How much do overseas pro basketball players make

How Much Do Overseas Basketball Players Make?

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When it comes to a basketball league, we think of the NBA. This professional basketball tournament attracts the attention of spectators around the world thanks to its sublime matches.

It is every player’s dream to be here. Part of the reason is thanks to the salary and benefits for NBA players. However, overseas basketball leagues are also gradually proving their potential and more and more players are joining here.

How much do overseas basketball players make? Overseas basketball players can receive an average wage from zero to $4 million a year. 

There are many factors that affect the salary and amount an overseas basketball player can receive. If you still want to learn more, continue reading this article by Scott Fujita.

Overseas basketball salaries 

Contents

While the number of players specified for NBA teams is limited, playing basketball overseas is optimal for players to find opportunities for themselves. Each country has its own rules and ways of paying its professional basketball players.

Many countries in Europe pay average salaries between $60k and $500k per season for a player playing in the top tier. Some Asian countries like Korea or Japan are also willing to pay a similar amount from $120k to $400k a season.

View more: How much do NBA players make

China has the most generous payouts, ranging from $1 million to $3 million a season. The rest of the world pays more modest salaries, ranging from $2k to $20k.

Remember, these numbers are only valid when you enter a top professional basketball division.

Through our research, we have identified two main factors that influence the payment ability of players in overseas basketball leagues. These include:

• The economic potential of the country.
• The growth and popularity of basketball for that country.

To learn more about salaries at most overseas basketball leagues, check out this video.

The good news for those who want to play basketball professionally overseas is that you won’t need to pay taxes on your earnings. It is the most apparent difference between the contract of an NBA player and an overseas player.

The basketball player’s team is the unit responsible for paying tax on that individual’s income. The salary you see on the contract is roughly what you can expect. Meanwhile, NBA players often have to spend half of their salary to pay related expenses and taxes.

The salary of a professional basketball player in different leagues will fluctuate significantly. Not only that, but the leagues also present an income gap between the average player and the highest-paid player. To learn more about league-specific salaries, follow the next section.

Chinese Basketball Association 

The 2020-21 season marks the agreement on a new salary cap by the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). Basketball clubs at CBA can pay between 20-40 million yuan ($3-6.72 million) for Chinese players born in the country. Each team can have up to four foreign players and limit their salaries to no more than $7 million.

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Salary ranges are marked from A to E, with D being the maximum salary. Usually, overseas players will receive compensation of between 1 and 3 million dollars per year.

The season at the CBA also has a shorter playing time of just six months. Compared to the marathon race that lasts from 8 to 9 months in the European seasons, the competition conditions are good.

All of the above reasons have made CBA, apart from the NBA, one of the world’s most attractive overseas basketball leagues.

EuroLeague 

The EuroLeague is the dream destination of any professional basketball player overseas thanks to its premium remuneration. The average European basketball salaries are pretty impressive, ranging from $500k – $800k per season. The best players can achieve a max salary of up to 4 million dollars per season.

FC Barcelona’s Nikola Mirotic leads the list of the highest-paid basketball players at the EuroLeague, receiving $4 million per year. Following him is Shane Larkin of Anadolu Efes, with $3.7 million per year.

Related: How much do NBA refs make

The sponsor for this sports tournament is Turkish Airlines EuroLeague. The tournament features 16 teams. They include Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, ​​Bayern Munich, Anadolu Efes, Olympiacos, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Valencia Basket, Baskonia, Zalgiris, Zenit Saint Petersburg, among others.

The EuroLeague schedule starts in October and ends in May every year.

Liga ACB 

Liga ACB is the premier professional basketball division of the Spanish basketball league system. It consists of 18 teams. The most prestigious tournament teams such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, ​​or Kirolbet Baskonia also compete in the EuroLeague. They are also the teams that pay the best for basketball players.

The average salary that a basketball player can receive at ACB is from $250k to $500k per season. The highest-paid European basketball players are Walter Tavares and Sergio Llull. Each pocketed more than $2 million per season.

Many ACB teams have one or more NBA players on their roster.

