite telling. 16 of the 18 teams in the league had a better win percentage with at least one assignee with their club. The fact that there are two teams who were actually worse with an assignee shows that throwing any player into the mix, no matter how talented, can sometimes have an adverse effect.

These numbers in a vacuum can also be a little misleading, though. By only looking at this, you could draw the simple conclusion that the Stampede would have made the playoffs with more assignees. However, the Stampede had an assignee for half of their games and only went 7-18 with them present; the vast improvement stems from the fact that in the other half — without an assignee — they went 2-23.

I don’t think this is groundbreaking information — most fans would deduce that a D-League team’s chance of winning is improved by having NBA guys with the team. However, the graphics help to show just how much of an impact assignees have and the strategy behind an NBA club using them to help their affiliate push toward a D-League championship. That strategy certainly worked for Santa Cruz this season. Without those mid-season helpers from Golden State, they might not have won their first championship in Surf City.

As the league continues to grow it will be interesting to follow this dynamic and see if the upward trend wins out, or if a new trend arises as more D-League clubs will have access to NBA assignees.

But until then…

*Special shout out to Hal Brown (@HalBrownNBA) for assistance with the graphics.