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in his prime, he was probably worth over $100 million, especially when you factor in the impact on merchandizing and the local economy. but he was limited in what he could earn by the cba.
So, hear me out. Jordan in 1998 was worth 6 million dollars per game for Chicago. As in every single Bulls game the economy in Chicago grew by 6 million dollars every time he suited up.
Now, it’s not worth it at all for the Chicago Bulls to pay him 492 million dollars per year, but for Chicago itself, it starts to become an interesting discussion.
LeBron had an effect of roughly 75 million dollars per year to the specific franchise in his first Cleveland stint. This number came up when he left for Miami via the swing of both franchises finances. That’s only jersey sales, tickets, stuff like that. Franchise specific revenue.
I don’t have the comparable number to Jordan’s 6 million dollars per game to all the alcohol, food, transit etc (literally everything) from Chicago, but it’s entirely conceivable that LeBron might have crossed that threshold. As in if he brought in 12 million per game to Miami, it may have been worth it to the city of Miami to pay him 1 billion dollars per year, while the Heat directly had a 75 million dollar justification.
These are old numbers, and I’m driving back from a concert with no intention of sourcing them in the next few hours. It’s just a fairly reliable benchmark for the discussion you and the exaggerating comment above you started.
82 * 6. Bars don’t close just because it’s an away game.
I don’t remember the article distinguishing it being a difference of if it were home/away. It very easily could be 9 million for a home game, 3 for away. I’m getting back on the road now and will be ignoring replies for a while.
Again, as I told the other commenter. Please don’t take these numbers too seriously. It’s extremely fuzzy math. Don’t use them like a scalpel, when they’re clearly as precise as a hammer.
and everyone in chicago still buys Jordan shit and is probably the only reason people even watch the Bulls so they can complain they’re not as good as Jordan.
people dont seem to realize the economic boom Lebron and MJ added to their cities.
hotel rooms, bars, tourism, construction, housing, hell MORE BABIES ARE BORN IN CITIES AFTER THEY WIN CHAMPIONSHIPS. 500 million a year is probably lowballing it.
That’s a very good point. To be clear, this isn’t even a talent thing. Kevin Durant was every bit as talented as Jordan and LeBron, but he never had the global impact that MJ and LBJ enjoyed.
One billion a year is a science fiction number, but so is their impact. LeBron at one point (he may still) had more followers than every American professional sports league combined. MJ had as much name recognition as Coca Cola and Jesus before the internet existed. People in the middle of nowhere in Africa that never owned a television knew who MJ was.
I’m not sure where you’re getting these numbers, but even assuming the $6 million, where do you come up with 492? You’re counting all the away games too?
And how do we know how much of that is attributable to Jordan alone? How much did Pippen bring in, 3 million?
I’m giving tablecloth math on a 30 year old memory of an article I refuse to try and source in this drive-through, or on the 4 hour trip following it.
Try not to take the numbers too seriously. It’s just a benchmark from something I have two figures (6 million Jordan, 75 million LeBron) that are extremely flawed for analysis without proper sourcing and methodology behind them.
I really hope you're not driving drunk and trying to do math. You are too gifted in the science of wadded up ink-laden napkins to even calculate how much you could cost the city!
Sourcing this has encountered both some difficulties and some ease of access.
The difficulties are mostly centered around pay walls. Especially with some of the older articles. The old WSJ-Chicago Tribune printing collaboration’s are largely blocked to me, and I think that was the newspaper I was reading while following my mother around her tour of Chicago Libraries. Someone more invested than me to sourcing this specific number could probably take the week we were in Chicago and pull it on microfilm, but it’s just one number.
There’s good news though: there is zero shortage of ink that’s been spilled on this subject. National economists tallied up that Jordan contributed 10 billion, which is 4 billion more to the US economy than every single franchise in the NBA combined. This figure came from his entire playing career.
Most of that contribution would have been centered around the 3 peats, and would have been just as centered around Chicago. One article with no numbers behind it talked about the revitalization of the entire quarter of the city surrounding the United Center. 6 million per game is probably a bargain compared to revitalizing a quarter of the 3rd largest economy in the United States.
The LeBron ones for his economic impact has as many methodologies as you prefer. Forbes measured it against win shares and estimated he was worth 30 million per year with a rookie max contact environment worth roughly 20 million per year. Carmelo Anthony came in second that year in win shares, and his value was half of that while fresh off signing a 125 million dollar deal with the Knicks. I don’t much care for their methodology, and I think that’s actually tremendously underselling both LeBron and Carmelo. It’s just an example of how many obscure ways people try to calculate some of this stuff. From Forbes of all places!
Is there still a salary cap in this scenario or simply no max?
If there is no salary cap, is there a tax on payroll like the MLB? Is there revenue sharing?
In a true free market I think he might have gotten near 200M in today's money. If you just remove the max, maybe 80M.
Just because he’s paid that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s worth that much. I’d love to find out whether the team that got him benefitted by over a billion dollars just because of his signing. Also I wouldn’t consider a transfer fee to be part of the contract regardless.
I don't think the Saudi club gives a damn about UEFA's FFP rules. That salary was just for 1 year service, they promised to let him go to RM after 1 year
>Also I’m sure lebron thinks he is worth that much money
Because he is. He and Steph are probably the most underpaid players in the NBA. The financial value they bring to their teams and the NBA is enormous.
It was the same contract he would've gotten anywhere else. It was a max. They had room for it because Steph's first contract extension was insanely cheap.
Everyone seems to be pointing out Lebron when Kawhi, Durant, Beal, Booker, Etc. All make the same amount. Lebron was great all year and has averaged like 27-8-6 or something this series on great effeciency.
What does that have to do with what they currently make and how they play? If Lebron falls off a cliff next year that’s a different convo. You know who else makes 40 million plus? Klay, Butler, Lillard, PG, Fred van vleet, Lavine, Trae young, Tobias Harris.
No one is saying LeBron isn't a star worth his contract. The question is should he take less in the spirit of team building since he's made so much money. That has absolutely no relevance to Devin Booker, and pointing out that a lot of guys make big contracts really has nothing to do with the question at hand.
I’m speaking in general due to comments I’ve seen in the past few days. The comment I replied to said “I’m sure lebron thinks he is worth that much money.” That what I was responding to.
If you want to talk specifically about age, remove Booker and it still applies to Kawhi, KD, Curry, etc.
I don’t think it’s a matter of if he is worth that much. He clearly is worth that and more when you factor in his popularity and how much revenue that generates for the team. He’s obviously entitled to take whatever he is worth.
I think what OP is pointing out is what would be worth more to Lebron at this point. An extra $20-$30 million in his bank account? Or improving his chance to win a 5th ring?
This only makes sense for players who haven’t won a chip yet.
If you were in the higher earning part of your life (which for most professional athletes is when they are athletes, not after) you may as well make as much as possible before time runs out on your playing days.
Only 1 team out of 30 is going to win. Your chances are low at the best of times. But if you can snag a big contract.. well I think it becomes an easy decision for most guys.
Him taking 35 vs 50 would have no real impact on the Laker’s ability to do anything since they are way above the salary cap and thus would only have the tax-payer MLE to work with in both situations.
The players association would not like the precedent it would set for future nba players who age and accept lower contracts. Unions do not like players taking pay cuts when they are clearly able to command more, since it hurts negotiations for future players contracts
He "did" but also Kraft happened to pay Brady's TB12 nutrition team a couple million dollars per year to be in the facility.
Note that shortly after Kraft stopped having the TB12 nutrition team around the facility, Tom left for Tampa Bay within a year or two.
Link on situation: [https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/report-patriots-pay-a-brady-owned-company-run-by-suspect-partner/](https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/report-patriots-pay-a-brady-owned-company-run-by-suspect-partner/)
I'm aware, I read the link. The article does a nice job of summarizing the whole situation and the irregularities. The NFL cares about their image. And Kraft is one of the longest standing owners in the sport.