Basketball Super League

Turkey’s top professional men’s basketball league is the Turkish Basketball Super League (BSL). Top BSL contenders such as Fenerbahçe Beko and Anadolu Efes also competed in the EuroLeague.

Each BSL team can recruit up to eight overseas basketball players and use up to six players per match.

Salaries for foreign, non-Turkish players at BSL are typically between $250k and $450k per season. The highest-paid player is Anadolu Efes’ Shane Larkin, with a $2.6 million salary excluding taxes.

VTB United 

The VTB United is the leading national basketball league in Russia. They offer an excellent average salary between $200k and $450k per year. Depending on the player’s status, an overseas basketball player’s maximum pay is $4 million.

In fact, Europe’s highest-paid stars now mostly come from Russia. Alexey Shved, Nikola Milutinov, and Mike James all make $2.5 million per season.

It is worth noting that Alexey Shved played in the NBA for three years before returning to Russia. Brooklyn Nets currently hire Mike James as a free agent.

Given their stature and fame, we can easily see why the average Euro basketball salaries are so high.

Basketball Bundesliga 

The German Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) is another foreign league that pays players well. They have 18 teams with budgets as low as $10 million. Bayern Munich is the team with the most significant budget, $25 million.

Playing overseas at BBL will bring in an average salary of $100K to $350K per season. NBA first-round superstars like Greg Monroe can pocket around $1 million per season.

Lega Basket Serie A 

Basketball, surprisingly, is quite a popular sport in Italy. The Lega Basket Serie A (Serie A) is the biggest tournament with the participation of 17 teams. Each team offers an average salary ranging from $180K to $350K per year for an overseas basketball player.

For players with superstar status, he will be offered a higher salary. The highest-paid basketball player in Serie A is Sergio Rodriguez. He gets $2 million a year, the highest salary in the league.

LNB Pro A 

Founded in 1921 with 18 teams, the LNB Pro A is still France’s most prestigious basketball tournament today. The defending champion ASVEL is also the most successful team in the game.

An overseas basketball player can earn an average salary at LNB between $80k and $200k per season. A.J Slaughter of ASVEL was the highest-paid basketball player of the 2019-20 season with $300k.

Many successful NBA players, such as Ian Mahinmi and Tony Parker, have emerged from the club over the past 15 seasons. This league is considered one of the financially safe places to play professional basketball abroad.

With an average NBA salary of $6.2 million per year, the NBA league is a mecca for professional basketball players. However, they can still find attractive opportunities at overseas teams as basketball becomes more and more popular. When receiving an attractive salary, they are also subject to many expectations and pressure from the team and the fans.

Whether you want to become the highest-paid NBA player or an overseas player, the prerequisite is that you have a stable form and continuous learning.

Thank you for reading!

Scott Fujita

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How much do NBA stars earn? Salary rating-2019 - Blogg on the floor - Blogs

We count other people's millions.

Many people know that the NBA has a salary cap. It is set at $109.14 million for the 2019/20 season.

But not everyone knows that the salary cap is directly tied to the league's income. And with it - the salaries of all players. Basketball players make millions of dollars because the NBA makes billions of dollars.

8.2 billion, to be exact - that's how much the NBA expects to receive in the coming season in the form of "Basketball-related income" (BRI, basketball-related income). This BRI includes only $400-500 million converted from yuan, so don't worry: even a complete break in relations with China won't take more than five or six percent off the BRI.

Under the 2017 Collective Agreement between the league and the players union, 50%* of BRI goes to players in the form of salaries.

* - actually not, but in order not to load the text with nuances, I will explain them in the comments.

There are 510 jobs in the league - each of the 30 teams can apply for 17 people.

51 NBA players - exactly 10% - will receive at least $20 million next season **.

** - and again I suggest going to the comments for those who want abstruseness.

The “Gini coefficient” and other indicators of financial inequality in the NBA as in a single economy look better than the global ones: if in the real world the richest 10% own 75-85% of all wealth (in the USA - 70-75% according to various estimates ), then in the NBA, the top 10% earn only 35% of all salaries.

