National Basketball Association is the best professional basketball league on the planet. As such, it is home to the best basketball players in the world. Any player’s dream is to get to the NBA one day. While competitiveness certainly does play a role, there is something little extra to make the desire higher. That little additional flavor is cash. There is no league in the world capable of matching whopping salaries the NBA stars receive.
You all know who the most popular players in the league are, but do you know who are the most paid NBA stars right now? Do you know how much do they make? We are here to help you by providing the list of the top three highest earners in the league. Click here to get more details on the NBA.
1 – Stephen Curry – $45,780,966 (Golden State Warriors)
Stephen Curry has been one of the best players in the league for more than a decade. He has been drafted by the Golden State Warriors in 2009 and has not left the team since. During his rich career, Curry has won three NBA rings and two MPV awards among other bountiful and prestigious achievements. He is also an eight-time All-Star. Curry is in his last year of contact but has signed a brutal extension last summer and will make even more in the years to come. To be more precise, Steph will earn a total of $215 million in the next four years.
2 – James Harden – $44,310,840 (Philadelphia 76ers)
The second place is reserved for James Harden & John Wall who make an identical sum of money in the 2021/22 campaign. Harden’s situation is very interesting as he has just joined the Philadelphia 76ers who have inherited his huge contract. Harden is now bound to the Sixers until the end of the 2022/23 season. After next season, he will be able to sign a massive $233 million extension with Philadelphia with a chance to earn as much as $61 million in the 2026/27 season. Whether this will be a smart investment for Philly remains to be seen, but we are quite skeptical knowing he will be 33-year-old before signing the mentioned extension. Also, Harden has been nowhere near as valuable for his teams as Curry has been for the Warriors over the last ten years.
2 – John Wall – $44,310,840 (Houston Rockets)
John Wall has signed a huge $170 million extension with Washington Wizards. He was traded to Houston Rockets for Russell Westbrook on December 2nd, 2020, but has not played much basketball there after suffering a hamstring strain in April 2021. The Rockets do not want Wall anymore, but they need to pay him $44.3 million and $47.4 million for the next two seasons as per the contract. This is why the last-placed team in 2021/22 NBA standing desperately want to release money by trading John Wall as soon as possible. The problem is that the other teams do not necessarily want such a huge contract for a player that has not played proper basketball at all in the previous two years.
The other big earners
Interestingly, you won’t see some of the best and the most efficient players in the league in the 2021/22 season even among the top-ten highest-paid stars for this season. The top-five list is completed with the likes of Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant. The fact that Wall and Westbrook are among the top five earners for the season best shows how poor job their respective teams have done in the last several years signing all these whopping extensions. For those who are wondering, LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo hold the sixth and the seventh position respectively in this list, Nikola Jokic is 27th, while Luka Doncic is not even inside the top-50.