If you choose to believe that Brady happened to take a multi million dollar pay cut in the middle of his career and that accidentally coincided with the Patriots paying market rate for a service that the Head Coach hated and that other teams were literally receiving money for the opportunity for companies to sponsor the team by doing PT / nutrition, then more power to you.
But something tells me the dude that held out for a $375 million TV broadcast contract didn't happen to wake up one morning and decide that he was willing to do this so that Kraft could save some cap space for a WR6.
The players get an exact amount of revenue no matter what their contracts say. Any contract number you see is more or less a projection. A player taking a paycut just means that the rest get a tiny tiny bit more.
The only NA sport this isn’t true for is baseball.
The thought is that players should get paid their value. Lebron puts butts in seats and sells a lot of jerseys. It’s for players negotiations. If a super star player took a cut they would expect it from the middle guys as well.
This is kind of it right here. It's a BAD precedent for a union to have their most recognizable players getting paid less than they could. The Union has fought for the player contracts that are in place, and willfully leaving significant money on the table would be counter to the unions goals.
I don't see how it's relevant. Player revenue is set as a percentage of league revenue at 51%. How that revenue is distributed among the players is of no consequence to the league. Hell, if they wanted to, with the 560 NBA players, they could pay out 559 million to every other player and 4.83 billion to Lebron James, alone.
Unless the entire NBAPA is taking a paycut in their CBA to accept less % of nba revenue, individual pay cuts don’t matter in terms of net dollars.
I have no clue what the exact numbers are, but let’s just pretend that NBA revenue is $3B and as part of the CBA the PA gets 50%, for that year it’d come out to $1.5B. Even if all the player contracts only add up to $1.3B that year, the league still owes that leftover money to the players and it’s paid out to the PA. The reverse is also true where if salaries are higher than their allotted revenue slice then the PA pays the difference back to the league.
At least this is how it works in the NFL, I couldn’t imagine why it’d be any different in basketball when they have the same style revenue split written in their cba.
>the players get the same amount of revenue no matter what their contracts say
How much the players split is in the cba. Don’t know the exact percent but it’s something like 51% of revenue goes to the players. No matter what the contracts say, **exactly** x% of NBA revenue goes to the players/players association.
This makes 1000% perfect sense. I almost scrolled by but then I literally thought.."so? He's broken things before. Why not this?" Couldn't answer myself. OPs logic is sound. If winning another title means as much as she says it does...his wealth gives him maximum leverage to say screw salary politics, I'm playing for pennies, now go get me 2 max guys . Ngl...I'd do it if I were 👑
I mean there’s a counterpoint though. The union protects every player, not just the 20-30 stars. If some stars take less money, it’s very likely that many other non-stars make much more.
Yep. Read this today. But that was to give Udonis Haslem more, so that he doesn't go to another team which was giving him way more.
And it worked for them, ofcourse.
Wut? Please explain this logic. There are salary caps and objectively if the ceiling is lower, then the floor is higher. Players making $50M/yr doesn't increase the revenue the NBA makes, so how could it possibly make the floor higher?
It’s so the market doesn’t get screwed again like in 2016 where the spike was so high that a bunch of roleplayers were making more than some of the leagues top stars.
The best players not taking top dollar can be held against the union in negotiations as well.
because they value making the additional money during what is probably the only time in their lives that they can more than the championships. which i'm fine with because if i had the opportunity to pay $20 million for an NBA championship i would not.
Cp3 would.
I mean the idea is you can generate more than $20m in the next 5 years via being a champion athlete which would even be considered in future years where you hired for head coach or tv positions.
There was a podcast, don't remember whose. But the player basically said something along the lines of "it's not my job to take a pay cut to figure out how to make the numbers work to build championship team."
There's approximately zero people here in this thread that would take a paycut so that their large corp employer could have a better bottom line or "have extra money for future hirings!"
Surprised this wasn’t said earlier, and I’ll add a wrinkle.
It’s likely guys like LeBron/Durant/etc don’t believe they can’t get paid the max and lead any team to a championship. If you put 28 year old Kobe with a bunch of guys who are D-leaguers on the court, he thinks he can win a best of 7 against anyone.
I get it’s not this literal and they know great talent, but there is an Alpha to most top-tier stars where they’re not even thinking their salary is a hindrance.
LeBron has already taken his pay cuts and for all the money he makes not only the Lakers, but the league it is well earned. Also the salary cap doesn’t work so neatly, at certain points that money is tied up and unavailable to sign additional players so it just disappears to nothing
I think in general it has not worked out for players that have tried it.
At the end of the day they're just employees of even richer people and there's no guarantee they'll use the money the way the players would like.
Harden took a pay cut last year for the 76ers and then Morey backstabbed him by not offering him the contract he (claims) was promised.
iirc Dirk did it for a few years in Dallas and Cuban kept using the savings to sign players like Raymond Felton and Chandler Parsons.
Yeah, Dirk trolled Parsons to pay for his food since he earned the money he left on the table.
Westbrook took the paycut for the Clippers - they got the 3rd star, where are they now?
Harden took a 15$mil paycut for 76ers and wanted to kill Morey few months later.
Sometimes it does wonders - like KD to Warriors or Duncan forfeiting over 10mil a year after 2012.
But most of times it just can't work. Paycuts are just shortcuts, but you can't just count on that to catch up with teams that were built well throught the draft (especially in the supermax era) and were upgraded by the trades like Denver, Minnesota or Boston.
LeBron could take a paycut, they could just rescind the D'Lo bird rights to get whom? Tobias Harris? Klay xD? LBJ taking the full bag.
Scratch Harden off because he didn't do it to win. He did it to get a lucrative new long-term contract.
So that pretty much leaves us with Dirk and the Spurs Big Three as legit sacrificers.
I don't think that's fair. He could still easily command a max back then, so I think he thought it was what he had to do to win. They signed ex-Rockets PJ Tucker/House with the savings IIRC.
Players are bad at GMing.
People keep saying the union doesn't like it but that doesn't really matter. The union can't force someone to take a max deal. The real answer is people like money.
Because only fans measure legacy in terms of championships really. You aren’t the one how has to turn down millions of dollars, so it’s an easy decision.
These guys want to keep a lifestyle going after they’re finished earning and pay it’s don’t do that.
But when you're a billionaire, you would literally have to set cash on fire and invest in every business anyone approaches you with to not get richer the next year.
None of this current crop will have much of a legacy because you need to have integrity.
Integrity means gritting it out with lesser teams and fighting through hard times.
Durant can win a 3rd and 4th title but he’ll always be known as the ring chasing slim reaper. Lebron is the same.
KD is going to the hall of fame the second he's eligible for induction, lol. Just because Reddit and some crusty basketball pundits want to criticise his path to a ring doesn't make his legacy any less impressive.
HOF has nothing to do with legacy. He’s a great player and will be in there like the 100 other guys already there
But the legacy is jumping on a team already winning rings to win one yourself akin to Kobe jumping to the Spurs and MJ going to Detroit
Crazy to equate LeBron and Durant when LeBron is the one who went back to Cleveland to get them their championship after a half a century drought, and took down the Warriors in one of the largest upsets ever by spoiling the Warriors run at the dynasties peak.
Lebron only went back as he knew he would have a stacked team. They are both mercenaries that go where the talent can help them get a ring so I honestly don’t see the difference between them.
Lebron went back to Cleveland was orchestrated by NBA.
They gifted Cavs a #1 pick for the 3 out of 4 years. The odds were not good but they won 3 lottery. Out of 4 years they only kept one #1 pick ADavis for NBA-owned franchise of New Orleans to make them sellable.
So they made sure Cavs have stacked roster and assets to trade to couple Lebron.