But even this 35% is more than one and a half billion dollars. Or, in other words, 1,655 NBA rookie minimum contracts.

Let's look at how this one and a half billion is distributed. For a round number, we will limit ourselves to the top 50 earning more than 20 million; The 51st player in the ranking with a salary of exactly 20 million is Indiana guard Malcolm Brogdon. If you go to the basketball section less than once a week, then most likely you don’t even know who it is. And he earns more than Aguero, James, Neuer or any Serie A player except Cristiano.

Who is not in this part of the rating? For example, Philadelphia's rising star Ben Simmons, who signed a five-year, $170 million contract this summer that won't take effect until a year later, is now playing on a "modest" $8 million rookie salary.

For the same reason, Utah leader Donovan Mitchell, Dallas' delightful Luka Doncic, or intimidating rookie Zion Williamson are not yet on the NBA's Most Valuable Players list. All of them still earn a fixed salary (depending on the number under which the player was taken in the draft), for which they need to play 4 seasons before claiming a luxurious life.

Who is in this part of the rating? Giannis. The current NBA MVP - and the future, according to some forecasts, too.

Greek-Frick did not make the top 40 for a number of reasons, the main of which is that the NBA does not revise existing contracts (with some exceptions that are so rare that they do not even deserve an asterisk and a footnote in the commentary). Antetokounmpo signed his contract back in 2016, by that time the Greek had never played in the All-Star Game, averaging 17 points and playing as the main point guard of the very weak Bucks (49losses in a season).

And Giannis, not so long ago a beggar teenager who sold souvenirs on the streets of Athens and ran in patched sneakers, was so grateful that Milwaukee believed in him that he did not insist on either a maximum contract or even a player option in the last year contract. He was told that he would receive $100 million, and he was stunned by this amount - and it does not matter that at the same time as him, Stephen Adams also signed for exactly the same contract, whom Oklahoma renewed only in a panic from losing Durant.

All in all, Antetokounmpo did great humanly but naively economically three years ago: Giannis has already lost $33 million by waiving his maximum wage and has also pushed back his possible free agency entry from 2020 to 2021.

That's why next year he will be so low in the rankings again. But then - hello to the biggest contract in the history of the NBA.

There are now only 32 people in the NBA with maximum contracts of (this number does not include DeRozan, whose salary was maximum only in the first two years of the contract, Horford and Love, who played at maximum levels a year ago, Vucevic, and Millsap and Middleton from the next group).

At the same time, almost everyone has different salaries.

How did it happen?

To answer this question, needs to understand how maximum contracts are formed .

Maximum contracts come in three levels depending on the player's experience:

• up to 6 league seasons - 25% of ceiling;
• 7-9 seasons - 30%;
• and more 10 - 35%

A player can jump up one category by becoming MVP, NBA Defensive Player of the Year or making the All-Star Team of the Season. At the same time, all these 25, 30 and 35% form only the salary in the first season. For example, now 25% of the ceiling is the salary of Russell, Porzingis, Booker, Townes. The first two signed a contract this summer, and the last two lasted a year ago, just their agreements implied entry into force in 2019-m.

And then everything changes: Russell, who signed a contract with a new team, Golden State after Brooklyn, will have an annual increase of 5%. Towns, who lasted with Minnesota, has 8%. And next year their salaries will be different.

Other players signed maximum wages in other years when there was a different salary cap. Anthony Davis received 25% of the ceiling in 2016 (he could have received 30%, but he got injured in the key season 15/16 and did not make the team of the season). Then, when he moved to the Lakers, he voluntarily forfeited a trading bonus so the Los Angelesers could sign a third star this summer.

Voiceover: They couldn't.

So it turned out that Davis and three other maximum speeds in 2016 are not included in the top 30, since they are slightly behind the maximum contracts concluded later, in 2017-2019 - the growth rate of the ceiling and, consequently, the new maximum speeds were higher than the increase in their contracts .

