Difference in Salary between Offense and Defense?

EHow much does offense cost compared to defense? We are going to compare the salaries of 25 top offensive players vs top defensive players. We are basing these offensive and defensive off DARKO offense and defense ratings just so we can put numerical values on players abilities and off League voting(all stars votes and defensive team votes).

DARKO is a machine learning-driven basketball player box-score score projection system that assigns and projects values to players games based on all sorts of data like versatility, luck, clutch, and matchups. We used their calculated values for offense and defense.

The DARKO top 25 players go as follows-

OFFENSE

1. Lebron James

2. Damian Lillard

3. Trae Young

4. Kevin Durant

5. Stephen Curry

6. Jayson Tatum

7. Devin Booker

8. Giannis Antetokounmpo

9. Donovan Mitchell

10. Kyrie Irving

11. Luka Doncic

12. Joel Embiid

13. Ja Morant

14. Nikola Jovic

15. Karl-Anthony Towns

16. James Harden

17. Jaylen Brown

18. Kawhi Leonard

19. Chris Paul

20. Jimmy Butler

21. Darius Garland

22. Brandon Ingram

23. Anthony Edwards

24. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

25. Paul George

DEFENSE

1. Rudy Gobert

2. Draymond Green

3. Giannis Antetokounmpo

4. Steven Adams

5. Al Horford

6. Robert Covington

7. Joel Embiid

8. Brook Lopez

9. Andre Iguodala

10. Otto Porter Jr.

11. Bam Adebayo

12. Jusuf Nurkic

13. Taj Gibson

14. Robert Williams III

15. Danny Green

16. Kevon Looney

17. Mason Plumlee

18. Paul George

19. Jakob Poeltl

20. Patrick Beverly

21. Jae Crowder

22. P.J Tucker

23. Anthony Davis

24. Isaiah Harkenstein

25. Gary Payton II

Since Giannis, Joel Embiid, and Paul George were on both lists they will not be used in calculations.

I added up all the players' salaries and divided them by the 22 players in each section.

Average salary of a top 22 OFFENSIVE player is $33,866,392

Average salary of a top 22 DEFENSIVE player is $13,987,191.64

According to this model a top offensive player is worth nearly 3x as much as a top defensive player.

Darko’s metrics seemed to favor older players and front court players on defense and missed out on some players on NBA defensive teams this year so I did a second calculation with 17 of top offensive players who aren’t elite defenders (based on all star votes) and players who received all defensive team votes who are not elite on offense.

OFFENSE

Lebron James

Andrew Wiggins

Demar DeRozan

Trae Young

Kevin Durant

Stephen Curry

Devin Booker

Donovan Mitchell

Khris Middleton

Luka Doncic

Ja Morant

Nikola Jovic

Karl-Anthony Towns

James Harden

Jason Tatum

Darius Garland

Zach LaVine

DEFENSE

Marcus Smart

Rudy Gobert

Bam Adebayo

Jrue Holiday

Mikal Bridges

Jaren Jackson Jr.

Matisse Thybulle

Robert Williams III

Draymond Green

Dejounte Murray

Kyle Lowry

Alex Caruso

Gary Payton II

Evan Mobley

Herb Jones

Dorian Finney-Smith

Derrick White

I added up all the players' salaries and divided them by the 17 players in each section.

Average salary of a top 17 OFFENSIVE players is $33,284,694.35

Average salary of a top 17 DEFENSIVE players is $17,966,916.41

According to this model a top offensive player is worth only around 2x as much as a top defensive player.

Based on these two models we can see how elite players on offense are much more expensive than elite players on defense. Obviously defensive and offensive abilities are valued differently by teams. An elite player can give you 30+ points per game whereas an elite defender most likely will not save you 30+.