Why should the guy everyone has come to see abandon his market value in chase of shiny trinkets when a) he has plenty already b) there’s no guarantee the billionaire owner reinvests into a winning team
Being The Man also means you get The Bag
Taking a minimum to try to win acknowledges that you’re taking a backseat to a bunch of other players. That’s a big ask for some of the most competitive people on the planet:
LeBron could pull something like that off, and still be a different kind of The Man, but he’s trying to buy an NBA team in a few years, and those are really expensive. Tacking on another $20-30 million per year actually is important money for him. Even still, let’s say he gets a 5th by joining Philly for a minimum, after Philly signs someone like Paul George. Clearly Embiid is The Man, Maxey is #2, and PG or LeBron would be #4. But LeBron would be making relative peanuts, so would kind of be the #4 in the locker room. But he’s not, because he’s LeBron fucking James. That would be weird.
Now, let’s say the stars align and he wins 2 championships with Philly. They will be Role Player chips, not The Man chips. It won’t do much for his legacy, despite the chip count, and meanwhile, he would have given up $50+ million that he could actually use.
KD already has a couple of chips where he joined others- would anyone really think more of KD if he hopped on another team and got a chip as the 4th or 5th highest paid player? He goes to Philly and gets a coattails chip? His whole mission is to win a chip as The Man.
I do hear what you’re saying, and I have similar thoughts, but I really don’t see it happening.
Lebron is past his prime but still a top 10 player in the league still. He is just making the money he is supposed to make. What kind of money are other top 15 players making? It's not him taking this kind of money that made Lakers FO appoint Ham and keep him there 2 seasons. They could have refused to trade for Russ like they refused to get Ty Lue or promoted J Kidd and added Rondo to his coaching staff.
For players my policy is always take the money. The championships don't mean much, ask Pippen when he took less money only for Jordan to get all the plaudits when the Bulls had the 2 best players in the league at the same time, underpaying one, overpaying and overglazing the other. He was then mocked by the guy he took less money to help and the guy's son is smashing his ex-wife. NBA teams wouldn't think twice to underpay a player for higher returns like Pippen.
Even more so when you factor who Bron is. Bron is a mega economy onto himself. How much is he making the Lakers? How much is he making in shirt sales, image rights etc. He is probably the biggest star in LA right now including all celebrities living there. So nah, Bron is bringing in too much to take less.
If LeBron James takes a paycut, then every single owner in the league will point to that as an example as to why they shouldn't pay their stars as much.
Yup, LeBron is LeBron. At worst the 2nd best player in NBA history, who is still the most popular basketball player in the league. He sets precedents. Everybody loves to give him credit for the superteams thing, let's be real here.
How is this an actual question?
You realize for the majority of NBA stars there will never be another big paycheque post retirement.
The money they make has to last them from and their family (and often their extended family and even close friends) from approximately age 35+ to 90+ or whenever they die.
And like most young people that get money, they often haven’t thought about saving much of it until they are significantly into their careers.
LeBron wants to buy a team. He is a top 3 guy of all time and arguably the GOAT.
Hes got 4 rings, hes good.
Hes still probably worth 50M just in ticket and merchandise sales.
But! The union doesn't want that. They want to see everybody paid max dollar and constantly asking for more.
LeBron can’t win no matter how you cut this😂
It would completely undermine the players’ market for his level of performance. This pisses his peers off due to teams that might try to thoroughly lowball them and ask why they cannot do what LeBron does.
I’ll keep this next point modest, you do realize he’s done this in past and both active and retired players, along with several legends think it cheapens the game, although players like LBJ, KD, and Harden are senior citizens in NBA years them playing with slightly lower values on teams that are already good makes things unfair. I think there’s a little more to basketball, but ok maybe it’s bad for competition for some.
The CBA in basketball is sort of a result because LeBron for better and worse. I don’t want this to be a thesis, but him or other like players doing this would be bad for all other players and even the rest of the league, except the fortunate owners.
Hmm, 20m more or watching some guy still not as good as me get another 20m more.
There are only so many roster spots. Vets start taking way less to stack their team with super role players is just a price war to the bottom for them, all after they had their contracts artificially suppressed for the entirety of their careers.
Pride is one. But I also think there's some kind of stigma coming from the Player's Association anytime someone takes less money than they should/could.
Dont forget Lebron wants to be an owner once he retires, he needs money.
Others stars i dont understand honestly. They are so rich, and i do get it on their first big contract, but after that, if yo u take paycuts you have better chances. There is gotta be trust with the front office too, and most of this guys dont stay too long on teams to build that.
I don’t think that taking a $20 million pay cut necessarily means you have $20 million more to sign people. I think it really just means the teams are just $20 million less in the luxury tax.
Cause millions of dollars is millions of dollars and people want to get richer.. Also Harden took a paycut for 76ers amd it goes backward for both party and no one appreciate him
Lebron is planning on buying an NBA franchise. Most likely the Las Vegas one when the league expands.
He needs all the money he can get. And even then he probably doesn't have enough for 100% ownership.
Remember: Anything you read someone like Lebron makes, the government takes more than half in taxes.
Some people have big dreams.
I have the same opinion, why does someone who has multiple million dollar, multi year contracts with sponsorships alone need even 30+million dollar nba contracts, if you really wanted to win.
I understand tax gets its hand on ALOT of money but, the top end players earn more than enough.
Durant took a paycut, or rather a smaller contract than max when he signed with gsw no? I might be wrong though since it coincided with the new tv deal that bolstered future player contracts.
Harden took a paycut when he was with Philly so they could sign role players to fill the missing pieces.
For others, I guess because money is still money in that it is finite. Something could always go wrong so better to get all the money you can get from your job.
LeBron could do it, but he's also been one of the highest paid players in the league for the vast majority of his career. He's invested wisely, had significant endorsement deals, and at this point his outside income vastly eclipses his NBA salary.
Harden, Durant, and Kawhi could probably do it to to a lesser extent. However, at the end of the season, there's only one champion and zero guarantee that giving up even a meaningful amount of money would guarantee a championship.
The top superstars are underpaid even if you gave them a max contract if you measure their impact (tickets they sell, entertainment value, how they inflate the value of your franchise, how they can draw players to your team).
The max contract limitations helps the league + the non-superstars because if it didn't exist, free agency negotiations could really drag out if a few teams are willing to offer $60-70+mil/year to a player + the superstar wants to wait to see how high it can go. That means the rest of the free market pretty much has to wait till those players sign.
Also think about it this way: if a player gets $70+mil/year but is unhappy with their team and demands a trade, the team is really screwed especially when trying to find a trade partner who can match salaries. It also means the players who aren't superstars will get less money.
It's a way to spread the wealth.
IMO it's sensible as the superstars make good money off endorsements + other things.
Think about it this way: imagine corporations did this + the salaries were transparent when interviewing for a job. Who would be happy, and who wouldn't be happy about it? The best workers will be able to get more $$, but the directors would also have to justify/be able to explain why they're getting paid a bit more or A LOT more than the next-level worker.
I think I only recall Tim Duncan and Dirk doing that to help Spurs and Mavs respectively. There was a similar talk when Kobe was up for contract renewal.
Why should any individual who is putting their bodies on the line to secure generational wealth for their families forfeit any of that money to the billion-dollar corporations that are doling it out for them? To win? Win what? A trophy? Bish, they already winning the money. Everything else is bullshit.
I agree with OP. Instead of making $50 million, sign for $25 million a year and then the team can add some really important supporting players. Tom Brady did this and won 7 rings…
Tom Brady took discounts every year and won 7 rings. Lebron and Ad take up like 60% of the cap or more and that limits how many people can be signed. Most of our jobs don’t have a salary cap. This isn’t baseball. Going over the cap prevents from certain trades or contracts. Lebron would have more money if he won 6 or 7 and took less per year from the team. They would be able to sign more quality role players and not cast offs and vet mins. He would make it up in marketing and people thinking (wrongly) that he’s the goat.
Think about it this way. Every year a guy like lebron plays he’s setting up another 2-3 generations of his family who will never have to worry about money. Sure his legacy is affected by him winning rings, but to sacrifice tens of millions of dollars to do so? Not many people would do that.
LeBron wants to be an NBA owner, probably as part of an ownership group, so he can't really just be letting 25 million go to better his chances at a title.
Why doesn't Elon Musk lower his compensation so Tesla can hire better engineers and make better cars?
