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07/02/2012 | News release
distributed by noodls on 07/02/2012 20:39
League-wide this offseason, there are 171 free agents-including both restricted and unrestricted free agents. For the uninitiated, unrestricted free agents are free to sign with any team who also wishes to sign them. Restricted free agents, on the other hand, are free to seek out any offer from any club, but the player's original club has the right to match any offer to retain that player. As long as the player's original club meets the highest offer from an opposing club, the player's rights stay with the original team.
How does this shake out for the Pacers? Glad you asked.
This offseason, the Pacers have seven free agents (not including recently-retired Jeff Foster), two of whom are restricted. If seven seems like a fairly high number of free agents to you, it's because it is: Only a handful of teams have more free agents than the Pacers (Atlanta, Boston, Brooklyn, Charlotte, New York, Philly, and Portland). Two ballclubs have the same as the Pacers (Clippers and Suns). To break it down further, 2/3 of NBA ball clubs have less free agents than we do.
Mathematically, 171 free agents league-wide spread across 30 teams in the NBA measures out to 5.7 free agents per team. The simple arithmetic shows us that the Pacers have 1.3 more free agents on average than the rest of the NBA. But, since there's no such thing as 0.3 of a free agent, we'll round down and say the Pacers have one more free agent than the league average. That may not seem like a lot, but for a team with only 12 active roster spots, one extra free agent is both statistically significant and significant in terms of who the players are on the free agent list.