Recently, both on television broadcasts of games and on talk radio shows, I’ve heard several discussions relating to roster composition in sports. In the NBA, much discussion regards the notion of needing to use free agency in order to acquire a “big three” and compete for an NBA championship.  And with the NBA finals, featuring Miami’s well-publicized “big three”, tipping-off tonight, I decided to look into how each NBA team acquired its players.

Without any complementary analysis (I would like to be able get into that another time), I’ve included a radar chart and table in this post. (Note: the table illustrates the percent of a team’s 2013-2014 roster, according to RealGM Basketball, derived from a specific talent acquisition avenue). Again, it would be fascinating to conduct a detailed study concerning optimal roster construction (and to add money devoted to each method of acquiring players into the analysis), but for now, let’s note that both NBA finals participants (particularly Miami) have relied heavily upon free agency in crafting their rosters.