NBA Salaries in Context
Shockingly enough, NBA officials are hoping to take advantage of the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement to pay the players less money:
For all the tough talk about raising the age limit to 20, eliminating 10.5 percent annual pay raises and lowering the maximum length of contracts, the real meat of the discussions is expected to be centered around the division of revenues and the percent the players are getting: 57, which is nearly 9 percentage points more than they were allocated when the salary cap was instituted in the 1980s.
What to make of that 57 percent? Well, to put it in context, consider the Kaiser Family Foundation’s report on the evolution of compensation in recent decades in the United States:
Total compensation as a share of GDP is denoted by the topmost line and is a fairly stable over the period, ranging from about 56 percent to 59 percent. Although wages are consistently the largest component of worker compensation, the shares paid to employees for health benefits and other fringe benefits/payroll taxes have increased as a share of GDP, while the amount paid as wages has fallen. Health benefit costs have increased from 0.6 percent of GDP in 1960 to 4.1 percent in 2006. Fringe benefits other than health care and payroll taxes have also increased over this period, ranging from 3.8 percent of GDP in 1960 to 6.7 percent in 2006.
In other words, a 57 percent share of revenue going to the players is pretty much in line with the historically determined rate of employee compensation as an overall share of the economy. Of course owners do have labor costs beyond the players (coaches, guys who sell pretzels, etc.). But the 57 percent in question here is a percent of “basketball-related income” which does not include the full range of income sources available to owners:
Basketball-related income includes most basketball revenue, but it excludes several important income sources. For instance, basketball-related income does not include naming rights (often several million dollars per year), licensing and sponsorship income (around $300 million per year), 60 percent of both arena signs and luxury box income, and parts of related-party income.
To make a long story short, NBA players earn a lot of money because (a) NBA franchises have a lot of revenue and (b) there aren’t very many NBA players (usually 12 players on a roster instead of 25 on a baseball team or hundreds of employees at a given Wal-Mart) so the money is concentrated in a few hands. But I don’t see any evidence that they’re earning an unusually large slice of the pie relative to any other industry.
53 Responses to “NBA Salaries in Context”
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July 13th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
“there aren’t very many NBA players (usually 12 players on a roster”
Ugh. The roster was expanded to a maximum of 15 several years ago, although some teams looking to control costs will carry only 13 or 14. I don’t think any team has carried only 12 since the rule changes.
Why does Matthew hate low-salaried journeymen?
July 13th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
We’ll see how strong the player’s union is when these contracts get underway. I don’t think they could hold a candle to the MLB union, so the players are probably going to get shafted. That’s unfortunate, because I think the NBA salary structure is a much better arranagment for the players with the profit sharing made pretty explicit. The players shouldn’t let it drop, though.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
That 57% to players allocates 0% to all other employees
of the team if you keep 57% of total revenues to employees.
Irrelevant national statistic applied (incorrectly)
to basketball franchises.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
I never minded high salaries for athletes or entertainers. There literally are just a handful of people world wide that can be competative with, say, the Williams sisters. And if people pay to see movies or shows they like, then so be it.
It’s the high pay of executives of some corporations or on-air newscasters that get me. There are probably millions of people who could read the news as well as Katie Couric. It wasn’t long ago when executive salaries were some low multiplier of the average salary of the company, so it doesn’t have to be that way. But now they are treated like peerage, in some perverse Ayn Rand adoration of wealth.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
“We’ll see how strong the player’s union is when these contracts get underway.”
The NBAPA has always been weak. They got the current good arrangement not out of strength, but instead because David Stern had some enlightened management ideas 25 years ago.
Given that revenues are declining, the next contract will not be pleasant one. The NBAPA’s task is not to get a pleasant contract, but instead to maintain player unity in the face of the upcoming unpleasant contract.
If I were head of the NBAPA, I’d be working to expand the definition of BRI while giving ground on everything else. An expanded definition of BRI will yield dividends for a long time, but it will be hard to sell to the players as the main objective in the face of the otherwise unappealing contract that will emerge.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Basketball-related income includes most basketball revenue, but it excludes several important income sources. For instance, basketball-related income does not include naming rights (often several million dollars per year), licensing and sponsorship income (around $300 million per year), 60 percent of both arena signs and luxury box income, and parts of related-party income.
