Following their victory over the Toronto Raptors, the Boston Celtics have increased the salaries of two of their best players.
If you still can’t quite accept that Jaylen Brown is the highest paid player in the NBA, don’t worry—this is only likely to be a short-term circumstance. Granted, Brown’s five-year, $304 million contract from the Boston Celtics made history on Tuesday, but that’s the kind of history that’s supposed to be broken.
Just go back to 2016, when Mike Conley Jr.’s signing with the Memphis Grizzlies for a five-year, $153 million contract made headlines and briefly made him the highest-paid player in the NBA. Similar to Brown, none of the parties involved believed Conley was more deserving of that title than players like Steph Curry, LeBron James, or Kevin Durant. Simply put, he was able to negotiate for that much because the Grizzlies were in dire need of signing him and the current CBA permitted that.
What took place following the Conley contract? Superstar players, however, began to ink ever-bigger contracts, which progressively moved Conley down the list. The actual best player in the league right now, Nikola Jokić, was offered five years and $276 million by the Denver Nuggets when he decided to re-sign. In just six years, that’s an increase of over $100 million (though Nuggets supporters would be the first to tell you that he was worth every penny).
