NBA salary distributions
NBA salary distributions
Who's paying how much? Do similar players get paid the same amount? And more!
Every year, the NBA’s offseason transaction period brings sticker shock. “How much did [Player X] get??”
But for all the discourse around NBA player salaries, I didn’t have a great sense of the distribution of payments across the league, so I decided to slice and dice a bit.
Let’s start by looking at where teams stand. This won’t be a comprehensive overview of the CBA and all its rules and restrictions, but it will hopefully give you a glimpse at the current state of league spending.
NBA Team Salary Distribution
First, let’s establish the lay of the land, salary-cap-wise. There are five essential thresholds you should be aware of: the salary floor, the salary cap, the tax threshold, the first apron, and the second apron. From the cap onwards, crossing each landmark makes roster-building more complex and more expensive.
Annoyingly, some loopholes and tricks can cause player salaries to differ between tax purposes and apron purposes, but here’s my best stab at showing where those thresholds lie and where your team falls on that spectrum (data from Spotrac and Hoops Rumors as of 9/9/24).
I apologize in advance; for someone who used to make PowerPoint decks for a living, I am embarrassed I couldn’t find a better way to display this.
In summary, four teams are above the second apron, meaning they can’t do anything roster-wise except sign their own free agents and draft picks, sign minimum contracts, and trade out more salary than they receive (and they can’t aggregate salaries). These teams are screaming about torpedoes and full speeds: they’re all in.
Five other teams are above the first apron, which has slightly fewer restrictions, and five more are in the tax but below the first apron, with fewer restrictions still. These teams generally at least fancy themselves contenders (or close to it), but want a little wiggle room to make further moves. Or they’re the Nuggets and are too cheap to stay in the second apron despite a three-time MVP in his prime. Note that some teams can be hard-capped at the first apron; like I said, it’s very confusing.
That leaves 16 teams that aren’t paying the tax and can do nearly whatever they want to improve their roster (if they choose). Remember, teams that don’t pay the luxury tax also receive a disbursement from the tax-paying teams; last year, it was around $12 million. There’s a double financial incentive for non-contending teams not to pay the tax because they both save money nominally and get this not-insignificant distribution from the tax pool.
Only one squad, the Detroit Pistons, is below the salary cap. Nobody is below the salary floor; teams below the floor do not get the tax distribution we just talked about, so why bother?
Ok, so that’s the salary cap situation. But what are players getting paid?