It also excludes, on the players’ side, endorsement deals, appearance fees, etc. So I’m not sure why the comparison to compensation to the general public is applicable.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
5: It doesn’t help that the players personal financial management is so poor that many would go broke if they went on strike. I hear you on BRI, but they should probably be looking at ways they can strengthen the union as such. Maybe mandatory contributions to a strike fund (reimbursed upon retirement?) with a stronger union culture. That’s aside from negotiations, though.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I don’t think any team has carried only 12 since the rule changes.
The CBA generally requires at least 13 on a roster (12 active and at least one inactive).
July 13th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I’ll note that the last couple of contracts have been fascinating in that they were essentially redistributionist among labor.
They capped maximum salaries (for superstars) while taking multiple steps to increase salaries for lower paid players. The multiple steps:
1) Expanded rosters. Two to three more slots per team for marginal players to make much more than they could out of the league.
2) Introduction of the MLE, allowing average players to earn an average wage, where before, average players tended to earn below the league average.
3) Large increases in the veteran’s minimum, with the salary being picked up by the league, allowing journeymen to make a decent wage.
It’s notable that the most recent contract received only one ‘no’ vote, from Kobe Bryant, who was trying to stop the redistributionist aspects of the agreement. This is reason #57 to dislike Kobe Bean.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
You would expect the NBA to allocate a greater percentage of revenue to players than the national average for all industries, since – after all – the players represent virtually the entirety of the product. The auto industry, by way of contrast, has to pay its employees, *and* allocate a very large percentage of its revenues towards the materials required to actually make a car.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
9: These are the aspects of the NBA contract that I like in comparison to the MLB. It’s much easier to have a profitable 3-5 year run in the NBA than the MLB (at least as far as I can see). 10+ year veterans do well in either system, though.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
They capped maximum salaries (for superstars) while taking multiple steps to increase salaries for lower paid players.
I don’t know why you find this interesting. Clearly there are more lower-paid NBA players represented by the players union than (a) maximum salary superstars (who get screwed by the maximum salary scale) and (b) players who haven’t been drafted yet (who get screwed by the rookie salary scale).
July 13th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I’ve never had a problem with high athlete salaries. Whenever anyone bitches to me about how much they make, I ask them, “should the owners be getting that money instead?” because that’s the choice.
Now, if there were a way to put a surtax on athletes’ salaries – and owners’ revenue as well – with the money funding future arena/stadium construction so that the cities didn’t have to pick up the tab, I could go along with that.
I still resent D.C.’s being taken for such a ride by the Nats a few years ago, shelling out $800 million or some such to build the Lerners a ballpark. D.C. was the last prime location available for a new baseball team: if the Nats didn’t stay in D.C., their choices were cities like Portland, Las Vegas, and Jacksonville. Here we were with one of the few situations where the city could have had the upper hand in negotiations, and it played it as if they had no leverage at all.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
But I don’t see any evidence that they’re earning an unusually large slice of the pie relative to any other industry.
By the way, this is a nice conclusion. Espcially given that nobody at all is arguing that NBA players earn an unusually large slice of the pie relative to any other industry.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
“I don’t know why you find this interesting. Clearly there are more lower-paid NBA players represented by the players union than (a) maximum salary superstars (who get screwed by the maximum salary scale) and (b) players who haven’t been drafted yet (who get screwed by the rookie salary scale).”
Because my strong impression is that most unions of highly paid professionals (aka sports and entertainment) tend to better represent the interests of superstars than they do the interests of the median members.
Most sports and entertainment unions have seen a demise of their ‘middle-class’ at the same time that the NBA players have seen a great strengthening of their ‘middle-class’.
(FWIW, if I had to guess why this was so, I’d guess it has less to do with the strength or smarts of the NBAPA than with the enlightenment of David Stern.)
Also, it’s worth noting the disastrous NBA strike was all about protecting the interests of the superstars, not the interests of the median members. That’s my impression of how unions tend to normally work in these industries.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
The NBA is dead to me since they took the Sonics away. Also I never had much interest in players’ salary fights (the fact that maybe the most visible unions in the US are those defending the salaries of a handful of multi-bajillionaires always struck me as an only-in-America quirk of the labor movement).