Six people signed a new contract this year with a starting salary of 30% of the ceiling. And they are all different:

The strangest one is with Kyrie Irving: 1 million allocated to 8 bonuses, for which he needs to play in 70 games, hit 88.5% of free throws in a season, lose the ball no more than 2.4 times per game and so on. He did not achieve all this a year ago, and bonuses are not yet taken into account in his salary.

Tobias Harris will receive the maximum in the first year of his contract only, and will receive a total of 10 million less in the remaining seasons.

Clay Thompson signed up for 5 years.

Kemba Walker and Jimmy Butler - for 4 years, the only difference is a possible trading bonus in Kemba's contract.

Kawhi signed up for 3. And the third year is a player option, so he should be a free agent again in 2021.

Yes, it's strange to see Kawhi Leonard outside the top 10 - but he chose this path himself (as the last NBA finals showed - he did the right thing). If the forward did not change teams, but remained in San Antonio, then this season his salary would be the same as that of Harden or Durant. But he has a different financial mechanism turned on: better conditions for winning the championship + a large market for new advertising contracts = the opportunity to get much more than the extra 5-6 million a year in the club salary.

Did you really think there was no calculator built into Kawhi's operating system?

P.S. Interestingly, in the top 20 - only Americans, this has not happened since the implementation of the salary cap in 1984! A new generation of super-foreigners, constrained by the financial rules of the NBA, has not yet reached the old American star guard.

King James always wants to be at the top of the list. But he was the most expensive NBA player only once : in the 2016/17 season. Before that, the Miami discount to team up with Wade and Bosch, the move back to Cleveland on a one-year contract, the technical impossibility of reaching Kobe's maximum salary. And then Curry, who has been playing in one club all his career, took the lead - after all, the NBA salary rules reward those stars who do not change clubs: they get a slightly higher maximum salary, a little longer, a little earlier.

But LeBron was always pissed off about the concept of a maximum salary. Why should workers be capped by some sort of salary cap? Why can't he earn in the NBA as much as she earns on him? According to various statistical metrics, the benefit of LeBron in his peak years should have been paid by a contract of 70-80 million a year 2003, with a completely different salary cap.

Even now, LeBron James's salary would be much more than 37.4 million if there were no artificial restrictions in the NBA. Reference point? Let's take Cristiano Ronaldo. Similar age, status, achievements, popularity, the situation with the transition to another club, even advertising contracts they have about the same level of income. Ronaldo earns about 64 million a year from Juventus before taxes; LeBron, it turns out, almost half as much.

Nevertheless, LeBron will still be the first - in terms of total career earnings . In the upcoming season, he (307 million) will overtake Shaquille (286 million) and will be second only to Kobe Bryant (323 million) and Kevin Garnett (334 million), whom he will overtake in 2021. LeBron will earn almost $400 million in the NBA by the end of his career - and even more from advertising contracts. The dream of becoming a billionaire is getting closer.

Fans often demand strict logic in issuing maximum contracts. That they should only be given to MVPs or champions, that clubs shouldn't give big contracts to non-All-Star players, that only five/two/ten people/one LeBron/all 510 NBA players are eligible for the top salary.

Actually there is no logic.

The maximum contract, even the largest possible one (35% of the ceiling), can be obtained for real services to the club, like Harden - and still there will be people who consider his salary too high.

You can - for previous achievements. Kevin Durant will make over $38 million in a season without a game for Brooklyn due to a Achilles tear, but the Nets believe he can return to his former superstar level and add championship experience to the team.

Or you can - for vague promises to become a top player in the NBA, as was the case with John Wall. He sparkled in the second half of the 2016/17 season and made it to the NBA's third All-Star Five, which qualified him for a Supermax contract extension. And "Washington" then gave him this 170 million extension for 4 years, which is effective now.

Since signing, Wall has never played more than 50% of his season and, like Durant, will miss the 2019 season/20 whole. But in 2017, he was a rising star, soon to be the best defenseman in the conference, and was priced into a super max contract...

Or just the Washingtons. A team that hasn't played in an Eastern final for 40 years.

Westbrook and Paul are united not only by the fact that they were traded for each other in July, but also that since 2018 they have an identical salary. They were extended through different mechanisms, but came to the same numbers (although Westbrook has a contract for a year longer).

