At this time of year, NBA analysts, fans, and front offices are all concerned with cost efficiency. Free agent season stimulates near-constant conversation evaluating each new contract as a good deal, bad deal, or fair deal. What is the basis of all the conversation, though? To be more specific, what is the standard used to determine whether a player is overpaid, underpaid, or fairly paid? If the standard is subjective, then offseason “grades” merely reflect the degree of correlation between a team’s offseason moves and what I happen to think each player is worth. That correlation is not valuable to anyone aside from me. Nobody else can use grades like that, because the grades only reflect a subjective opinion.