That said, this is a concern for me in that I love the NFL and this exact issue looks like it could derail things there and cause an extended work stoppage. The big labor justice issue in the NFL seems to be retired players haunted by old injuries; everything else comes down to a bunch of rich people deciding how to divide up a very big pie in ways that, no matter what happens, will leave everyone still rich. Hopefully both leagues have owners and players who can see the forest for the trees.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
16: Actually, the NFL is quite a different beast. In a 10 year stretch there are maybe 1000 players who make a decent living out of an NFL career. Then there are another 10000 who make a substantial contribution to the success of the league but never get more than a couple years at minimum wage. Its a decent sum of money, but 300K for your life’s work is not very much. After that it’s 20K for an assistant coaches job somewhere. Could the league function differently? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that whatever the result of negotiations, those guys will continue to get screwed.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
A business dispute which pits a very wealthy group against an extraordinarily wealthy group holds no interest for me, although I agree with the poster above who noted that the players may be in a weakened position due to a non trivial percentage of the group being bad at managing their affairs. I will alsao note that the NBA union appears to have done a much better job at representing the rank and file than the NFL union which at times seems to represent the superstar player much better than it does the typical NFL player with a short career. Also, the extent to which these guys are fighting over revenues supplied by taxpayers is obnoxious.
As a basketball fan, the worst thing about the NBA management/labor relationship is that it produces the worst of all worlds; a fairly hard salary cap and contracts which tend to be fully guaranteed. This really reduces roster flexibility, which definitely harms the product.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Pro athletes are my favorite millionaires (or hundred thousandaires or whatever). The overwhelming majority has middle class or lower beginnings and then get filthy stinkin’ rich. It’s the American Dream that’s so often cited, yet very, very rarely happens.
And then the owners need public money to finance their stadiums and arenas or else they rip the fans’ heart out like that guy in Temple of Doom by moving the franchise to some city that will raise taxes on whoever hasn’t flown to their suburbs.
I live in Cleveland. Art Modell is Lucifer. Fuck the owners FTW.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
“A business dispute which pits a very wealthy group against an extraordinarily wealthy group holds no interest for me”
Why on earth would you spend time composing remarks on a topic that holds no interest for you?
July 13th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Shockingly enough, NBA officials are hoping to take advantage of the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement to pay the players less money:
=============================================================
Why would this be so shocking when half the teams in the NBA don’t make a profit?
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/basketball/nba/2008-10-23-notes_N.htm
July 13th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
17–True about how most NFL players don’t last long and don’t get a lot of money, but is that any different from the NBA or other sports? (Actually it probably is because the NFL is so violent and dangerous, so you get a lot more knee blowouts and concussions and so forth that can end a career.) But you still have a lot of guys in the NBA who try to come on board but don’t last longer than a year or two, or who bounce between the NBA and the D-league, European leagues, etc. Same thing with baseball; most of the guys in the minors aren’t ever going to get more than a very brief taste of the big time.
Also, I don’t necessarily feel bad for someone who gets out of college and lasts three years in the NFL. Plenty of people get out of college with a major and then realize after a couple years that they can’t do it/don’t like doing it. So then you cast around for a new career, walk the earth, go back to grad school, start a band, or however else you decide to resolve the mid-20s drift that happens to a lot of people. I graduated from school with an urban planning degree and quickly realized that I absolutely loathe urban planning work; not quite the same as going from school to the NFL and then blowing my knee out, but the end result was the same in that I was out of what I thought would be my profession after a very brief period. So I found something else to do with my time and turned out all right. If I had been able to get paid $300K by the urban planners while I was there I wouldn’t have anything to complain about.
What does need to be adressed better is the situation where a guy gets hurt playing football and then spends the rest of his days limping around in constant pain with huge medical bills, or suffering from early-onset Alzheimers due to old concussions, with no support from the league. That’s inexcusable. (The NFLPA, and the owners, should be 100% behind Obamacare for these reasons.)
