OpinionFrom Memphis to the mainland, NBA salary madness knows no boundaries
Spate of unfathomably lucrative contracts is good news for Chinese basketball phenom Zhou Qi but it appears the sky’s the limit for even unheralded players, who are getting ridiculously rich
You don’t choose your era, it chooses you. China’s towering centre Zhou Qi’s age is unknown. Drafted a little over one week ago by the Houston Rockets in the second round, Zhou may be anywhere from 20 to 24 years of age depending on who you speak with. And while the uncertainty over his age is a bit perplexing, in the end it really won’t matter.
He is young regardless and because of that will soon be ridiculously rich. There is a plethora of absolute stupid money in the NBA and for the kid from Henan with the condor like wingspan, all he has to do is stay healthy and he will soon reap the rewards. Again, it’s nice to be born at the right time even if that time is slightly ambiguous. 15 years ago Wang Zhizhi was the first mainland player to appear in an NBA game.
There is a plethora of absolute stupid money in the NBA
A few years later Yao would follow him. Both were talented big men with Yao in particular having a stellar and lucrative NBA career. However, at the time Yao and Wang were forced to pay upwards of 50 per cent of their salary to the basketball authorities in China.
But thanks to the pioneering and courageous stand that Yao and women’s tennis star Li Na took in regards to the ridiculous garnisheeing of their wages, young Zhou will be able to keep most of his money.
Yet, as big a debt as Zhou may owe to Yao and Na, he will be far more beholden to the new NBA TV deal that has brought so much money into the game and has teams spending like sailors on shore leave. At the risk of wallowing in convoluted economics, the NBA has a soft salary cap that is calculated on a percentage of revenue between the players and owners that is a 50-50 split.
A new nine-year TV deal for US$24 billion kicks in this coming season and has raised the annual average TV revenue from US$938 million in 2015 to US$2.67 billion. It is an absolute insane amount and because of that Mike Conley, a largely anonymous 28-year-old guard with the Memphis Grizzlies who has never come close to making an all-star team, is now the highest paid player in the history of the game and will make over US$30 million per season for the next five years.