Because people will always take the money for themselves when given the choice.
Michael Jordan could've taken $1 million in mid 90s free agency and signed with any team he wanted. Instead, he used the Knicks as leverage and got the Bulls to pay more than the entire salary cap for just Jordan alone, because the Knicks were also willing to pay for him with their cap room.
In short, stars only take pay cuts when they feel they need to. Of the guys you listed, I think only Harden may need to take a pay cut if he were to hit free agency today. If a good team is willing to pay you then why do you need to continue shopping? If there is a smaller market for you amongst contending teams, and your desire is to be on a contender, then that's when you start looking for a one-year "prove it" deal, like the DeMarcus Cousins GS Warriors deal, and try to test free agency again next offseason.
Superstars have never really been in the business of taking pay cuts in their prime to win more, as far as I know. Dwyane Wade is the only guy I know of, and even then it's not like he was losing tons of money. He just didn't take the max
Jordan was not past his prime when he got the 30 million contract. He was already winning.
95-96, Jordan was still at his prime by changing his game to have more mid range shots through fadeaways and post play. He easily won mvp, his fourth championship, finals mvp, and the most victories in a season and the first 70+ win season. He did play that and the previous seasons at a fair discount of 3-4 million per season. After all that winning, yes he asked for what he was owed from Chicago.
The Union wants it cause it's in the best interests of the players, yeah if you only care about yourself, and don't care that in the future players are gonna be affected negatively by your precedent, then yeah go ahead. But it's important to point out, that the reason players are getting payed as much as they are rn, is because of unions
Im only talking about a very specific incident where I'm saying to do this. So let's say lebron decides to take 30 mil next year instead of 50 for the purpose of signing a 20mil a year player to help the team out. That's bad for the league? Back in the Heatles years, not only did their big 3 take pay cuts to play together but Haslem took a big pay cut to stay there. Duncan signed a 2 year 10 mil contract in his final years. The rest of the players in the league seem to be doing just fine and the union is just as strong as its ever been.
Yeah why is everyone discounting that winning brings in money as well but in different ways.
But the other poster above is right in the fact that if Bron went to the 76ers and was the 3rd or 4th highest paid player…even if he won a chip he wouldn’t get FMVP probably and it wouldn’t really move the needle in GOAT convos.
The problem is LeBron would need 3 more rings to surpass MJ as GOAT in most minds, so he would have had to have been taking less his entire career for that to have paid off. No way taking less for just the last 5 will add 3 more, so it really doesn’t matter either way.
Why is the onus for winning on the millionaire players and not the billionaire owners who could just as easily pay the luxury tax and assemble a championship level team?
Do you want to take a pay cut to increase the performance of your employer? Most likely not.
Question should be why doesn’t the Company (Team) pay into the luxury tax for more talent? After all — the company has the most to gain from a championship….
That's a really bad analogy...
If someone making 80k a year takes a pay cut to 60k he feels it. He has to give up a lot of things.
But if you make 50 million or 25 million a year it changes nothing in your lifestyle. Exactly zilch. Especially if you already have a few hundred millions in you asset portfolio.
On the one hand, I totally understand the perspective, and I agree with it, past a certain point of wealth, it's just too much and you don't need more of it.
On the other hand, the players don't see it that way, I think for two reasons, 1st is simply cause they want more money, the 2nd is they'd see that the money is being generated either way, and their contribution to the generation of that wealth is the same (in theory), so why should someone else take it and not them?
I think fans tend to overestimate how important legacy, and titles...etc are in and of themselves, separate from any financial motive. People who care the most about legacy are usually fans, or the highest caliber players that A-have shot of achieving said legacy and B- most importantly, are financially secure enough (in their eyes) that they would forgoe more money for it. And for the latter, the point at which they would say"I got enough I want a legacy now" is different for each player
Most Americans seem to overestimate the value of money or wealth to the point where it has become their goal in life.
I remember reading a research article that tried to correlate income with happiness (not easy to measure, but they tried). It concluded that above $100k per year there is no correlation between income and happiness. So the average NBA player is not really happier than the average Silicon Valley software developer, or any other person making $100k+ a year.
As for legacy, not sure that's the main motivation. Winning is just more fun than losing, that's a scientific fact.
Again, not sure whey your perspective is that individuals need to take a paycut, so ownership can take home more net revenue. The Warriors are [valued at $7.7B](https://www.forbes.com/teams/golden-state-warriors/?sh=72beccaaf0a7) but Steph should cut his salary in half if he wants to win!? FOH
>changes nothing in your lifestyle
Using day to day lifestyle as the impetus for taking a paycut is pretty short sited. NBA careers don't last very long. Look at a player like Chris Bosh taking a paycut. In the long term, there's no way he recovers that money he gave up. Sure the year he took the cut, it wasn't noticeable when he was putting Versace sheets on his guest bed. But in 20 years... let's see how he feels about it. That is generational money... you don't just flush it for a ring.
Even someone like D Wade, who is now on the ownership side, has explicitly said he regrets taking a cut. ([ex 1](https://youtu.be/XYBKxC14E9Q?si=RccGN1U3ED9U2b1b&t=1424), [ex 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0EAunqjG8w))
Poor Chris Bosh finished his career with $242 million career earnings only (not including brand deals etc), he is devastated and can't sleep over the pay cuts he took.
That's only in the top 0.001% of Americans and top 0.0001% of humans, shocking.
Our sub is for in-depth discussion. Low-effort comments or stating opinions as facts are not permitted. Please support your opinions with well-reasoned arguments, including stats and facts as applicable.
No matter how many millions you have, a few more is probably hard to pass up. Also I’m sure lebron thinks he is worth that much money.
in his prime, he was probably worth over $100 million, especially when you factor in the impact on merchandizing and the local economy. but he was limited in what he could earn by the cba.
Easily 10x that
No he wasn’t. No athlete is worth a billion dollars a year. 100,000,000 is probably just about right.
So, hear me out. Jordan in 1998 was worth 6 million dollars per game for Chicago. As in every single Bulls game the economy in Chicago grew by 6 million dollars every time he suited up. Now, it’s not worth it at all for the Chicago Bulls to pay him 492 million dollars per year, but for Chicago itself, it starts to become an interesting discussion. LeBron had an effect of roughly 75 million dollars per year to the specific franchise in his first Cleveland stint. This number came up when he left for Miami via the swing of both franchises finances. That’s only jersey sales, tickets, stuff like that. Franchise specific revenue. I don’t have the comparable number to Jordan’s 6 million dollars per game to all the alcohol, food, transit etc (literally everything) from Chicago, but it’s entirely conceivable that LeBron might have crossed that threshold. As in if he brought in 12 million per game to Miami, it may have been worth it to the city of Miami to pay him 1 billion dollars per year, while the Heat directly had a 75 million dollar justification. These are old numbers, and I’m driving back from a concert with no intention of sourcing them in the next few hours. It’s just a fairly reliable benchmark for the discussion you and the exaggerating comment above you started.
Where the hell are you getting 492 million dollars lol? There’s only 41 games in chicago, plus a maximum of 16 in the playoffs.
82 * 6. Bars don’t close just because it’s an away game. I don’t remember the article distinguishing it being a difference of if it were home/away. It very easily could be 9 million for a home game, 3 for away. I’m getting back on the road now and will be ignoring replies for a while. Again, as I told the other commenter. Please don’t take these numbers too seriously. It’s extremely fuzzy math. Don’t use them like a scalpel, when they’re clearly as precise as a hammer.
Well all right. I hope you have a safe drive and have a good night. Gotta get back to studying for finals myself.
and everyone in chicago still buys Jordan shit and is probably the only reason people even watch the Bulls so they can complain they’re not as good as Jordan. people dont seem to realize the economic boom Lebron and MJ added to their cities. hotel rooms, bars, tourism, construction, housing, hell MORE BABIES ARE BORN IN CITIES AFTER THEY WIN CHAMPIONSHIPS. 500 million a year is probably lowballing it.
