1-(25 pts.) In the National Basketball Association (NBA) lockout of 2011, the owners of NBA teams wished to change the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement with the NBA Players Association.The owners wanted a "hard salary cap" restricting the size of team payrolls. This would allow "smaller market teams" having less revenue to be (1) financially profitable and (2) competitive (in terms of wins and losses) with the "larger market teams." The NBA owners also wanted the players to agree to take less than the 57% share of team revenues that they had been receiving.The players opposed these changes.Final Exam Excel file provides for each NBA team, ranking, the team's 2009-2010 revenue, player expenses, and operating income as given on the Foebs.com website on October 26, 2011. The operating income of a team is basically the team's profit (that is team's revenue minus the team's expenses-including player expenses, arena expenses, etc.)

c-Construct the correlation matrix of 5 variables: rank, revenue, players' expenses, operating income, and Exp/Revenue ratio. Discuss the relationship between 5 variables based on the correlation matrix and rank them from high to low based on absolute correlation to Ranking. What variable is the best indicator of team's ranking?

d-Verify how the ratio of 57% is calculated. Based on analysis of ratio data, identify (count/sort) teams that have ratio of 57% or higher. Discuss how NBA can use this information and mean and median of ratios to justify salary cap of lower than 57%?

e-How would players use the mean income of teams to justify their position opposing a hard salary cap? What other reasoning players may use to oppose the salary cap?

f-As an statistical consultant, what is your recommendation on proposed salary cap and how you justify recommendation. Whose side you take based on data?