NBA Player Salaries

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a major basketball league in North America. It comprises 30 teams which are divided into 2 divisions - Eastern Conference and Western Conference, each having 15 teams. The Eastern and the Western Conference are further divided into 3 divisions each, with 5 teams in each division. So, in all there are 6 divisions with 5 teams each, forming two Conferences of 15 teams each. Every team plays a total of 82 games every season, playing every other team in the league at least twice. After this regular season, NBA playoffs take place comprising top 8 teams from each conference with the final taking place between top teams in each conference after the playoffs.

Salary Cap
The NBA Salary Cap is the most important factor in determining an NBA player's salary. It is the amount set by the National Basketball Association, which is the maximum money teams can spend in paying their players. The league's total revenue in the previous season determines the salary cap for the current season and this amount is different every season. The salary cap for the 2009-10 season was fixed at US $57.7 million. The NBA salary cap is not a very strict one and therefore there are lot of loopholes and exceptions, which the team managers exploit to their advantage and are able to spend more than the salary cap.

CBA Agreement
The contract between the NBA players association and the NBA team owners is known as the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). This agreement decides various policies regarding salary cap, player contracts, trades and also revenue distribution. The CBA has set some rules regarding the maximum amount a NBA player can receive as salary, which depends upon the player's experience and the salary cap of that season. According to this rule, the maximum salary a player with 6 or lesser years of experience receives is 25% of the total salary cap. A player with more than 6 and less than 10 years of experience can earn a maximum salary amounting to 30% of the total salary cap. A player with more than 10 years of experience can earn a maximum annual salary which should not be more than 35% of the total salary cap.

Types of Agents
The type of free agent the player is, also contributes in determining the player salaries. According to the CBA, there are 2 types of free agents - Restricted and Unrestricted. A restricted free agent can sign another team, only after his current team refuses to pay him more money than he is being offered. An unrestricted free agent can sign with any team he wants. To become a restricted free agent, an NBA player must complete at least 3 seasons.

Sign and Trade Agreements
Let's assume that there is a certain player A who is currently playing for team Y. Now, A is on his way to become an unrestricted free agent next season. If he does so, then team Y gets nothing out of it as it is obvious other teams will sign him. So team Y extends his contract to make some money by signing A for more money or the same amount which A would get by playing for any other team. Now, if some team wants A, it will have to pay him more money than his current extended contract, while team Y gets another player in return as per the trade. In this way the players make more money, the current team also gets another good player in return from the team who buys the player.

Signing Bonuses
When any team signs a particular player, they pay the player a certain amount of money, which is the signing bonus. This amount is apart from the salary the player receives and is spread across the number of years in the contract. NBA players make a lot of money through signing bonuses alone.

Rookie Salary Scale
The rookie salary scale is the amount decided by the CBA which needs to be paid by the NBA teams to its rookie players as salary. The rookies who get selected in the first draft itself, get the highest salary followed by the ones picked in the second draft and so on. The contracts for the rookies are of 2 years and they have an option of changing teams in the 3rd and 4th year. In the 2009-10 season, a 1st pick rookie player received US $4,152,900 as salary for the 1st year.

Top NBA Salaries

The following is a list of top NBA player salaries for the 2009-10 season:

Player	Team	Position	Salary (US $)
Tracy Mcgrady	Houston Rockets	Guard	$23,239,561
Kobe Bryant	L. A. Lakers	Guard	$23,034,375
Jermaine O'Neal	Miami Heat	Forward/Center	$23,016,000
Tim Duncan	San Antonio Spurs	Center	$22,183,220
Shaquille O'Neal	Cleveland Cavaliers	Center	$20,000,000
Dirk Nowitzki	Dallas Mavericks	Forward	$19,795,714
Paul Pierce	Boston Celtics	Forward	$19,975,712
Ray Allen	Boston Celtics	Guard	$18,776,860
Rashard Lewis	Orlando Magic	Forward	$18,010,791
Michael Redd	Milwaukee Bucks	Guard	$17,040,000

Player Salaries by Team

The following is the list of the top 10 player salaries by team or in other words, team payrolls:

Team	Amount (US $)
L. A. Lakers	$91,377,313
New York Knicks	$85,962,554
Boston Celtics	$85,214,270
Dallas Mavericks	$84,698,708
San Antonio Spurs	$80,671,324
Orlando Magic	$80,532,126
Cleveland Cavaliers	$80,277,945
Washington Wizards	$79,179,646
Utah Jazz	$77,292,887
Denver Nuggets	$74,860,031

Average NBA Player's Salary

An average NBA player salary is calculated on the basis of the total salaries paid by all the teams in the previous season. The average player salary is useful for determining a player's salary during transfers and trade offs. The average NBA player salary for the 2009-10 season was US $5.85 million, which is apparently the highest among all other major sporting leagues in the United States of America.

NBA salaries are way more than the NFL salaries but less than the salaries the National Baseball League players receive, largely due to the soft salary cap. In spite of this, with an average salary of just under 6 million dollars, basketball in the NBA is intensely competitive.