The Impact of Mobility on Short- and Long-term Benefits of Athletes: Evidence from NBA

Objectives: This paper investigates the influence of player mobility and performance metrics on the career earnings of NBA players. We explore whether higher performance metrics positively influence salary, how the number of transitions between clubs affects total career earnings, and the role of a player’s age during transitions. Method: Using a comprehensive dataset covering NBA players’ salaries, performance metrics, and career transitions over several decades, we employ regression; our analysis integrates fixed effects to control for team-specific and time-specific influences. Results: The findings suggest that higher performance metrics, particularly Win Shares (WS), significantly enhance a player’s career earnings. The number of team transitions also positively influences career earnings up to a certain point, after which the effect diminishes. Additionally, older players experience less positive impacts from transitions on their career earnings compared to younger players. Conclusions: This study contributes to sports economics and labor economics by providing insights into how player mobility and performance metrics affect career earnings in a highly competitive labor market. The results have implications for player career management and team contract strategies. Keywords: player mobility, career earnings, NBA, performance metrics, labor economics.