In a recent interview with Shannon Sharpe on “Club Shay Shay,” Mark Cuban shared the idea that NBA players might one day earn more than team owners.
“They’ll be making more money a year than I will. You’re going to have players making more than the owners, and that’s OK,” Cuban told Sharpe. “There is no league without them. They are the league and they earned every penny of it.”
The NBA recently signed an 11-year deal valued at more than $77 billion with ESPN, Amazon and NBC. According to Cuban the earning potential of players is expected to increase, if its media contract continues to rise as this would allow the league’s salary cap to increase.
Cuban, who sold his majority ownership in the Mavericks for $2 billion in 2023 and is still currently a minority owner of the team. Cuban’s net worth is $5.7 billion. Even as a minority owner, he still earns significantly more than the team’s highest paid player, Luka Doncic, who is set to earn $45 million annually for this upcoming season.
The NBA salary cap for the 2024-25 season is $140,588 million, which went into effect on July 1, 2024. The minimum team salary for the season is $126,529 million, according to the NBA.
The NBA splits basketball-related income (BRI) between players and owners almost evenly, with each side receiving between 49 percent to 51 percent of the total. The NBA’s revenue sharing system also redistributes annual revenue from high-grossing teams to low-grossing ones to ensure each team receives a share equal to the salary cap, according to Sportico.
Who Earns What
But who are the highest paid NBA players and how much do the team owners earn?
Steph Curry is currently the highest paid player in the NBA. The Golden State Warriors point guard recently agreed to a $62.6 million one-year extension and will be making $55.76 million this season. Along with Curry’s endorsements with Chase, Nissan, Under Armour, Palm, Infiniti and Rakuten as well as business ventures, he has an estimated net worth of $120 million. By contrast, Golden State Warriors majority owner Joe Lacob has an estimated net worth of $2 billion.
The second place for highest NBA player is a tie between Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets and the Philadelphia 76ers’ Joel Embiid. Jokic and Embiid both will earn $51.415 million this season. Jokic, who has played in the NBA since 2015, has an estimated net worth of $80 million. The owner of his team, Stan Kroenke, has a net worth of $16.9 billion. Embiid, who has played center power forward for the Philadelphia 76ers for ten years, has an estimated net worth of $100 million. Philadelphia 76ers owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer have net worths estimated at $9.6 billion and $3.1 billion, respectively.
