Independent basketball research since 2007
NBA salary cap tools, CBA explainers, salaries and player data.
ShamSports is a basketball operations site for people who enjoy the awkward bits:
cap mechanics, roster construction, contract rules, player movement and scouting.
The Capulator
Build, save and share NBA salary cap scenarios. Draw the offseason instead of describing it.
The CBA Glossary
A plain-English guide to the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement, from the basic to the stupidly obscure.
NBA Salaries
The original salary database. Coming back soon, probably, allegedly, eventually.
Player Database
Thousands of player profiles, career paths and scouting notes from around the basketball world.
What is this place?
ShamSports is run by Mark Deeks and exists to make sense of the machinery behind basketball teams:
contracts, transactions, cap rules, scouting, player movement and the endless weirdness of roster construction.
It is not always finished. It is not always sensible. But it is usually quite thorough.
ShamSports.com is run by me, Mark Deeks, a man sorely in need of a professional headshot. This website is the perpetually unfinished pseudo-culmination of many years of laborious and financially unsuccessful study of the NBA, and more specifically, studies of the basketball operations side of its business. I am continuously intrigued by the esoterica and minutiae of all the aspects of building an NBA basketball team. I want to build the best basketball teams possible. No, I don’t know why, either.
Saying that I “am interested in building the best basketball teams possible” is vague and all-encompassing, yet it is deliberately so, because that is precisely what I am interested in. There are many such things that go into building a team, and I am interested in them all. From a roster management point of view, a simplified view could be taken that states that there are three factors that go into building a team – salary cap management, old school player scouting, and advanced analytics. This website is concerned with the first two. You’ll need a real adult for the third.
OTHER STUFF:
I write at HoopsHype.
I write at Heavy.
I used to write at Forbes.
I have a very occasional ad hoc basketball podcast, Loose Balls.
In 2020, I wrote the biggest basketball e-book ever – The Basketball Manifesto.
I wrote a quiz book. This once got to #242 on Amazon. Which isn’t bad at all.
I wrote a second quiz book. [These last two aren’t related to basketball. I’m just saying.]
Previous to this, I also wrote the 2017 and 2018 NBA Manifestos; hugely in-depth forecasts of the offseason strategies of all NBA teams, albeit with smaller databases behind them. The Basketball Manifesto included the G-League, NCAA, EuroLeague and myriad other high-tier competitions.
Elsewhere, I have created the following types of content over the years:
– Video analysis, including film breakdown sessions and an analytical playoff show.
– Scouting, including both individual and team, incorporating both European and NCAA basketball.
– Many breakdowns of the minutiae of salary cap matters and roster construction (for example; potential salary cap ramifications of Steve Nash’s retirement; an explanation of the foundation of TPEs; the Grizzlies’ sub-optimal management of the signing of Juan Carlos Navarro and how restructuring their order of transactions would have seen them consolidate their assets; the importance of contract length, among many others).
– Identifying errors in the already-ratified contracts of both Zach Randolph and Tim Duncan which ultimately led to ex post facto modification.
– Market perspectives, such as the evolution of parity in the NBA and a retrospective on The Process. (Other examples: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10)
– Strategy-focused analysis on specific transactions; for example, the Clippers’ trading of Blake Griffin or Chicago’s signing of Jabari Parker.
– Also devised, edited and hosted the GiveMeSport NBA Podcast (with uncountable number of guest appearances on others).
– Predictions on transactions that might or could happen based on aforementioned salary cap minutiae, trying to find angles with which to anticipate and improve the efficiency of team strategy (for example; finding the little-used rule that allowed for Nick Collison’s second extension; correctly determining the Nene trade was an extended sign-and-trade; how the Cavaliers spent $1.4 million doing something they could have done for $8,000; the buyout of Luol Deng).
– Profiled on both Grantland and Sports on Earth.
– Consultation with both player agents and team executives, placing non-NBA clients all around the world, from Lithuania to Australia.
CONTACTING ME FOR SOME REASON
Most readily and most regularly, I can be found on Threads at @markdeeks, BlueSky at markdeeks.bsky.social, and on Twitter (never X) at MarkDeeksNBA. There, I can regularly be found self-publicising my work and thoughts, quietly commanding the respect of the room and rarely staying on topic, all with an unending joie de vivre and slight nervous energy. Or you can email me at mark.s.deeks@gmail.com. I hope you like my constantly-begun, rarely-finished projects!
