The Golden State Warriors‘ Draymond Green made a crazy claim that the NBA doesn’t want it’s players to be rich, despite signing two deals worth $182 million dollars within four years during his time in the sport.
The top level of basketball in the world also has the 25th highest-earner, as of June 2023, making over $30,000,000 per year whilst players such as Michael Jordan and LeBron James have broken the billionaire barrier.
Shaquille O’Neal and Draymond Green disscuss whose team would win
In fact, the average salary earned is eight million dollars only 15 players are paid the minimum salary by the league (which is still enough to make them millionaires).
So, out of context it’s a bit of a strange comment from Green but, of course, context is the absolute key and he’s talking about after retirement.
“This job is actually not set up for us to be wealthy after we’re done playing,” Green told Shaquille O’Neal on The Big Podcast with Shaq. “They way we’re taxed…
“It took my mom four years when I was growing up to make $100k. And I lose that a night because, what?”
However, Green also complained about fines imposed by the League and for that he isn’t going to attract much sympathy considering it’s well within the control of the players to behave.
Why have NBA salaries exploded?
When Shaquille O’Neal earned $17m in 1999/00 as the league’s highest-paid player, not too far long after being drafted as the overall first pick in 1992, many didn’t expect how salaries would explode into the modern era.
In total, 80 players earned more than O’Neal did in the 2022/23 season and the highest-earner, Steph Curry, made a whopping $51m in salary with 17 players in total making over $40m. So why have salaries boomed?
Well, a major leap occurred in 2007 when the NBA signed an eight-year, $7.4 billion deal with ESPN/ABC and TNT. Another groundbreaking moment came in 2014 with a nine-year, $24 billion TV deal with ESPN/ABC and Turner Sports, starting in the 2016-17 season. This nearly tripled the previous deal’s value…
Capitalizing on the new TV deal, the 2016 CBA raised the salary cap substantially, leading to notable salary increases for players.
The salary cap, which determines the maximum amount teams can spend on player salaries, has risen significantly. For instance, the salary cap was $70 million in the 2015-16 season and jumped to $94.1 million in the 2016-17 season following the new TV deal. By the 2023-24 season, the cap reached approximately $136 million.
This rise in the salary cap has led to unprecedented player contracts and extensions, such as Curry’s $201 million contract in 2017 and Giannis Antetokounmpo‘s five-year, $228 million extension in 2020.