Why are their salaries higher than the Durant-Harden Wall trio? Again, remember that the maximum salary depends on the ceiling, which grows unevenly . The annual salary increase is 8%, while the salary cap has increased by only 7.14% in the last year.

Contracts in the NBA, as already mentioned, are not reviewed - neither as a result of negotiations between the parties, nor by any automatic rules, so in a year Westbrook and Paul are entitled to 41 million, in two - 44 million each. And this figure will not change, even if all countries, including the United States, follow the example of China, turn their backs on the NBA, and the salary cap falls from 109million dollars to 109 million cents.

Next year, Durant, Harden, Wall, Paul and Westbrook will break the $40 million salary bar with their supermaxes. But they won't be the first.

Steph Curry won his first MVP and first title, being fourth in salary on his team, and 53rd in the league behind JaVale McGee, Larry Sanders and Andrea Bargnani.

Second MVP - fifth salary with the Warriors and 61st in the NBA, behind Amir Johnson, Demarre Carroll and Brandon Knight.

Second title - Curry is the 82nd highest paid in the NBA, and it's too long to list role players earning more. At the time, Curry's salary of $12 million was closer to the minimum (1.3 million) than the maximum (26.5 million).

Just before the third title, Stef was given the contract he deserved. The largest in history at that time - 201.2 million dollars.

The third season of this contract breaks the historic mark of $40 million. However, taking into account inflation, this is not a record, but only the third most expensive indicator.

Jordan has the first two, of course. His 30 million in 96/97 would be $49 million in today's dollars, and his 33 million in 97/98 would be $54 million.

* * *

You can complain that your parents forgot to send you to the basketball section or fed you little carrots, cottage cheese and oatmeal, in the comments.

Photo: globallookpress.com/TPG/ZUMAPRESS.com, /Naoki Morita/AFLO; Gettyimages.ru/Sean M. Haffey, /Ezra Shaw, /Al Bello

American basketball stars come to Russia to make money. In the US they are paid a penny

Star basketball players shared their memories of royal conditions in Russian clubs.

Brianna Stewart / Photo: © Aris Messinis - Pool / Pool / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru

A scandal has been raging in American basketball for several months now. The detention of Brittney Griner in Russia exposed a serious gender issue in this sport in the United States. It turns out that in a country of equal opportunities, basketball players and basketball players are not treated the same way.

In an attempt to ensure their own financial stability, women's NBA stars are forced to spend the whole year on the floor. They go to Russia with pleasure to earn their living.

American athletes openly admit that the time spent in Russian clubs is the best in their career.

Americans don't value their basketball players

WNBA women's earnings are nothing compared to NBA men's salaries. If LeBron James's contract with the Lakers brings him more than $40 million per season, then the income of the most star players in the women's league, taking into account all sponsorship and marketing deductions, most often does not reach the half million mark after paying all taxes.

Lack of financial stability forces basketball players to play almost all year round. Every year, after the end of the WNBA season, many athletes move to Europe and Asia, where they are offered much more significant contracts. And this is in a country where everyone is literally obsessed with gender equality.

“Literally everything was at the highest level”

American stars of the first magnitude regularly come to Russia to earn money. Here they can earn 2-3 times more than in their homeland. Athletes do not hesitate to praise the conditions that are created for them in our country.

Delisha Milton-Jones recalled that nowhere else did she get paid as much as in Russia, although she tried her hand at the championships of many countries.

- We booked a room in a five-star hotel. Shabtai Kalmanovich just spoiled us. He sent us to France for the weekend and gave us thousands of dollars for purchases,” Milton-Jones admitted at the US national team training camp.

- Literally everything was at the highest level. We have stayed in the best hotels. We went to Paris,” Sue Bird confirmed her words.

“To be honest, my experience in Russia is amazing,” said center Brianna Stewart, who also played for UMMC.

Many other basketball players who also have experience of playing in the Russian championship confirmed the good attitude of the club management towards them. They said that they were provided with modern and comfortable housing, with Western-style kitchens and laundry facilities.

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