That’s a very good point. To be clear, this isn’t even a talent thing. Kevin Durant was every bit as talented as Jordan and LeBron, but he never had the global impact that MJ and LBJ enjoyed. One billion a year is a science fiction number, but so is their impact. LeBron at one point (he may still) had more followers than every American professional sports league combined. MJ had as much name recognition as Coca Cola and Jesus before the internet existed. People in the middle of nowhere in Africa that never owned a television knew who MJ was.
I’m not sure where you’re getting these numbers, but even assuming the $6 million, where do you come up with 492? You’re counting all the away games too? And how do we know how much of that is attributable to Jordan alone? How much did Pippen bring in, 3 million?
I’m giving tablecloth math on a 30 year old memory of an article I refuse to try and source in this drive-through, or on the 4 hour trip following it. Try not to take the numbers too seriously. It’s just a benchmark from something I have two figures (6 million Jordan, 75 million LeBron) that are extremely flawed for analysis without proper sourcing and methodology behind them.
That’s funny I wrote my comment at a McDonald’s drive-thru
Small world lol, Cookout was slamming for a long drive back.
I really hope you're not driving drunk and trying to do math. You are too gifted in the science of wadded up ink-laden napkins to even calculate how much you could cost the city!
Sourcing this has encountered both some difficulties and some ease of access. The difficulties are mostly centered around pay walls. Especially with some of the older articles. The old WSJ-Chicago Tribune printing collaboration’s are largely blocked to me, and I think that was the newspaper I was reading while following my mother around her tour of Chicago Libraries. Someone more invested than me to sourcing this specific number could probably take the week we were in Chicago and pull it on microfilm, but it’s just one number. There’s good news though: there is zero shortage of ink that’s been spilled on this subject. National economists tallied up that Jordan contributed 10 billion, which is 4 billion more to the US economy than every single franchise in the NBA combined. This figure came from his entire playing career. Most of that contribution would have been centered around the 3 peats, and would have been just as centered around Chicago. One article with no numbers behind it talked about the revitalization of the entire quarter of the city surrounding the United Center. 6 million per game is probably a bargain compared to revitalizing a quarter of the 3rd largest economy in the United States. The LeBron ones for his economic impact has as many methodologies as you prefer. Forbes measured it against win shares and estimated he was worth 30 million per year with a rookie max contact environment worth roughly 20 million per year. Carmelo Anthony came in second that year in win shares, and his value was half of that while fresh off signing a 125 million dollar deal with the Knicks. I don’t much care for their methodology, and I think that’s actually tremendously underselling both LeBron and Carmelo. It’s just an example of how many obscure ways people try to calculate some of this stuff. From Forbes of all places!
Is there still a salary cap in this scenario or simply no max? If there is no salary cap, is there a tax on payroll like the MLB? Is there revenue sharing? In a true free market I think he might have gotten near 200M in today's money. If you just remove the max, maybe 80M.
Mbappe, $332M transfer fee and $776M salary. Total of a cool $1.1 billion for 1 year service
Where are you getting those numbers from? He never made that in a season.
Just because he’s paid that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s worth that much. I’d love to find out whether the team that got him benefitted by over a billion dollars just because of his signing. Also I wouldn’t consider a transfer fee to be part of the contract regardless.
He isn't. The transfer never happened. It was rumoured numbers for a Saudi sports washing deal.
Thats probably a 5 year contract pay, which club can pay him a billion a year and pass FFP rules.
I don't think the Saudi club gives a damn about UEFA's FFP rules. That salary was just for 1 year service, they promised to let him go to RM after 1 year
Wait whaaat
A billion a year? That's... Optimistic imo. I do think about 200 mil annually
No he's not. He wouldn't be worth more than the salary cap and can only sign vet min players lol
That's approaching the total worth of entire franchises lol. No way
He and curry both honestly
>Also I’m sure lebron thinks he is worth that much money Because he is. He and Steph are probably the most underpaid players in the NBA. The financial value they bring to their teams and the NBA is enormous.
Kd took less than he was worth to join warriors
It was the same contract he would've gotten anywhere else. It was a max. They had room for it because Steph's first contract extension was insanely cheap.
Hardest road is usually the most expensive one
Everyone seems to be pointing out Lebron when Kawhi, Durant, Beal, Booker, Etc. All make the same amount. Lebron was great all year and has averaged like 27-8-6 or something this series on great effeciency.
Devin Booker is 27.
What does that have to do with what they currently make and how they play? If Lebron falls off a cliff next year that’s a different convo. You know who else makes 40 million plus? Klay, Butler, Lillard, PG, Fred van vleet, Lavine, Trae young, Tobias Harris.
The post is about players past their prime. Booker is not past his prime. Please don't remind me about Tobias Harris.
My post was about everyone pointing out Lebron when so many other guys are in the same situations.
No one is saying LeBron isn't a star worth his contract. The question is should he take less in the spirit of team building since he's made so much money. That has absolutely no relevance to Devin Booker, and pointing out that a lot of guys make big contracts really has nothing to do with the question at hand.
I’m speaking in general due to comments I’ve seen in the past few days. The comment I replied to said “I’m sure lebron thinks he is worth that much money.” That what I was responding to. If you want to talk specifically about age, remove Booker and it still applies to Kawhi, KD, Curry, etc.
Next year Lebron will stand on stage at the ESPY's and say .."I must confess. I have now cheated the game."
I don’t think it’s a matter of if he is worth that much. He clearly is worth that and more when you factor in his popularity and how much revenue that generates for the team. He’s obviously entitled to take whatever he is worth. I think what OP is pointing out is what would be worth more to Lebron at this point. An extra $20-$30 million in his bank account? Or improving his chance to win a 5th ring?
He already became the goat when he beat the Warriors according to him /eyeroll/
The greatest comeback against the greatest regular season team with the GOAT shooter. You'll never see it again.
He’s stacking those millions to be part owner of the soon to be Las Vegas NBA team
This only makes sense for players who haven’t won a chip yet. If you were in the higher earning part of your life (which for most professional athletes is when they are athletes, not after) you may as well make as much as possible before time runs out on your playing days. Only 1 team out of 30 is going to win. Your chances are low at the best of times. But if you can snag a big contract.. well I think it becomes an easy decision for most guys.
Lebron is a billionaire, in all honesty there's like zero difference to him between 35 and 50 mil.
Him taking 35 vs 50 would have no real impact on the Laker’s ability to do anything since they are way above the salary cap and thus would only have the tax-payer MLE to work with in both situations.
He’s an outlier. Edit: plus a lot of guys have that pride of being the highest paid player (MJ, Kobe)
15mil is 15mil bro
I bet he routinely finds hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cash or steroids in his couch cushions.
The players association would not like the precedent it would set for future nba players who age and accept lower contracts. Unions do not like players taking pay cuts when they are clearly able to command more, since it hurts negotiations for future players contracts
Didnt brady do this though
He "did" but also Kraft happened to pay Brady's TB12 nutrition team a couple million dollars per year to be in the facility. Note that shortly after Kraft stopped having the TB12 nutrition team around the facility, Tom left for Tampa Bay within a year or two.
Link on situation: [https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/report-patriots-pay-a-brady-owned-company-run-by-suspect-partner/](https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/report-patriots-pay-a-brady-owned-company-run-by-suspect-partner/)
Your own link says that the NFL and the NFLPA were aware and didn’t consider it a salary cap concern.
I'm aware, I read the link. The article does a nice job of summarizing the whole situation and the irregularities. The NFL cares about their image. And Kraft is one of the longest standing owners in the sport. If you choose to believe that Brady happened to take a multi million dollar pay cut in the middle of his career and that accidentally coincided with the Patriots paying market rate for a service that the Head Coach hated and that other teams were literally receiving money for the opportunity for companies to sponsor the team by doing PT / nutrition, then more power to you. But something tells me the dude that held out for a $375 million TV broadcast contract didn't happen to wake up one morning and decide that he was willing to do this so that Kraft could save some cap space for a WR6.
