Jalen Brunson may be sitting at the center of the NBA spotlight, but he’s probably not going to be the league’s first player to cross $1 billion in career earnings.
That was the conversation Brian Windhorst, Tim MacMahon and Bobby Marks circled on the latest Hoop Collective, as they laughed about a league that is barreling toward players making $100 million a year. The NBA’s finances are booming after the 11-year, $77 billion media-rights deal agreed to in 2024, with national games now spread across NBC, Peacock, ABC, ESPN and Amazon Prime Video. With the salary cap climbing, the money keeps rising everywhere you look.
Brunson, though, doesn’t quite fit the path to that kind of all-time haul. He wasn’t a first-round pick, and his rookie deal averaged just $1.5 million. Then came the bigger choice: in 2024, he extended rather than chasing the larger payday he could have pushed for, giving the Knicks the flexibility they turned into a title.
That sacrifice is why the guard is so often said to have given up $113 million, even if the real number is closer to $37 million. Either way, it was an unusual move for a star, and an especially striking one for a player who had spent so much of his career being overlooked.
Brunson would have been worth the full maximum extension in 2025. The Knicks would have been justified in paying it, too. But he chose the route that put leadership first, keeping himself in a position to play with less financial stress and to throw his body around for New York without worrying about an injury wrecking his next contract.
That decision also helped the Knicks’ front office build out the rest of the roster around him, and the payoff was obvious when the franchise ended its well-documented 53-year championship drought. Brunson’s place in New York was sealed.
For now, he’s the city’s King, and he’ll be treated like one for the rest of his life. That kind of stature brings its own rewards, including sponsorship opportunities that should help make up the difference.
Windhorst, MacMahon and Marks did touch on one player who once looked like the best bet to become the NBA’s first $1 billion man: Luka Dončić. Marks said he had previously believed the Slovenian star would be the one to get there. But now that Dončić is no longer with the team that drafted him, that outlook has changed.
It’s hard not to look back at what the Dallas Mavericks pulled off in the 2018 draft and shake your head. They landed Dončić and Brunson with the third and 33rd picks, a ridiculous haul by any standard. What came next only made it look stranger: one player was traded away for a 32-year-old star known for durability concerns, and the other was allowed to walk after the search to replace him clouded his real value.
Oh well.
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