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Many of the NBA’s highest-paid players are on contracts considered maximum-salary deals, but the 2025/26 salaries for those players vary significantly depending on when the player signed his contract and how much NBA experience he has. That’s why a player like Stephen Curry will earn nearly $22MM more than LaMelo Ball in ’25/26 despite both players technically being on max deals.
When a player signs a maximum-salary contract, he doesn’t necessarily earn the NBA max for each season of that contract — he earns the max in year one, then gets a series of identical annual raises. In Curry’s case, his 2025/26 salary actually exceeds this year’s maximum, since the annual cap increases since he began earning the max haven’t kept pace with his annual 8% raises.
Listed below are the top 50 highest-paid NBA players for the 2025/26 season. The players on this list don’t necessarily have the contracts with the largest overall value. This top 50 only considers the current league year, with the player’s ’25/26 base salary listed.
Additionally, we’ve noted players who could potentially increase their earnings via incentives or trade bonuses. We didn’t add those notes for players like Curry or Anthony Edwards, who have trade bonuses but are already earning their maximum — their salaries for this season can’t increase beyond their max.
Here are the NBA’s 50 highest-paid players for the 2025/26 season:
For the first time in NBA history, a base salary above $30MM is required to earn a spot on the league’s list of the top 50 highest-paid players, and even that isn’t quite enough for a few players. A pair of Trail Blazers veterans – Jrue Holiday at $32.4MM and Jerami Grant at $32MM – are the top two highest-paid players who didn’t make the cut.
It’s also worth noting that a small handful of players who just missed the top 50 have the ability to earn more than Quickley’s $32.5MM base salary if they achieve certain performance incentives during the coming season. Those players are as follows:
Even after officially re-signing Cam Thomas, Day’Ron Sharpe, and Ziaire Williams, the Nets are still operating slightly below the minimum salary floor, as Bobby Marks of ESPN tweets.
While the exact terms of Williams’ new deal haven’t been confirmed, it sounds like it will be identical to Sharpe’s contract, which includes a cap hit of $6.25MM for 2025/26. That would increase Brooklyn’s team salary to about $138.53MM — this season’s minimum salary floor is $139.18MM, and Marks confirms that the Nets are roughly $649K below the floor.
As we detail in our glossary entry, the minimum salary floor comes in each season at 90% of the salary cap. In the past, a team was required to reach that threshold by the end of the regular season — if it didn’t get there, it was simply required to make up the shortfall by paying the difference to its players.
However, under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, teams must reach the minimum salary floor by the start of the regular season. A team whose salary is below the minimum floor at the start of the season won’t receive a share of the end-of-season luxury tax payouts and will have a portion of its cap room (the amount between its team salary and the minimum floor) frozen.
Last season’s end-of-season payout to non-taxpayers was approximately $11.5MM per team. While there’s no guarantee the 2025/26 payout will be quite that high, it’s safe to assume the Nets won’t simply give up that money, so we can count on them making a move to reach the salary floor by the start of the season.
However, it won’t necessarily be as simple as signing a player to a minimum-salary contract. Four of the 18 players on Brooklyn’s current roster are either on non-guaranteed deals or have small partial guarantees — the Nets will have to set a 15-man roster for the regular season, and if they end up waiving two or three of those players on non-guaranteed contracts, it would further reduce their overall salary, moving the club further away from the minimum floor.
For instance, if the Nets were to cut Tyrese Martin, Drew Timme, and Keon Johnson, it would remove approximately $6.23MM from their books, moving the team about $6.87MM below the minimum salary floor.
If the Nets opt to waive a player or two with a guaranteed salary and keep more of their non-guaranteed contracts, the gap between their team salary and the minimum floor wouldn’t be as significant, but it still may require a free agent signing above the minimum to reach the floor.
While a free agent signing is a possibility, it’s probably more of a last resort, since it would make more sense for Brooklyn to continue using its leftover cap room on the trade market to take on unwanted salary attached to draft assets. The Nets have already taken that route this offseason in deals for Michael Porter Jr. (who was sent to Brooklyn with an unprotected 2032 first-round pick), Terance Mann (with this year’s No. 22 overall pick), and Haywood Highsmith (with a 2032 second-rounder).
The Nets still have $16.1MM in cap room remaining and could further increase that figure by waiving one or more of their players on non-guaranteed salaries.
As part of his two-year contract agreement with the Nets, Day’Ron Sharpe waived his right to veto a trade during the 2025/26 season, Hoops Rumors has learned.
A player who re-signs with his previous team on a one-year deal or a two-year deal that includes a second-year option is typically given an implicit no-trade clause, but a team can ask the player to give up that no-trade clause upon signing. Because Sharpe agreed to do so, he would lose his Bird rights if he’s traded ahead of February’s deadline.
[RELATED: NBA Players Who Can Veto Trades In 2025/26]
Even though he re-signed with his previous team, got a raise exceeding 20%, and signed for more than the minimum, Sharpe will become trade-eligible on December 15 instead of January 15 because the Nets were still operating below the cap upon completing his deal.
Here are more details on a few recently signed contracts from around the NBA:
Tragedy has struck Timberwolves big man Naz Reid and his family. His sister, Toraya Reid, was shot and killed Saturday in New Jersey, Eva Herscowitz of the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. A New Jersey prosecutor charged Shaquille Green, whom the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office said was in a relationship with Toraya Reid, with her murder.
Reid’s former teammate, Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns, was devastated by the news.
“Heartbroken. No words can ever take away the pain for my brother,” Towns tweeted. “Holding everyone close in prayer today.”
