The Most Valuable Contracts of the Century
Every negotiated NBA deal since 1999, valued over its whole life, in today’s money — and why the best ones are worth so much more than the worst ones cost.
A contract is a bet on the future made by people who can’t see it. Most of them are fine. Some are catastrophes, and we remember those forever: ask anyone from Washington about Juwan Howard, or from New York about most of the 2000s. But the other tail is where the real money is, and almost nobody keeps score of it. So we did.
The method is simple: take every negotiated contract since 1999-00, add up the surplus it produced in every season it ran (what the player was worth on the open market, minus what he was paid) and convert each season to today’s money, so a dollar of 2003 cap space counts the same as the same share of today’s.1 Rookie-scale deals are out, since the league sets those, not a negotiation. Extensions count as new contracts, starting the season after they were signed.2
The winner
Steve Nash’s deal covering 2004-05 to 2009-10 produced $811M of surplus in today’s money: 103.3 wins above replacement over 6 seasons, for $191M in pay.
| Player | Seasons | Team | WAR | Paid | Surplus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steve Nash | 2004-05 to 2009-10 | PHX | 103.3 | $191M | +$811M |
| Stephen Curry | 2013-14 to 2016-17 | GSW | 88.4 | $97M | +$737M |
| Nikola Jokić | 2018-19 to 2022-23 | DEN | 96.7 | $200M | +$727M |
| Dirk Nowitzki | 2002-03 to 2006-07 | DAL | 97.3 | $210M | +$722M |
| LeBron James | 2010-11 to 2013-14 | MIA | 96.1 | $178M | +$720M |
| Kevin Garnett | 1998-99 to 2003-04 † | MIN | 122.9 | $439M | +$706M |
| Tim Duncan | 2003-04 to 2007-08 | SAS | 97.6 | $248M | +$687M |
| Chris Paul | 2013-14 to 2017-18 | LAC/HOU | 91.3 | $222M | +$656M |
| Kobe Bryant | 2004-05 to 2009-10 | LAL | 98.8 | $323M | +$638M |
| Kevin Garnett | 2004-05 to 2007-08 | MIN/BOS | 92.6 | $240M | +$629M |
In today’s money. * still running; its total is so far. † began in 1998-99, the season before the board starts; that season isn’t counted.
Value over time
Totals reward length, so here is the same list as it accumulated, season by season. The steepest line isn’t the longest one: Stephen Curry banked $184M a season, the best rate of any contract in the top ten.
Four of the ten are extensions: deals signed by a team that already knew exactly what it had, with a player who hadn’t yet made it expensive to find out.
And the other end
| Player | Seasons | Team | WAR | Paid | Surplus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vin Baker | 1999-00 to 2003-04 | SEA/BOS | 0.3 | $221M | −$195M |
| Grant Hill | 2000-01 to 2006-07 | ORL | 9.5 | $277M | −$170M |
| Amar'e Stoudemire | 2010-11 to 2014-15 | NYK | 8.2 | $260M | −$169M |
| Brian Grant | 2000-01 to 2005-06 | MIA/LAL | 7.2 | $251M | −$165M |
| Jalen Rose | 2000-01 to 2006-07 | IND/CHI/TOR/NYK | 13.8 | $317M | −$162M |
The worst contracts are smaller than the best ones, which is the most important thing on this page. A max deal gone wrong costs a team its salary. A max deal gone right is worth far more than its salary, because the salary is capped and the player isn’t: the best deal on the list returned $811M, the worst lost $195M. That asymmetry is the whole economic case for swinging big in free agency, and the reason the teams that never do tend to stay exactly where they are.
Figures: every season on the players board, 1999-00 to 2025-26, with contracts from the contract ledger, as of this build. Wins are on this model’s own scale and dollars at the open-market price of a win; the method explains both.
- That is, each season’s surplus as a share of that season’s cap, times the 2025-26 cap of $155M. The cap was $34M in 1999-00. ↩
- The contract ledger records an extension as a continuation of the deal it extends, which is right for pricing trades and wrong for this. Split at the extension date, the dates line up with when the new money actually started for rookie-scale extensions and most veteran ones; a veteran extension signed two years early is credited a year too soon. ↩
