Highest-paid NBA player will make more than five times McDavid's salary
Connor McDavid might sometimes be wishing that his talents had led him to a career in the NBA instead.
A five-time Art Ross winner as the league’s top scorer and a three-time Hart Trophy winner as league MVP, McDavid has solidified himself as the best NHL player we’ve seen in a generation.
In his best campaign to date, the 26-year-old centre had 64 goals and 89 assists for a total of 153 points, playing all 82 games for the Edmonton Oilers this season.
The owner of an eight-year, $100 million contract signed in 2016 that currently carries the second-highest cap hit at $12.5 million a year (trailing only Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon by $100,000 per year), one might reasonably expect McDavid to be among his peers in sports when it comes to his annual salary.
But he’s getting blown out of the water when it comes to NBA contracts.
Today, Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown signed a five-year, $304 million supermax extension, as the first big-name player to benefit from a new CBA that kicked in this month.
Brown, a two-time All-Star, had his best season yet with the Celtics, as he averaged 26.6 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 3.5 assists in 67 games in the regular season.
A member of the All-NBA second team this season, he’s one of the game’s best players: in his seven seasons with Boston, Brown has made the Eastern Conference Finals five times, including a berth in the 2022 NBA Finals.
Still, it’s a little odd to see Brown’s name attached to the richest deal in NBA history — at least for now — and it’s carrying an annual salary that NHL players like McDavid can only dream of.
Per ESPN’s Bobby Marks, Brown’s deal will see him rake in $69.125 million in 2028-29, the final year of his five-year deal.
That’s 5.53 times more than McDavid’s $12.5 million per year and even when taking in Brown’s annual average salary of $60.8 million, it’s still 4.86 times more than McDavid’s salary.
— Bobby Marks (@BobbyMarks42) July 25, 2023
In fact, Brown’s most expensive yearly salary is actually more than the entire roster of the Anaheim Ducks is set to make for next season, with a current projected cap hit of $55.3 million, per CapFriendly.
Over 120 NBA players will carry a higher cap hit than McDavid next season, per Spotrac.
Per sports business analyst Adam Seaborn, there’s a huge absence of McDavid, MacKinnon, or any other NHL player among the biggest 50 contracts in North American pro sports.
NHL nowhere to be found pic.twitter.com/Gm7UF0BLwP
— Adam Seaborn (@AHBSeaborn) July 25, 2023
There are actually two active NHL contracts with higher total values than either MacKinnon or McDavid: Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby signed a 12-year, $104 million contract that’s no longer allowed under the current CBA back in 2012, while Shea Weber — technically a member of the Arizona Coyotes, though he’s unlikely to ever play for the team — has three years left on his own 14-year, $110 million deal that he signed with Nashville, also in 2012.
Still, every deal ever signed in the NHL pales in comparison to Brown’s, with 48 active contracts in the NBA bigger than the NHL record 12-year, $120 million deal signed by Alex Ovechkin back in 2008.
And unless we see the NHL undergo a massive jump in popularity over the next few seasons, one can only expect the gulf of players’ salaries between its own league and the NBA to continue to widen.
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