Opening Day Collective Records

In the recap thread after the opening game of the season, MadTown Hoops wondered what the collective career won/loss total is for the fifteen Bucks making up this year's squad.  I was curious, so I looked it up and posted a response.  Naturally, that just made me more curious, so I went ahead and looked up the opening day collective won/loss record for each team in the league.

Some caveats:

• I only looked at opening day rosters, so the Rockets don't get credit for Erick Dampier, the Spurs get Bobby Simmons instead of Chris Quinn, and so on.  I used Basketball-Reference.com for transactions, though I appealed to other sources to resolve some questionable dates/transactions.
• I estimated players who were traded mid-season.  I assumed the player was not active for any team on the day of the trade.  I assumed each player joined his new team the day after the trade.  I treated waiver claims the same way.
  
• For 10-day contracts and other in-season free agent signings, I considered the player active immediately.
• Being only partly crazy, I did not delve into the dates of D-League assignments.  This has the unfortunate effect of skewing some players' records, especially on good teams.  Likewise, time spent in Europe was not considered, even if a team had rights to a player.

Each of these erodes accuracy.  Therefore I'm not going to argue my list is 100% correct.  However, since it's just for fun, that's okay.  I don't think a few wins or losses either way is going to make a big difference.

With that out of the way, here is the list:

You really get a sense of how veteran-laden the Miami Heat are, with nearly 1000 more games of experience than the runner-up Mavericks.  Conversely, Memphis, Minnesota, Sacramento, and Washington have the least collective experience.  I thought it was interesting the whole league is slightly above .500, but it makes sense.  Many of the teams on the bottom are there by virtue of being bad for a while with the same players.  The reverse effect can be seen at the top of the table.

Among individual players, the top percentage belongs to Darnell Jackson, who, by virtue of his time in Cleveland, checks in with a remarkable .783 (130-36).  This is an excellent example of the impact of not filtering out D-League time.  Among players with 500 or more games (just over six full seasons), the Spurs' trio of Tony Parker (515-223, .698), Manu Ginobili (457-199, .697), and Tim Duncan (719-315, .695) top the list.  The bottom belongs to Jamal Crawford (284-535, .347), Eddy Curry (261-477, .354), and Chris Wilcox (238-416, .364).

In terms of raw totals, Shaquille O'Neal has the most wins with 798, followed by Kobe Bryant (735) and Derek Fisher (733).  Juwan Howard, one of two still-active Washington Bullets, has the most losses with 684.  Theo Ratliff (649), Joe Smith (622), and Marcus Camby (605) round out the 600+ club.  Jason Kidd (1278) has the most total games and is joined in the 1200+ club by Howard (1262), Ratliff (1202), and Kurt Thomas (1202).

The 435 players on opening day rosters have a simple average of 391 team games each, or 4.77 seasons.  As noted, Miami is the most experienced team, with an average of 648 games per player.  The Lakers are second with 629.  Memphis at 211 and Minnesota at 219 are on the low end.

I don't think any of this really means anything, especially with the caveats I laid out above.  Still, it's always fun to have a little bit of trivia to bring up during a boring game.