About apex predators and the ever-evolving G League
In 1995, 12 wolves were transferred from Western Canada to two different acclimatization pens in the Yellowstone National Park in an effort to restore the wolf populations of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
This was just the first of many steps that led to the current, healthy wolf populations and to a series of numerous direct and indirect consequences that unexpectedly even positively affected the landscape of the park itself.
The wolves started putting pressure on the elk population, diminishing their number, thus allowing the willows to start recolonizing the park. The increased availability of building materials allowed beavers to thrive and expand, and ultimately the countless engineering works of these rodents modified the course of the rivers. An incredible story that became emblematic of the crucial balancing role of apex predators within habitats.
This dynamic is called “trophic cascade” and is also identifiable in other lesser known situations like the reintroduction of the Tasmanian devil.
This video pretty much became a cornerstone of whatever ecology course of study.
What does this even have to do with basketball?
When I started watching some G League games and stats this season, something didn’t feel right to me. The “landscape” didn’t look the same as I remembered.
Thinking about the possible reasons that caused such a change in the teams’ rotations I remembered the recent introduction of a third two-way contract. This brought to my mind the Yellowstone wolves and I hypothesized that this could lead to a similar series of ripple effects.
Is it possible that a small change in a crucial part of the system caused a major change in the scenery? Is it possible that the addition of the third two-way caused a significant shift in the minute distributions?
No Country For Rookies
What first struck me as I approached this G League season was the apparent scarcity of rookies playing prominent roles.
When I try to decide which game to watch I look up box scores on the G League site, and I’m generally subject to the “New Shiny Toy Syndrome,” preferring to watch games where a bunch of rookies play a relevant role. I found it much more difficult in the first part of the 2024-25 season, and I often ended up watching the same few teams.
Trying to clarify the situation, the first thing I did was check the stats on the beloved and despised G League site (clear room for improvement for a more enjoyable and easily accessible product, as I pointed out in another article) which confirmed my first impression.
After putting everything down on a spreadsheet, I found that the share of rookie minutes among the top 100 players dropped from 34% during the 2023-24 Showcase Tournament to 24% in the 2024-25 Tip-off Tournament. This is certainly a significant difference (it was even larger in the first months of the season, around -13/-14%) that deserves attention and further analysis.
Even just looking up box scores it is evident that some teams generally didn’t even start a rookie. For example, this was the case with the College Park Skyhawks (they had in Djurisic their rookie star, and he was still dealing with a foot injury, to be honest), Long Island Nets, Windy City Bulls, and Capital City Go-Go, which had only 83 minutes total played by rookies over the whole tournament.
The Osceola Magic (recently rebranded after the legendary chief of the Seminole) deserve a special note for the uniqueness of their case: no rookie suited up for them during the Tip-off Tournament, and they had an average age of 25.8 years.
The complete Osceola Magic roster for the Tip-Off Tournament
Could the introduction of the third two-way be the trigger of a similar change in the minutes’ distribution?
Good things come in threes
The introduction of two-way contracts in 2017 was a game changer for the empowerment of the G League. Those represented a new frontier of player development and became a tangible connection between two almost separate “habitats.”
In a matter of few seasons, the abundance of talent on the margins of the league made clear the insufficiency of just two two-way spots. Therefore, following the new Collective Bargain Agreement, the NBA introduced the possibility of signing a third player with a two-way contract starting with the 2023-24 season.
Examining how the two-way distribution changed before and after this new introduction is interesting. Obviously, the two-way contracts aren’t set in stone and things can change throughout the year, but as of today, thirty-three rookies signed a two-way contract for the 2024-25 season. During the 2022-23 season, the last before the introduction of the third two-way, 30 two-way players out of 60 available spots were occupied by rookies.
While the raw number of rookies obviously increased, the overall percentage dropped by 13%. We could suppose that the third two-way allowed the teams to approach this matter with a more developmental view, stimulating them to work on fringe players for more seasons. This means more two-way contracts are allocated to players in their second or third season.
At the time of the last CBA negotiations, the goal of the league itself was to give teams the tools to develop players with fewer than four years of experience playing part-time in the G League and in the NBA.
Along with this comes a series of considerations. There are some ifs and buts, but a two-way contract can be worth up to $578,577 (50% of the regular NBA minimum). More spots mean more potentially life-changing money for fringe players, which means more good G League players have a great reason to stay around longer, taking their chance in the minor league without signing abroad. This kind of enrichment and improvement of salary conditions for a part of the players leads to more competitiveness and to a higher level of the sport.
As an example, one of the players signed with a two-way contract most recently, Daeqwon Plowden, who is 26 and is in his third G League season, probably wouldn’t be on a two-way contract at this point of his career without the introduction of the third spot.
While a similar dynamic is clearly beneficial for the league in a vacuum and potentially more propaedeutic to NBA success, it could lead to an environment initially less friendly for rookies and newcomers.
Just a bad harvest?
While my initial hypothesis is supported by some statistical evidences as we saw, it’s probably too early to have a definitive answer for the questions posed in the introduction.
There could actually be a simpler reason that caused a similar shift in the minutes’ distribution: the level of the current rookie class.
There’s talent in every rookie class, and this year’s isn’t an exception, but it looks less rich than others that preceded it. Already during the scouting process, there were some doubts, especially about the absence of top-tier prospects, and the NBA Rookie of the Year race is confirming it so far.
Even simply looking up the playing time in the NBA, we can notice the absence of rookies playing 30 or more minutes and even how there are few playing more than 20 minutes per game. Along with it comes a general impression of a class that is struggling to shine in the league. And while this isn’t a real demonstration of a bad class, it certainly is a symptom of a weird one that is leading to an equally weird race for Rookie Of the Year with no real favorite.
The lack of rookies’ minutes in G League could be just a reflection of an overall rookie class that’s also not particularly strong or deep.
Equilibrium
In the case the league is indeed experiencing the described dynamic, this however could not last forever.
When apex predators recolonize a certain territory after an extended period of absence, the population of their main prey can face a drastic decrease because the animals don’t have the needed defensive strategies anymore and don’t know how to evade predation attempts. The casual observer can mistake it for a local extinction, but it’s just a transitory fluctuation within the normal predator-prey interactions.
An example of a model that simulates the interaction between a population of predators and preys (rights reserved to Arizona State University)
Even if there’s an apparent shift in rookie minutes and two-way allocations, this could represent a similar oscillation that the system will re-balance in the near future. It’ll be interesting to keep track of its evolution going forward.
As you probably understood reading this article, it’s very difficult to analyze and define such a volatile and ever-evolving league like the G League (just consider the league reached the ever-chased 30 teams with NBA affiliation only this season, for example) but, at the end of the day, as I said in a DM to Matt Powers when I started thinking about this article, I don’t have the perfect answer for this question, but guessing is the fun part.
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