NBA money is on another level
"Ball Knowledge" content creator is opening fans' eyes
My feeds are certainly biased, but there has been an exponential rise in basketball related content across Instagram and Tiktok that asks viewers: “Do you know ball?”
It largely began with engagement bait along the lines of name a forgotten 2010’s NBA player in the comments let’s see who knows ball, which is a great social media strategy when someone claims that Manu Ginoboli has been lost to the archives and then the immediate reply is: Oh, you mean the first Argentinian born player in the NBA and 4x NBA champion? I feel that this is a poor answer for multiple reasons:
Manu Ginobili once swatted a bat out of mid air on the court, and that alone should earn him immortality.
Players like Luke Babbit exist.
While naming old role players is a pastime many a sports fan enjoys at any point in any season, the more recent financial twist on this type of content has intrigued me—and many NBA fans—over the last few weeks. An Instagram account recently turned micro-influencer (cracked 10,000 followers) @nick.knows.ball has had a few posts go viral over the past few weeks:
The content itself is so maddeningly simple, but the comment sections are full of comparisons, frustrations and just straight up shock at how much money journeymen NBA players, not even superstars, are making or have made in their careers. One comment reads: “Reggie Bullock averaged 7.3ppg for his career and he just bought a private island”. Spoiler, he actually did:
No slight to Reggie and Bullock Island but calling him a “star” is a bit of a stretch. NBA money really is different. The top 100 highest-paid athletes in the world in 2024 earned a combined $6.2 billion, with 36 NBA players occupying space on that list and earning just under ⅓ of that total at $2.02 billion. Roughly 50 NBA players are earning over $30 million this season and that number will probably double by 2030. A number of factors play into these insane dollar figures including small roster sizes, $77 billion in media deals and off-the-court endorsements, but for the average working class American this amount of money is incredibly difficult to visualize.
Enter nick.knows.ball, who is breaking people’s internal calculators with some rudimentary math.
“Btw if you made $1 million a year since the Mayflower arrived in America (1620) you wouldn’t even touch Chris Paul’s career earnings”
“You could’ve made $250K a year since the Titanic sank (1912) and you wouldn’t even sniff Landry Shamet’s career earnings”
“Let’s be grateful for the fact that you (yes YOU) could’ve made $170k a year since Einstein published the theory of relativity (1905) and you still wouldn’t touch Randy Foye’s career earnings.”
The more obscure the NBA player, the more flabbergasted viewers are by the concept. To put these career earnings into context with major historical dates while the average American salary sits somewhere around $60,000 a year clearly hits some pain points and gets people to rage, engage and wonder why they didn’t spend more time working on that left handed lay-up in the driveway.
The NFL is still king, top of the charts rappers still have the most bling (although Jettas, among others, is starting to give them a run for their money) but NBA money is starting to reach astronomical numbers.
On the topic of ridiculous numbers and dollar figures, Eben was unfamiliar with one of Lebron James’ many absurd NBA records: the fact that he hasn’t scored less than 10 points in a game since January 5th, 2007 against the Bucks. The King currently* has a streak of 1,297 games in which he has scored 10+ points. Jordan sits at #2 all time with a streak of 866 games, followed by Kareem at 787. Novy-Williams became aware of this streak after I sent him this tweet, which then hit the r/theydidthemath subreddit:
The actual monetary value is not accurate given that at some point sports books would have to stop taking the bets, but according to reddit math (so don’t take this too seriously) if you started with $1 at a 1.2x multiplier you would have approximately $4.9897 x 10^{102} in winnings over the last 17 years.
*I wrote this on Thursday before the Lakers played the Raptors, and then LeBron did one of the most LeBron things ever. Either Rui hits that shot to secure a Lakers win with James making “the right play,” or LeBron survives to score 2 more points in OT and continue the streak: a truly calculated king. Don’t worry, LeBron fans, he still holds the longest active streak of scoring 5+ points in a game at 1,459.
Lev’s take ⚡️: It’s fun to joke about the mind-boggling salaries of NBA players, but the fact that they make so much money has an actual impact on roster construction and the on-court product. For one, far fewer players are choosing to “bet on themselves” and enter free agency. Now that role player money in the NBA is truly life-changing, why risk $100 million guaranteed in the hopes that a team will bump that total to $110 million? Players are simply opting to lock in the contract extension money and call it a day, which in turn has left teams without cap space in the offseason.
Secondly, the NBA Players Association has gone awfully quiet in recent years. A grueling and archaic 82-game schedule that leaves a third of All-Stars injured come playoff time? No objection. Pervasive prop bet offerings that could leave players vulnerable to blackmail? No comment. When the average member is making eight figures, it’s hard for a union to get too worked up about any of these issues.
NBA Player Comps for Club Sportico:
Eben: Draymond Green (Illustrious CFB career and loves to podcast)1
Jacob: Mike Conley (somehow still around; likely thinking more about future media opportunities than basketball)
Lev: Righty Lamar Odom
Matt: Boris Diaw on the Spurs (2013-2014)
“Should I clarify that I’ve never punched a colleague?” -Eben