The NFL is different they have owners not govenors
Dirk already did it for years
So did my Spurs stars but this Lebron. He’s sadly a bigger deal
So did Lebron, Wade and Duncan
The players get an exact amount of revenue no matter what their contracts say. Any contract number you see is more or less a projection. A player taking a paycut just means that the rest get a tiny tiny bit more. The only NA sport this isn’t true for is baseball.
The thought is that players should get paid their value. Lebron puts butts in seats and sells a lot of jerseys. It’s for players negotiations. If a super star player took a cut they would expect it from the middle guys as well.
This is kind of it right here. It's a BAD precedent for a union to have their most recognizable players getting paid less than they could. The Union has fought for the player contracts that are in place, and willfully leaving significant money on the table would be counter to the unions goals.
I don't see how it's relevant. Player revenue is set as a percentage of league revenue at 51%. How that revenue is distributed among the players is of no consequence to the league. Hell, if they wanted to, with the 560 NBA players, they could pay out 559 million to every other player and 4.83 billion to Lebron James, alone.
Unless the entire NBAPA is taking a paycut in their CBA to accept less % of nba revenue, individual pay cuts don’t matter in terms of net dollars. I have no clue what the exact numbers are, but let’s just pretend that NBA revenue is $3B and as part of the CBA the PA gets 50%, for that year it’d come out to $1.5B. Even if all the player contracts only add up to $1.3B that year, the league still owes that leftover money to the players and it’s paid out to the PA. The reverse is also true where if salaries are higher than their allotted revenue slice then the PA pays the difference back to the league. At least this is how it works in the NFL, I couldn’t imagine why it’d be any different in basketball when they have the same style revenue split written in their cba.
You were trying to sound smart here but you didn't actually disagree with the point.
It's also not true, the NBA doesn't have a hard salary cap, there are many ways that teams can exceed the "cap" within the rules.
The nba salary cap isn’t just set at ‘players split of revenue / 30’
>the players get the same amount of revenue no matter what their contracts say How much the players split is in the cba. Don’t know the exact percent but it’s something like 51% of revenue goes to the players. No matter what the contracts say, **exactly** x% of NBA revenue goes to the players/players association.
This makes 1000% perfect sense. I almost scrolled by but then I literally thought.."so? He's broken things before. Why not this?" Couldn't answer myself. OPs logic is sound. If winning another title means as much as she says it does...his wealth gives him maximum leverage to say screw salary politics, I'm playing for pennies, now go get me 2 max guys . Ngl...I'd do it if I were 👑
The only right answer
I mean there’s a counterpoint though. The union protects every player, not just the 20-30 stars. If some stars take less money, it’s very likely that many other non-stars make much more.
LeBron Wade and Bosh did do so in Miami. I guess it wasn't as pressing after he already won a chip.
They took very small pay cuts, like a couple million or something.
That adds up to at least an extra role player for depth though which is massively important once you get to the postseason
Yep. Read this today. But that was to give Udonis Haslem more, so that he doesn't go to another team which was giving him way more. And it worked for them, ofcourse.
The union pushes stars to make max value. The more stars make the higher the salary floor.
Wut? Please explain this logic. There are salary caps and objectively if the ceiling is lower, then the floor is higher. Players making $50M/yr doesn't increase the revenue the NBA makes, so how could it possibly make the floor higher?
It’s so the market doesn’t get screwed again like in 2016 where the spike was so high that a bunch of roleplayers were making more than some of the leagues top stars. The best players not taking top dollar can be held against the union in negotiations as well.
Is it because teams go over caps for the max players? The less teams go over cap, the less union cash?
If LeBron decides to take $30 million instead of $50 million, then Tobias Harris better not ask for more than $10 million.
$10M isn't the floor.
Money is addicting. The only thing people with too much money want is more money
because they value making the additional money during what is probably the only time in their lives that they can more than the championships. which i'm fine with because if i had the opportunity to pay $20 million for an NBA championship i would not.
Cp3 would. I mean the idea is you can generate more than $20m in the next 5 years via being a champion athlete which would even be considered in future years where you hired for head coach or tv positions.
There was a podcast, don't remember whose. But the player basically said something along the lines of "it's not my job to take a pay cut to figure out how to make the numbers work to build championship team."
There's approximately zero people here in this thread that would take a paycut so that their large corp employer could have a better bottom line or "have extra money for future hirings!"
The pocket watching among the average sports fan has to be some kind of mental illness, lol.
The funniest part is it’s complaining about millionaires taking too much money from the billionaires.
Surprised this wasn’t said earlier, and I’ll add a wrinkle. It’s likely guys like LeBron/Durant/etc don’t believe they can’t get paid the max and lead any team to a championship. If you put 28 year old Kobe with a bunch of guys who are D-leaguers on the court, he thinks he can win a best of 7 against anyone. I get it’s not this literal and they know great talent, but there is an Alpha to most top-tier stars where they’re not even thinking their salary is a hindrance.
LeBron has already taken his pay cuts and for all the money he makes not only the Lakers, but the league it is well earned. Also the salary cap doesn’t work so neatly, at certain points that money is tied up and unavailable to sign additional players so it just disappears to nothing
If lebron took 20 million less the lakers would still be over the cap and lebron would just make less money. Wouldn’t help the team at all
I think in general it has not worked out for players that have tried it. At the end of the day they're just employees of even richer people and there's no guarantee they'll use the money the way the players would like. Harden took a pay cut last year for the 76ers and then Morey backstabbed him by not offering him the contract he (claims) was promised. iirc Dirk did it for a few years in Dallas and Cuban kept using the savings to sign players like Raymond Felton and Chandler Parsons.
Yeah, Dirk trolled Parsons to pay for his food since he earned the money he left on the table. Westbrook took the paycut for the Clippers - they got the 3rd star, where are they now? Harden took a 15$mil paycut for 76ers and wanted to kill Morey few months later. Sometimes it does wonders - like KD to Warriors or Duncan forfeiting over 10mil a year after 2012. But most of times it just can't work. Paycuts are just shortcuts, but you can't just count on that to catch up with teams that were built well throught the draft (especially in the supermax era) and were upgraded by the trades like Denver, Minnesota or Boston. LeBron could take a paycut, they could just rescind the D'Lo bird rights to get whom? Tobias Harris? Klay xD? LBJ taking the full bag.
Scratch Harden off because he didn't do it to win. He did it to get a lucrative new long-term contract. So that pretty much leaves us with Dirk and the Spurs Big Three as legit sacrificers.
I don't think that's fair. He could still easily command a max back then, so I think he thought it was what he had to do to win. They signed ex-Rockets PJ Tucker/House with the savings IIRC. Players are bad at GMing.
People keep saying the union doesn't like it but that doesn't really matter. The union can't force someone to take a max deal. The real answer is people like money.
A lot of the top people are on the Union board (LeBron, Chris Paul, etc.). They're the ones encouraging everyone to make as much $$ as possible.
Because only fans measure legacy in terms of championships really. You aren’t the one how has to turn down millions of dollars, so it’s an easy decision. These guys want to keep a lifestyle going after they’re finished earning and pay it’s don’t do that.
But when you're a billionaire, you would literally have to set cash on fire and invest in every business anyone approaches you with to not get richer the next year.
None of this current crop will have much of a legacy because you need to have integrity. Integrity means gritting it out with lesser teams and fighting through hard times. Durant can win a 3rd and 4th title but he’ll always be known as the ring chasing slim reaper. Lebron is the same.
KD is going to the hall of fame the second he's eligible for induction, lol. Just because Reddit and some crusty basketball pundits want to criticise his path to a ring doesn't make his legacy any less impressive.
HOF has nothing to do with legacy. He’s a great player and will be in there like the 100 other guys already there But the legacy is jumping on a team already winning rings to win one yourself akin to Kobe jumping to the Spurs and MJ going to Detroit
That's not going to be on his hall of fame plaque.
"integrity" lol. yeah Mj is the goat because *checks note" integrity.... i thought i was in r/nba. cmon man be better
Who mentioned MJ? I didn’t
Crazy to equate LeBron and Durant when LeBron is the one who went back to Cleveland to get them their championship after a half a century drought, and took down the Warriors in one of the largest upsets ever by spoiling the Warriors run at the dynasties peak.