It also sucks for guys to be out of the league at a young age in that they have been treated like kings throughout high school and college, and thus were never asked to do their homework or learn anything or socialize like normal humans. They can’t play football any more but outside of football they are about as socially adept as Michael Jackson or Mike Tyson. But that’s not the league’s fault; that has more to do with their football coaches and guidance counselors back in school.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Should read “little support from the league” because they have made progress on it, but there are still some pretty awful situations where the support guys get is totally inadequate compared to what they need.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Petey, I apologize for being insufficiently clear for you. Who prevails in this dispute holds no interest for me, since presumably any eventual agreement will maintain those aspects, like a relatively hard salary cap, which most inhibits roster flexibility. The relationship is of interest to me because it affects a game I sometimes enjoy watching.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
“True about how most NFL players don’t last long and don’t get a lot of money, but is that any different from the NBA”
Yes. Very much so.
—–
“What does need to be adressed better is the situation where a guy gets hurt playing football and then spends the rest of his days limping around in constant pain with huge medical bills, or suffering from early-onset Alzheimers due to old concussions”
I won’t watch football for the same reason I won’t watch boxing.
Supporting such enterprises makes you morally culpable for what the performers end up suffering.
If you need violent entertainment, I suggest you start watching pro wrestling or horror movies, where the performers are fictionalizing the bodily destruction.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Petey, I suggest you refrain from being a moralistic ass. Perhaps you should examine the number of consumerist behaviors you engage in which are made possible for you by suffering inflicted unto other human beings, human beings who often have less choice in the matter than the typical NFL player.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
“Who prevails in this dispute holds no interest for me, since presumably any eventual agreement will maintain those aspects, like a relatively hard salary cap, which most inhibits roster flexibility.”
Well…
1) The NBA actually has a very soft salary cap. Almost every team in the league goes over the salary cap, several by tens of millions of dollars. And the measures taken to strengthen the NBA’s ‘middle-class’ consist of contracts that are not subject to the cap.
2) Given your concern about roster flexibility for owners, you obviously do have a dog in the fight which consists of a business dispute which pits a very wealthy group against an extraordinarily wealthy group. You seem to have a strong preference for a more NFL-like system where the owners have more power to dictate terms and the players have fewer rights and protections.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
“Perhaps you should examine the number of consumerist behaviors you engage in which are made possible for you by suffering inflicted unto other human beings.”
Frankly, I don’t think there is anything inconsistent with simultaneously consuming electricity and being opposed to children working in coal mines.
I don’t see why folks with a political consciousness should support making professional sport out of boxing or football, given what we now know about the consequences for those professionals.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
It only seems to you that I have this preference, Petey, because you are ignorant. I actually tend to think that the baseball system, while flawed, may now be best for fans, in that the revenue sharing gives a decent chance for teams with relatively lower revenues to compete, while not having a salary cap means that rosters can be changed if the owner is willing to sign the checks.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
The post and comments are ignoring the large fact that capital for NBA teams in the form of stadiums and such are provided freely or very cheaply to NBA teams. Capital costs really are incredibly low to owners. Given that salaries should be a much higher percent of revenue than in other businesses.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I’ll note that the last couple of contracts have been fascinating in that they were essentially redistributionist among labor.
I see the argument that you’re making, but I wonder whether it played out that way. IIRC, one of the agents at the time argued that the CBA would squeeze people in the middle, so that you got teams top-heavy with stars and filled in with fillers. I don’t know if that’s how it played out, but it isn’t hard for me to believe that the agreement primarily distributed money from the best players to the very good players. And I don’t know how to take into account the rookie salary structure, which, as I recall, did the most work in rejiggering the structure of payroll.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
This is reason #57 to dislike Kobe Bean.
Please list the previous 56.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Petey, it’s interesting that your political conciousness doesn’t prevent you from consuming those things which you really like to have, despite the fact that the consumption involves the infliction of suffering unto people who have less choice in the matter than NFL players. Here’a clue; the fact that you like consuming oil more than consuming NFL games is not a ethical matter. You are like the person who claims veganism is a ethical choice, because inflicting suffering unto animals purely for one’s sensual or aesthetic pleasure is wrong, while sitting on a couch from Ikea, sipping a Starbucks, in a 1500 (or larger) square foot home.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
“I actually tend to think that the baseball system, while flawed, may now be best for fans, in that the revenue sharing gives a decent chance for teams with relatively lower revenues to compete, while not having a salary cap means that rosters can be changed if the owner is willing to sign the checks.”
