OPINION: Seemingly Unreasonable Contract Guarantees For NBA Players Are Fair

The value of a franchise player is like an intangible asset in business, you can’t put a price on him, or can you?  There has been a lot of discussion over the fact that non-superstar NBA, but still franchise ball players, are guaranteed more money in their contracts than the top NFL quarterbacks. The differences between NBA and NFL salaries is glaring, the proof is in the numbers, but I decided that it is fair.

Things to take into consideration for this are length of the season, possibility of injury, labor deals and simple math.

First of all, the NBA salary cap jumped from $70 million to $94.143 million since last year, so there’s that.  The NFL salary cap is $155.27 million.  An NBA team carries a maximum of 15 players and NFL teams carry 46 – 53 players deep.  If you divide these numbers evenly amongst a team NBA players would be paid more than twice as much as NFL players.

The NBA season is 82 games long not including playoffs or championships and the NFL season is 16 games not including playoffs or championships.  Football season is substantially shorter than basketball season.  Not to say that football players don’t train year-round, nor that the game takes any less toll on their bodies, which brings me to my next point.

Football is a much more physical game than basketball, and there’s more risk of injury playing football than basketball.  An article from Think Progress at the beginning of last year’s football season noted that only two weeks into the season 15 percent of football players had suffered an official injury.  Organizations are not going to guarantee a player a multi-million dollar contract to have him get a season-ending injury or a career-ending injury.

I do acknowledge there are the Tracy McGrady’s of the NBA that are plagued with injury, and get paid a ridiculous amount of money ($22.8 million for the 2009-2010 season) to sit on the bench.  However, NBA players are generally more durable, the average life of an NFL player is 3.6 years while the average NBA career is 4.8 years.

Kevin Mawae tweeted that he was tired of discussing the pay differences and that all NFL players have the right to negotiate contracts and many players do have guarantees.  The CBA for the NFL agreed upon a higher percentage of t.v. and media revenue and a lower percentage of locally generated revenue in the contract compared to the NBA that agreed upon half of league revenue.

NBA starting player salaries are kept at a minimum percentage of the cap space which allows teams to spread the wealth amongst the role players.  The first round draft pick in the NBA, Ben Simmons, is allowed no more than 5 percent of the salary cap which leaves him with roughly $5 million in his first year.  The top NFL pick Jared Goff will earn approximately $28 million over his first four years which is $2 million more than Simmons in his first year.

Andrew Luck’s contract of $140 million over six years and $87 million of that being guaranteed over the next three years is in NBA territory.  Luck’s completion percentage is 55.3 and his passer rating is 74.9 this past season, pretty decent.  He is a mainstay for the Colts.  In as far as the position of these athletes, in football the team is only as good as the quarterback.  Quarterbacks like Tom Brady, Cam Newton, Ben Roethlisberger, Russell Wilson, and the list continues are all instrumental in their team’s success.

Generally I think it’s fair that the non-superstar franchise players like Demar Derozan, Mike Conley, and Andre Drummond deserve the guarantees, but I disagree that Bradley Beal does.  Derozan, Conley, and Drummond are all household names in their respective organization’s city and are important to their ball clubs.  In my opinion a player like Beal had a decent season, but certainly not worthy of his guarantee of approximately $127 million.  His stat line last season was 17.4 points and 2.9 assists, but in four years in the league he missed nearly an entire season due to injury.  

Pittsburgh Steeler’s DeAngelo Williams was vocal about some of the contracts made in the NBA.  Williams signed a two-year contract with the Steelers in 2015 and was guaranteed $1.13 million.  He rushed for 907 yards and 11 touchdowns last season.

I’d feel salty too when Bismack Biyombo signs a four-year contract with the Orlando Magic for $72 million guaranteed while he averaged 5.5 points and 8 rebounds per game last season in Toronto.  Does he deserve it?  Probably not, hold the probably.  But is it fair?  Yes.

The way the numbers shake out allows the NBA to pay their players higher salaries and are able to guarantee some pretty hefty sums.  It may not sound fair to a top quarterback, or Williams, but it’s the nature of the beast.