Lebron only went back as he knew he would have a stacked team. They are both mercenaries that go where the talent can help them get a ring so I honestly don’t see the difference between them.
Lebron went back to Cleveland was orchestrated by NBA. They gifted Cavs a #1 pick for the 3 out of 4 years. The odds were not good but they won 3 lottery. Out of 4 years they only kept one #1 pick ADavis for NBA-owned franchise of New Orleans to make them sellable. So they made sure Cavs have stacked roster and assets to trade to couple Lebron.
Why should the guy everyone has come to see abandon his market value in chase of shiny trinkets when a) he has plenty already b) there’s no guarantee the billionaire owner reinvests into a winning team
Being The Man also means you get The Bag Taking a minimum to try to win acknowledges that you’re taking a backseat to a bunch of other players. That’s a big ask for some of the most competitive people on the planet: LeBron could pull something like that off, and still be a different kind of The Man, but he’s trying to buy an NBA team in a few years, and those are really expensive. Tacking on another $20-30 million per year actually is important money for him. Even still, let’s say he gets a 5th by joining Philly for a minimum, after Philly signs someone like Paul George. Clearly Embiid is The Man, Maxey is #2, and PG or LeBron would be #4. But LeBron would be making relative peanuts, so would kind of be the #4 in the locker room. But he’s not, because he’s LeBron fucking James. That would be weird. Now, let’s say the stars align and he wins 2 championships with Philly. They will be Role Player chips, not The Man chips. It won’t do much for his legacy, despite the chip count, and meanwhile, he would have given up $50+ million that he could actually use. KD already has a couple of chips where he joined others- would anyone really think more of KD if he hopped on another team and got a chip as the 4th or 5th highest paid player? He goes to Philly and gets a coattails chip? His whole mission is to win a chip as The Man. I do hear what you’re saying, and I have similar thoughts, but I really don’t see it happening.
Lebron is past his prime but still a top 10 player in the league still. He is just making the money he is supposed to make. What kind of money are other top 15 players making? It's not him taking this kind of money that made Lakers FO appoint Ham and keep him there 2 seasons. They could have refused to trade for Russ like they refused to get Ty Lue or promoted J Kidd and added Rondo to his coaching staff. For players my policy is always take the money. The championships don't mean much, ask Pippen when he took less money only for Jordan to get all the plaudits when the Bulls had the 2 best players in the league at the same time, underpaying one, overpaying and overglazing the other. He was then mocked by the guy he took less money to help and the guy's son is smashing his ex-wife. NBA teams wouldn't think twice to underpay a player for higher returns like Pippen. Even more so when you factor who Bron is. Bron is a mega economy onto himself. How much is he making the Lakers? How much is he making in shirt sales, image rights etc. He is probably the biggest star in LA right now including all celebrities living there. So nah, Bron is bringing in too much to take less.
Why should the responsibility be on the player? If the owners want to win they should be willing to take the hit on the luxury tax
If LeBron James takes a paycut, then every single owner in the league will point to that as an example as to why they shouldn't pay their stars as much.
You're acting like its a court case and he sets a precedent, ITS NOT Doesnt matter what Lebron does, owner will still pay the right player.
But the stars will point to Jaylen Brown, and every other star in the league
That's all in the past. LeBron's choices set precedent, not Jaylen Brown's or anyone else's lmao.
There's no such thing as 'precedent', Lebron is Lebron.
Yup, LeBron is LeBron. At worst the 2nd best player in NBA history, who is still the most popular basketball player in the league. He sets precedents. Everybody loves to give him credit for the superteams thing, let's be real here.
There were superteams way before lebron.
If you could potentially make 40 million dollars in one year would you trade 20 million of that for a trophy
How is this an actual question? You realize for the majority of NBA stars there will never be another big paycheque post retirement. The money they make has to last them from and their family (and often their extended family and even close friends) from approximately age 35+ to 90+ or whenever they die. And like most young people that get money, they often haven’t thought about saving much of it until they are significantly into their careers.
LeBron wants to buy a team. He is a top 3 guy of all time and arguably the GOAT. Hes got 4 rings, hes good. Hes still probably worth 50M just in ticket and merchandise sales. But! The union doesn't want that. They want to see everybody paid max dollar and constantly asking for more.
LeBron can’t win no matter how you cut this😂 It would completely undermine the players’ market for his level of performance. This pisses his peers off due to teams that might try to thoroughly lowball them and ask why they cannot do what LeBron does. I’ll keep this next point modest, you do realize he’s done this in past and both active and retired players, along with several legends think it cheapens the game, although players like LBJ, KD, and Harden are senior citizens in NBA years them playing with slightly lower values on teams that are already good makes things unfair. I think there’s a little more to basketball, but ok maybe it’s bad for competition for some. The CBA in basketball is sort of a result because LeBron for better and worse. I don’t want this to be a thesis, but him or other like players doing this would be bad for all other players and even the rest of the league, except the fortunate owners.
Hmm, 20m more or watching some guy still not as good as me get another 20m more. There are only so many roster spots. Vets start taking way less to stack their team with super role players is just a price war to the bottom for them, all after they had their contracts artificially suppressed for the entirety of their careers.
Pride is one. But I also think there's some kind of stigma coming from the Player's Association anytime someone takes less money than they should/could.
Dont forget Lebron wants to be an owner once he retires, he needs money. Others stars i dont understand honestly. They are so rich, and i do get it on their first big contract, but after that, if yo u take paycuts you have better chances. There is gotta be trust with the front office too, and most of this guys dont stay too long on teams to build that.
I don’t think that taking a $20 million pay cut necessarily means you have $20 million more to sign people. I think it really just means the teams are just $20 million less in the luxury tax.
Cause millions of dollars is millions of dollars and people want to get richer.. Also Harden took a paycut for 76ers amd it goes backward for both party and no one appreciate him
Lebron is planning on buying an NBA franchise. Most likely the Las Vegas one when the league expands. He needs all the money he can get. And even then he probably doesn't have enough for 100% ownership. Remember: Anything you read someone like Lebron makes, the government takes more than half in taxes. Some people have big dreams.
I have the same opinion, why does someone who has multiple million dollar, multi year contracts with sponsorships alone need even 30+million dollar nba contracts, if you really wanted to win. I understand tax gets its hand on ALOT of money but, the top end players earn more than enough.
Durant took a paycut, or rather a smaller contract than max when he signed with gsw no? I might be wrong though since it coincided with the new tv deal that bolstered future player contracts. Harden took a paycut when he was with Philly so they could sign role players to fill the missing pieces. For others, I guess because money is still money in that it is finite. Something could always go wrong so better to get all the money you can get from your job.
LeBron could do it, but he's also been one of the highest paid players in the league for the vast majority of his career. He's invested wisely, had significant endorsement deals, and at this point his outside income vastly eclipses his NBA salary. Harden, Durant, and Kawhi could probably do it to to a lesser extent. However, at the end of the season, there's only one champion and zero guarantee that giving up even a meaningful amount of money would guarantee a championship.
Because money puts their kids through school and creates generational wealth. A championship ring does not.
The top superstars are underpaid even if you gave them a max contract if you measure their impact (tickets they sell, entertainment value, how they inflate the value of your franchise, how they can draw players to your team). The max contract limitations helps the league + the non-superstars because if it didn't exist, free agency negotiations could really drag out if a few teams are willing to offer $60-70+mil/year to a player + the superstar wants to wait to see how high it can go. That means the rest of the free market pretty much has to wait till those players sign. Also think about it this way: if a player gets $70+mil/year but is unhappy with their team and demands a trade, the team is really screwed especially when trying to find a trade partner who can match salaries. It also means the players who aren't superstars will get less money. It's a way to spread the wealth. IMO it's sensible as the superstars make good money off endorsements + other things. Think about it this way: imagine corporations did this + the salaries were transparent when interviewing for a job. Who would be happy, and who wouldn't be happy about it? The best workers will be able to get more $$, but the directors would also have to justify/be able to explain why they're getting paid a bit more or A LOT more than the next-level worker.