Lithuania faces Greece in the quarterfinals of the EuroBasket tournament on Tuesday. Lithuanian general manager Linas Kleiza admits it will be difficult to keep Greece’s star player, Giannis Antetokounmpo, under control, Arik Barkas of Eurohoops.net writes.
“It’s a very tough matchup,” he said. “You guys (Greek media) have a very good team and a major superstar, one of the best, if not the best, players in the world. So this is a huge challenge for us, and we’re going to try to do our best, play hard, work hard, and see where it goes. But you guys definitely have a great team.”
So what is Lithuania’s plan?
“I don’t know. We’ll see tomorrow. Hope he has a bad game,” Kleiza said. “That’s all you can hope for. We’re going to try our best, but that’s why he’s the MVP. How do you stop that?”
We have more on the EuroBasket tournament:
Talen Horton-Tucker agreed to a contract with perennial Turkish power Fenerbahçe at the beginning of the month but he was given a 21-day window to continue to search for an NBA deal, according to Marc Stein in his latest Substack article for The Stein Line.
Horton-Tucker was unable to find a guaranteed contract in free agency last year but wound up spending the season with the Bulls. He made the team’s regular season roster after having signed a non-guaranteed Exhibit 10 deal last September — he was the only player on an Exhibit 10 contract to have that deal become a standard non-guaranteed deal.
Horton-Tucker eventually had his contract guaranteed when the Bulls decided to keep him around beyond the league-wide salary guarantee date in January.
Here’s more from around the basketball world:
7:00 pm: The Knicks never made a formal offer to Simmons, league sources tell Ian Begley of SNY.tv (Twitter link).
The question of whether or not a “formal offer” was made can come down to semantics — it’s possible Simmons indicated he wouldn’t accept a minimum-salary offer from New York before the team ever officially put it on the table.
12:06 pm: The Knicks offered Ben Simmons a one-year contract at some point this offseason, according to NBA insider Marc Stein (Substack link), who reports that the free agent guard passed on that proposal.
Due to their proximity to a hard cap, the Knicks aren’t able to offer more than the veteran’s minimum to any free agent, so it’s safe to assume that’s what their offer to Simmons was worth. According to Stein, the former No. 1 overall pick remains hopeful of signing a contract worth more than the minimum.
Simmons, 29, was the NBA’s Rookie of the Year in 2018, made three All-Star teams from 2019-21, and was the Defensive Player of the Year runner-up in 2021. One of the NBA’s best passers and defenders earlier in his career, he signed a maximum-salary rookie scale extension in 2019 that ran from 2020-25 — he was bought out of that deal this February before signing with the Clippers for the rest of the 2024/25 season.
Multiple back surgeries have slowed Simmons in recent years and his offensive numbers have fallen off when he has been healthy enough to play. While he was never much of a shooter, the former LSU standout was more willing to attempt field goals earlier in his career. His shot attempts per 36 minutes have declined in every single one of his NBA seasons, from 13.2 in 2017/18 to 7.2 in ’24/25.
Although he accepted a rest-of-season minimum deal with the Clippers in February, Simmons seems to be struggling to come to terms with the idea that he’s now being considered a minimum-salary player, as Jake Fischer detailed in his latest Bleacher Report live stream (YouTube link). Recent reports indicated that agent Bernie Lee has parted ways with Simmons and that the three-time All-Star isn’t 100% sure he wants to continue playing.
According to Stein, the Knicks and Celtics are the teams that expressed the most significant interest in Simmons this summer. Boston would likely also be capped at a minimum-salary offer due to the team’s proximity to the tax aprons.
Landry Shamet remains under heavy consideration to fill the Knicks’ available roster opening for a veteran’s minimum contract, according to Stefan Bondy of the New York Post. Shamet was a key reserve for the club last season, appearing in 50 games. Shamet has reportedly been working out in New York while hoping to re-sign with the Knicks.
A report from Marc Stein earlier on Monday indicated that Ben Simmons turned down an offer from the Knicks. Another prominent free agent, Malik Beasley, is a long shot to sign with them, according to Bondy, who names Malcolm Brogdon as another possibility for that veteran-minimum slot.
We have more from the Eastern Conference:
The Lakers are open to upgrading on the wing if they can find a player who contributes on both ends of the court and is capable of helping the team raise its ceiling, Marc Stein reports for The Stein Line (Substack link).
Stein cautions that Los Angeles isn’t looking to trade just for the sake of revamping the roster, but the Lakers are hoping the right opportunity presents itself in the coming months.
According to Stein, the Lakers were believed to be reluctant to take on anything more than expiring contracts earlier in the offseason, but that stance has “thawed somewhat.” Several weeks ago, multiple reports stated that L.A. was prioritizing preserving cap room for the summer of 2027.
Stein points to Andrew Wiggins as the type of player the Lakers are likely to be interested in, though it’s unclear if the Heat would move him, having recently sent signals that the team expects the former No. 1 overall pick to open the season in Miami. But if the Heat eventually decide to trim their payroll, Wiggins is a name to watch.
Wiggins will earn about $28.2MM in 2025/26, with a $30.2MM player option for 2026/27.
Stein hears the possibility of Wiggins being pursued by the Lakers gained steam after Luka Doncic signed a three-year extension in early August.
Reporting earlier this summer indicated that the Lakers had checked in with the Heat about Wiggins, but found Miami’s asking price to be “pretty high.” Dan Woike of The Athletic reported in mid-July that he was “pretty confident” the Lakers weren’t interested in Wiggins, though that was a few weeks before Doncic’s extension.
