Even before Victor Wembanyama signed a maximum contract to stay with the San Antonio Spurs, there were murmurings that he’d be willing to take a discount.
While he did sign a five-year maximum deal, he left some player performance clauses unchecked, leaving around $50 million possibly on the table. The “supermax” would have taken him well over $300 million for five seasons if he won MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, or made an All-NBA team.
Sounds likely!
While the NBA Players’ Union isn’t happy with Wembanyama’s new contract, there isn’t much they can do. It’s their job to make sure that players get paid fairly and make as much as possible, but when the NBA salary cap prevents teams from retaining all of their home-grown stars, the top players have to pick: win games or chase a bag?
Usually, when offered, players take the sueprmax. No one can really blame them. Wembanyama is the best and most valuable player in the NBA (from both a talent and marketing standpoint) and could have easily commanded the supermax. He became one of the rare players to take a pay cut, made even rarer by the fact that he took less in his first chance to make real NBA money coming off his rookie contract.
With the Players’ Association spurned by his choice, front offices around the league are rejoicing.
Victor Wembanyama Gave GMs Ultimate Bargaining Chip
Wembanyama’s new contract won’t start until the 2027-28 season. He has one more year left on his rookie deal.
He will make around $50.4 million in his first season with a maximum contract. That’s a hefty amount of money, but a whopping 22 players will make more than him.
Now, teams foolish enough to offer Trae Young and Jamal Murray more than $50 million a year shouldn’t be rewarded. Are they good players? Sure! But are they anywhere close to Wemby’s level? Absolutely not.
But they’re getting paid like it.
When players like Anthony Davis, Jimmy Butler, and Pascal Siakam head to contract negotiations in the coming offseasons, they had previously expected maximum or supermax offers. Not anymore. Their general managers can simply say, “Wembanyama is the centerpiece of a title team. We’re bringing you in to be a second or third option, and you’ll be paid like it.”
In recent seasons, front offices have handed out max contracts like candy, simply because that was the expectation around the league. If a player is taking up a third of your cap space, they should reasonably be able to carry the load of a third of a team’s responsibility, on both ends of the floor.
There are only a handful of players in the league who can do that. Wembanyama is one, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Cade Cunningham are others, and then guys like Jalen Brunson and Nikola Jokic are so offensively gifted that their defensive limitations don’t matter so much. Players brimming with promise, like Chet Holmgren and Evan Mobley, could be worth it, too, but there’s no guarantee that their next contract will be on par with their current ones.
It might seem anti-union or anti-worker to suggest that some of the league’s top players shouldn’t be paid accordingly, but shelling out massive contracts like that often hampers winning. Some savvy front offices are going to start having tough conversations. If you want to win, great, maybe you’ll take a pay cut in exchange for your ring. If you want to get paid like the best of the best, you have to play like the best of the best on a subpar team.
For players like Wembanyama, that’s an easy choice. For other superstars, sometimes the money matters more. You can’t fault them for that, but there’s a reason why James Harden, Joel Embiid, and Bam Adebayo are all ringless. Winning is hard and requires leaving money on the table.
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