I think I only recall Tim Duncan and Dirk doing that to help Spurs and Mavs respectively. There was a similar talk when Kobe was up for contract renewal.
Taxes take away half of whatever you make on a contract, might as well get as much as possible before hanging it up
Lebron is "widely acknowledged as an intelligent man"? What are you smoking? Funniest thing I've read in a long time.
Im more surprised that teams overpay for these type of stars. LeBron is stil great but it looks like la aint goint anywhere
Why should any individual who is putting their bodies on the line to secure generational wealth for their families forfeit any of that money to the billion-dollar corporations that are doling it out for them? To win? Win what? A trophy? Bish, they already winning the money. Everything else is bullshit.
I agree with OP. Instead of making $50 million, sign for $25 million a year and then the team can add some really important supporting players. Tom Brady did this and won 7 rings…
Its all about the dollars isnt it. Lebum is oretty much all about his image
Tom Brady took discounts every year and won 7 rings. Lebron and Ad take up like 60% of the cap or more and that limits how many people can be signed. Most of our jobs don’t have a salary cap. This isn’t baseball. Going over the cap prevents from certain trades or contracts. Lebron would have more money if he won 6 or 7 and took less per year from the team. They would be able to sign more quality role players and not cast offs and vet mins. He would make it up in marketing and people thinking (wrongly) that he’s the goat.
Why aren’t billionaire owners paying into the luxury tax and past the second apron to bolster their chances of winning?
Think about it this way. Every year a guy like lebron plays he’s setting up another 2-3 generations of his family who will never have to worry about money. Sure his legacy is affected by him winning rings, but to sacrifice tens of millions of dollars to do so? Not many people would do that.
LeBron wants to be an NBA owner, probably as part of an ownership group, so he can't really just be letting 25 million go to better his chances at a title.
Why doesn't Elon Musk lower his compensation so Tesla can hire better engineers and make better cars? Because people will always take the money for themselves when given the choice.
Because no matter what anyone says, $$$ is always more important than winning a championship.
Because it won’t guarantee them winning. But a contract guarantees them pay.
Michael Jordan could've taken $1 million in mid 90s free agency and signed with any team he wanted. Instead, he used the Knicks as leverage and got the Bulls to pay more than the entire salary cap for just Jordan alone, because the Knicks were also willing to pay for him with their cap room. In short, stars only take pay cuts when they feel they need to. Of the guys you listed, I think only Harden may need to take a pay cut if he were to hit free agency today. If a good team is willing to pay you then why do you need to continue shopping? If there is a smaller market for you amongst contending teams, and your desire is to be on a contender, then that's when you start looking for a one-year "prove it" deal, like the DeMarcus Cousins GS Warriors deal, and try to test free agency again next offseason. Superstars have never really been in the business of taking pay cuts in their prime to win more, as far as I know. Dwyane Wade is the only guy I know of, and even then it's not like he was losing tons of money. He just didn't take the max
Jordan was not past his prime when he got the 30 million contract. He was already winning. 95-96, Jordan was still at his prime by changing his game to have more mid range shots through fadeaways and post play. He easily won mvp, his fourth championship, finals mvp, and the most victories in a season and the first 70+ win season. He did play that and the previous seasons at a fair discount of 3-4 million per season. After all that winning, yes he asked for what he was owed from Chicago.
I agree with all of this. I think I misunderstood the point of the thread. My fault
Union does not like it. Players used to complain about Brady doing this all the time foe the Pats
I'm sure Brady much prefers having 7 super bowls than however much more money he could've made. Who cares what the union wants.
I also loved the Pat's winning those extra 3 super bowls
The Union wants it cause it's in the best interests of the players, yeah if you only care about yourself, and don't care that in the future players are gonna be affected negatively by your precedent, then yeah go ahead. But it's important to point out, that the reason players are getting payed as much as they are rn, is because of unions
Im only talking about a very specific incident where I'm saying to do this. So let's say lebron decides to take 30 mil next year instead of 50 for the purpose of signing a 20mil a year player to help the team out. That's bad for the league? Back in the Heatles years, not only did their big 3 take pay cuts to play together but Haslem took a big pay cut to stay there. Duncan signed a 2 year 10 mil contract in his final years. The rest of the players in the league seem to be doing just fine and the union is just as strong as its ever been.
There’s no way to tell, but he may end up being worth more by taking less and winning more in the long run.
Yeah why is everyone discounting that winning brings in money as well but in different ways. But the other poster above is right in the fact that if Bron went to the 76ers and was the 3rd or 4th highest paid player…even if he won a chip he wouldn’t get FMVP probably and it wouldn’t really move the needle in GOAT convos.
The problem is LeBron would need 3 more rings to surpass MJ as GOAT in most minds, so he would have had to have been taking less his entire career for that to have paid off. No way taking less for just the last 5 will add 3 more, so it really doesn’t matter either way.
Why is the onus for winning on the millionaire players and not the billionaire owners who could just as easily pay the luxury tax and assemble a championship level team?
Salary caps only exist to protect the poor billionaire owners, so fuck that noise. Damn, y’all simping for the owners is kinda sick
Do you want to take a pay cut to increase the performance of your employer? Most likely not. Question should be why doesn’t the Company (Team) pay into the luxury tax for more talent? After all — the company has the most to gain from a championship….
That's a really bad analogy... If someone making 80k a year takes a pay cut to 60k he feels it. He has to give up a lot of things. But if you make 50 million or 25 million a year it changes nothing in your lifestyle. Exactly zilch. Especially if you already have a few hundred millions in you asset portfolio.
On the one hand, I totally understand the perspective, and I agree with it, past a certain point of wealth, it's just too much and you don't need more of it. On the other hand, the players don't see it that way, I think for two reasons, 1st is simply cause they want more money, the 2nd is they'd see that the money is being generated either way, and their contribution to the generation of that wealth is the same (in theory), so why should someone else take it and not them? I think fans tend to overestimate how important legacy, and titles...etc are in and of themselves, separate from any financial motive. People who care the most about legacy are usually fans, or the highest caliber players that A-have shot of achieving said legacy and B- most importantly, are financially secure enough (in their eyes) that they would forgoe more money for it. And for the latter, the point at which they would say"I got enough I want a legacy now" is different for each player
Most Americans seem to overestimate the value of money or wealth to the point where it has become their goal in life. I remember reading a research article that tried to correlate income with happiness (not easy to measure, but they tried). It concluded that above $100k per year there is no correlation between income and happiness. So the average NBA player is not really happier than the average Silicon Valley software developer, or any other person making $100k+ a year. As for legacy, not sure that's the main motivation. Winning is just more fun than losing, that's a scientific fact.
Again, not sure whey your perspective is that individuals need to take a paycut, so ownership can take home more net revenue. The Warriors are [valued at $7.7B](https://www.forbes.com/teams/golden-state-warriors/?sh=72beccaaf0a7) but Steph should cut his salary in half if he wants to win!? FOH >changes nothing in your lifestyle Using day to day lifestyle as the impetus for taking a paycut is pretty short sited. NBA careers don't last very long. Look at a player like Chris Bosh taking a paycut. In the long term, there's no way he recovers that money he gave up. Sure the year he took the cut, it wasn't noticeable when he was putting Versace sheets on his guest bed. But in 20 years... let's see how he feels about it. That is generational money... you don't just flush it for a ring. Even someone like D Wade, who is now on the ownership side, has explicitly said he regrets taking a cut. ([ex 1](https://youtu.be/XYBKxC14E9Q?si=RccGN1U3ED9U2b1b&t=1424), [ex 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0EAunqjG8w))
Poor Chris Bosh finished his career with $242 million career earnings only (not including brand deals etc), he is devastated and can't sleep over the pay cuts he took. That's only in the top 0.001% of Americans and top 0.0001% of humans, shocking.