Are NBA Players Too Rich?

Probably. But in principle, they're doing what we should all do

NBA free agency starts today, meaning the contracts of hundreds of NBA players will expire, allowing them to sign with any team they please.

An obscene amount of money will be thrown around in coming weeks. Many folks will understandably be disgusted at the garish wealth on display. Solid NBA players will fetch contracts north of $30 million a year while the available stars (this year’s list includes LeBron James and Paul George) will demand over $60 million per season. These contracts are only going to get bigger in the future, and it won’t be long before we witness the first NBA player making over $100 million dollars per year.

If your visceral reaction to that sentence is to gag, or perhaps to turn bright red and mumble “Grrrrrrrr” while steam comes out of your ears, I get it. Trust me, I do. I work in food service and the restaurant I work at pays me $2.80 per hour, so watching anyone make more money than they can physically spend in a lifetime stings a bit.

But I also force myself to look at the hierarchy of the NBA and sports in general. The athletes are employees who are on the ground, performing the labor that’s earning money for the company they work for. That just happens to be a lot of fucking money. About 4.5 billion dollars in 2023, to be exact.

It is a problem that some people are making upwards of $100 million per year in the United States while 653,000+ people are experiencing homelessness. Full stop. The wealth disparity in this country is so egregious that it’s hard to fully comprehend.

Still, a lot of that disparity stems from the chasm between the pay of CEO’s (or general owners of labor) and the pay of workers, which is usually a difference of about 350x. So aiming our anger at the players (employees) is reductive. Comparatively, to the average American, they’re making “too much money.” But if you support the NBA, you obviously don’t want it to be less popular, and if you want the league to maintain its popularity, then the revenue the league creates has to go somewhere. The two options are either the owners of the labor or the workers themselves, and I know which one I’d prefer; pay the employees every time. Because paying the employees less will do nothing except deepen the gulf between workers and owners. That holds true in all fields, sports included.

I don’t want this piece to sound like I’m giving the NBA credit for being some progressive, forward-thinking business where its employees enjoy a fair share of the profits and there’s harmony between all parties. It’s not that. In fact, players only receive as much revenue share as they do (currently about 50%) because the NBA Players Association— the union made up of current and former players from around the league—bargains with the league powers whenever the Collective Bargaining Agreement expires and forces the league’s hand to pay the players their fair share. The union makes us strong, of course.

Meanwhile, stadium employees— who the league would crumble without— are forced to fight for livable wages. Players in the NBA G League, the NBA’s developmental league, which is funded by the NBA, make about $40,000 per season. How Adam Silver and the powers within the NBA feel no contrition in paying players (who they claim the NBA is developing) barely enough to survive in 2024 America is a mystery to me. It’s kind of like how the US government treats the people of Puerto Rico. Maybe it’s not like that. But it kind of feels like that. You’re one of us, but not really…

Anyway, the NBA, like any other business, would pay its employees shit wages if it could get away with it.

I also don’t want to make it sound like I think NBA players are aspirational for making hundreds of millions of dollars or that you should cheer them on for being so much richer than a normal person. Kevin Durant invests in a drone company used for government surveillance. Steph Curry told us how revolutionary FTX was before it was shut down. Nothing is stopping players from being CEO’s or bosses/exploiters of labor outside of their NBA responsibilities, and some players take advantage of that. So, no, you don’t have to admire these guys— you can even dislike them! But that dislike shouldn’t stem from them making a lot of money from the NBA, because overall, the principle of NBA players receiving a large chunk of the revenue their employer brings in is a good thing. They are workers who bargained for a higher slice of the cake. We, as working people, are so accustomed to being forced to fight for a tiny share of the income brought in by the businesses we work for, that seeing employees receive a big chunk is a shock to the senses. We’re used to settling for scraps (which we shouldn’t have to do, but that’s a story for a different day.)

As always, owners try to pit working people against each other. If they can convince us that our real enemy is our fellow worker, they will never have to confront how badly they need workers. So, when free agency opens up later today, don’t be mad at players for signing lucrative contracts— view it as the result of collective action. Instead, direct that anger at the CEO’s and bosses in all fields who stop everyone else from making the money necessary to live comfortably. They have the money. Don’t be fooled, they certainly have the money. They just haven’t been forced to distribute it yet, and it’s up to us to change that soon. We probably won’t make 100 million dollars a year, but it’ll be a start.

Power to all workers! (Except cops. You guys don’t count.)

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What I’m Listening to: The Coup

It’s only fitting, right?

The Coup made some of the most fun hip-hop of the 90s, and it (unsurprisingly) aged very well. Turn it up!

NOTE: I am not condoning any acts described in this song!!