I’d suggest that the NBA system is actually better for fans. Not only does it permit a small-market team like the Spurs with a shallow pocketed ownership to build a dynasty, but by de-incentivizing superstar movement, it allows fans to grow more attached to stars.
The MLB system is better for superstar players. The NBA system is better for median players, better for owners, and better for fans.
You seem profoundly nescient about how the NBA system actually works, which might be impeding your analysis.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
“Petey, it’s interesting that your political conciousness doesn’t prevent you from consuming those things which you really like”
I really liked boxing before I made a conscious decision to stop watching it because of the human cruelty involved. It’s a very pure sport, and were there not the health concerns for the participants, I’d still watch it.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
No, Petey, you just think there is value in deincentivizing superstar movement. I don’t. It may be true that I am an atypical sports fan, in that I don’t pretend to know what these people are like as human beings, and thus don’t grow especially attached to them, or detached from them, and I don’t root for laundry. I like good competition, and I see little reason to think that deincentivizing superstar movement promotes better competition.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Yeah, like I said Petey, the fact that you like oil better than boxing is not a ethical concern.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
If you need violent entertainment, I suggest you start watching pro wrestling or horror movies, where the performers are fictionalizing the bodily destruction.
You’ve got to be kidding me. Pre-determined outcomes notwithstanding, pro wrestling is far worse for the athletes’ long-term health than football and probably boxing too.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
“it isn’t hard for me to believe that the agreement primarily distributed money from the best players to the very good players.”
I’d offer up a player like Craig Hodges, who was a solid role player able to contribute to a title winner, as an example of how the ‘middle class’ fares better in the current era.
Hodges’ career earnings from an era before the CBA was changed to help the ‘middle class’ players totaled $3m. Today, a role player like Hodges would likely earn in the neighborhood of $50m.
Now, a lot of that increase is due to the increase in league revenues in the current era, but a good chunk of it is from things like the MLE and subsidized veteran minimums that steal from the rich to give to the middle-class. Hell, an almost worthless journeyman like Greg Buckner will have career earnings of $20m under the current system.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Rob Says:
July 13th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
The post and comments are ignoring the large fact that capital for NBA teams in the form of stadiums and such are provided freely or very cheaply to NBA teams. Capital costs really are incredibly low to owners. Given that salaries should be a much higher percent of revenue than in other businesses.
============================================================
Capital costs for the owners are incredibly low only if you ignore the fact that it costs several hundred million dollars to buy a franchise
July 13th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
They capped maximum salaries (for superstars) while taking multiple steps to increase salaries for lower paid players.
In addition to the steps you outline, the very fact that a maximum salary exists makes it far easier for a team with a superstar to build a great team around him. Without it, Kobe Bryant would be making $30M+ per season and the Lakers would have no cap room to pay a Pau Gasol or Lamar Odom. Kevin Garnett’s contract would have been too massive for the Celtics to absorb, especially since Paul Pierce’s contract would have been larger.
I believe this is good for the league in aggregate, as it creates a natural hierarchy of good-to-great teams built around superstars, which generate fan interest and income, instead of a bunch of mediocre teams that are either superstars with no supporting cast or a bunch of mediocre journeymen and role players patched together with an eye on the budget.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Pre-determined outcomes notwithstanding, pro wrestling is far worse for the athletes’ long-term health than football and probably boxing too.”
I have zero knowledge of the life of pro wrestlers, so if this is true, I stand corrected. I should have restricted my example to horror movies.
—–
“…the fact that you like oil better than boxing…”
Oil is not sport.
Societies get to make relatively pain-free choices about which sports we choose to support.
Just as it was pain-free to decide dog-fighting should be outlawed, it’s pain-free to decide things like boxing and football don’t deserve the support of civilized society, given the harm to the participants in the name of sport.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
There is nothing “natural” about this hierarchy, and it mostly just makes profits more predictable by making costs more predictable. One of the less desirable aspects of the NBA is that unless one gets lucky in the lottery, or gets lucky in finding a trade partner who is willing to do something really dumb, like trading Kobe Bryant for Vlade Divac, it is really, really difficult to win a title. Now, a good chunk of this is unavoidable, since there are only 10 players competing at a time, so an elite superstar is going to dominate more than in other team sports. Inhibiting superstar movement, however, narrows the distribution of championships.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
“Inhibiting superstar movement, however, narrows the distribution of championships.”
