Tom Van Riper, Forbes Staff

I cover the business of sports for Forbes.

12/14/2011 @ 3:12PM | 27,332 views

The NBA's Highest-Paid Players

As NBA clubs scramble to put rosters together in time to start the abbreviated season, the challenge is squeezing in talent around a salarycapped payroll still stuffed with bigmoney players.
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The new collective bargaining agreement may shift money to the AP Photo/Matt Slocum owners, but it doesnt exactly drain Click for full photo gallery: 10 Highest Paid Players the players pockets. And of course it NBA has no effect at all on the big earners playing on long-term contracts signed before the 2011 lockout, save for the paychecks they gave up from the canceled games. There are 57 NBA players whose contracts pay $10 million or more this season more than double the number of All Stars in a given year though the number shrinks to 35 after subtracting the estimated 19.5% from each players listed salary for missed games. So Bostons heralded backcourt mates $10 million men Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo will have to settle for a tad more than $8 million this season. By our count, those top 57 players on the pay scale will forfeit a combined $160 million in missed checks this year their collective take shrinking to $659 million from $819 million. Thats still $11.5 million a man, not including potential playoff shares paid out by the league. Leading the pack unsurprisingly Los Angeles Lakers veteran Kobe Bryant, a 13-time All Star who isnt slowing down much at age 33. Bryants current salary $25.2 million essentially matches his career scoring average (minus the million). Its the first installment of a three-year, $90 million extension he inked that will keep him in L.A. through the 2013-14 season. Thanks to the lockout, Bryant figures to actually collect about $20.3 million of the deal this year, but he can look forward to an escalation to the $30 million range next season. If NBA Commissioner David Stern wasnt after mega stars like Bryant in his quest to trim payrolls its those players that sell the league and draw the eyeballs, after all he was probably looking for a solution to the cringeinducing contract of the NBAs second-highest-paid player, Washington forward Rashard Lewis. A 20-points-per-game scorer in Seattle from 2005 to

2007, Lewis cashed in with a mega free-agent deal with the Orlando Magic. His scoring average has been in decline since, all the way down to 11.7 a game last season. And hes not known as much of a passer or defender. Yet Lewiss $22.1 million salary rates only behind Bryant this season, the fifth of his sixyear, $118 million free agent booty. Last season, Lewis was dealt to Washington from Orlando for another bigmoney underachiever, Gilbert Arenas (No. 5 in the league at $19.3 million) in a swap of bloated contracts. The change of scenery doesnt seem to be doing much Arenas was recently waived by the Magic under a new amnesty clause in the CBA that allows teams to clear salary cap space by unloading a player and freeing him up for bids by other teams. Arenas, though, still keeps the cash, even if a portion of it gets picked up by a different club. The exclusive payroll club has its share of future Hall of Famers, in addition to Bryant: Tim Duncan ($21.3 million), Kevin Garnett ($21.2 million) and Dirk Nowitzki ($19.1 million) all qualify. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade dont, having agreed to share the wealth a bit by teaming up in pursuit of championships in Miami. LeBron, D-Wade and Chris Bosh are all scheduled to reach the $20 million mark by 2014, though who knows what other top players will be getting by then. The league probably wont mind if its a high number, as long as it can narrow the gap between eight-figure earners and All Stars.

This article is available online at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanriper/2011/12/14/the-nbas-highest-paidplayers/