Steph Curry was the highest-paid NBA player in the 2024–2025 season, but he still believes he and other players are underpaid due to inequity.
Show Him The Money
He made $55 million in the last season, and the next season, 2025-2026, it will be closer to $60 million as The Golden State Warriors will be the league‘s most valuable at an estimate of $8.8 billion, according to Forbes.
With an estimated net worth of $240 million and career earnings topping $410 million, Curry says that is still not reflective of the value he and other stars bring to the league.
Curry argued that compared to the billions the NBA generates, even he — ranked third in career earnings behind LeBron James and Kevin Durant — is only seeing a fraction of the pie.
“To be honest, [my net worth is] not something I really worry about too much. I got somebody that takes care of that for me. What I have going on is about creating a portfolio of stuff that is aspirational in terms of your wealth,” Curry said on Speedy Mormon’s “360 With Speedy” show. “You wanna have something that you look back and are proud of. We’ve been blessed with so many opportunities and so many resources and so many relationships. We wanna be good stewards of it.”
The league generated approximately $10.247 billion in revenue for the 2024–2025 season, according to Basketball-Related Income (BRI), the metric used in the Collective Bargaining Agreement to determine how revenue is sharedbetween the NBA and its players, according to Sportico.
The previous season, 2023–2024, was even more lucrative at about $11.3 billion, according to Buzzfeed.
The NBA generates billions of dollars, and during the 2024-2025 season, the average NBA player earned around $12 million, with top players like Curry, Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid, making as much as $50 million, Sports Illustrated reported.
Although players significantly contribute to their teams’ success, NBA rules prohibit active players from owning equity in their teams, a restriction that prevents players from fully benefiting from the league’s financial growth.
“Those numbers sound crazy, but what the league is doing, from whatever era you want to compare it to, to now, is probably 10x that,” he said. “The idea that we can’t participate in equity while we’re playing is part of why I would say yes, we are underpaid, because we want to be able to participate in that rise.”
“Hopefully, sooner or later those rule change just a little bit so players can participate more in the upside of the team equity, the league, the valuations, and all that type of stuff, just because it’s something we deserve,” Curry said.