Parity is a false idol.
A sense of fairness is far more important a goal in sport. The fact that small-market San Antonio gets to keep Tim Duncan after winning him via a lottery is a good thing. Add in the fact that Duncan also had the labor freedom to ply his trade elsewhere if he had so desired, and you’ve got something close to a Panglossian system.
It’s no accident that the NBA title trophy is named after a former head of the Democratic National Committee. A well designed social democracy benefits pretty much everyone.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Petey, unless you are living like latter-stage Ghandi, a good chunnk of the oil you consume involves the infliction of a huge amount of suffering unto people who have no choice in the matter, for no other reason than to keep you in extreme comfort. The fact that you define one aspect of choice in consumerist behavior, spectator sports, as being “pain-free”, while you pretend that you don’t have a pain free choice in the countless other ways you choose to provide yourself aesthetic or sensual pleasure, and thus participate in relationships which inflicts suffering unto others, is not a ethical matter, if ethics are to be taken seriously.
Mind you, I’m not claiming to have any answers here to these moral conflicts. Then again, I’m not presuming to “suggest” what consumerist behaviors need to avoid in order to be ethical, or to have a political conciousness.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
“a good chunnk of the oil you consume involves the infliction of a huge amount of suffering”
Again, oil is not sport.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Petey, the fact that you think something so nebulous as a “sense of fairness” is something that can be meaningfully defined pretty much says it all. Lemme guess; the outcomes you like are proof of fairness.
The fact that you would tie this debate to the mindless bitribalism which dominates our political culture is sadly predictable.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Again, Petey, sport is not the only aspect of consumerism for sensual or aesthetic pleasure which you participate in which involves the infliction of suffering unto human beings.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
I’d offer up a player like Craig Hodges, who was a solid role player able to contribute to a title winner, as an example of how the ‘middle class’ fares better in the current era.
I don’t know about that. We’d have to come up with a working definition of “average player.” Avg. PER, as I recall, is set to 15, and Hodges seems to be a 12.
Really, we’d have to define a lot of terms at the start, which I’m unwilling to even think about at the moment.
July 13th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
“I don’t know about that. We’d have to come up with a working definition of “average player.” Avg. PER, as I recall, is set to 15, and Hodges seems to be a 12.”
Hodges led the league in 3pt shooting several years, a talent which is generally well compensated among role players. To move it to the current era, Kyle Korver will likely bank over $40m.
For another current example, look at Luke Walton, another role player with a career PER of 12.
Walton has already banked $25m, and should end up with $35m for his career. That’s an example of how the redistributionist effects of the current CBA help the ‘middle-class’ of NBA players.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
For another current example, look at Luke Walton, another role player with a career PER of 12.
Lots of people think that’s a bad contract. Including, I suspect, the Lakers. I say that as someone who loves Walton.
July 13th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
“Lots of people think that’s a bad contract. Including, I suspect, the Lakers.”
Sure. I only brought up Walton because I know you follow the purple and gold.
Kyle Korver is a better example, since he’s such a good analog for Craig Hodges.
Just like Hodges, he’s an elite 3pt shooter who doesn’t bring anything else, but could stay on the court for 20mpg with a title contender. Korver should easily clear $40m for his career, while Hodges made far less of of the available pie back in his day.
The current system is the triumph of the middle-class of the labor force. It steals from the Kobes of the world to give earnings to players like Korver, not to mention the guys at the far end of the bench. Soak the rich, and everybody is happy, including the rich.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Leaving aside pro sports for the moment, the trends in that chart aqre interesting. A slow decline in income to labor in the Eighties and early Nineties, a pronounced uptick in the mid and late Nineties and then a pronounced decline in the last eight or nine years. The amount going to labor is probablv 3-31/2% less than ten years ago and in a 14 trillion dollar-a-year economy that’s about $400 billion a year more going to capital.