NBA stars who were never in the Top 10 in salaries
The NBA salary database here at HoopsHype has data going back to the 1990-91 season, allowing us to conduct plenty of research regarding historical spending by teams and on players. As such, we have been able to look at the Top 10 earners around the league in each of these seasons, and see not only who was on those lists, but also, who was not on them.
Inevitably, of course, almost all of the game's greatest players since that time have featured in the Top 10 at least once, and often repeatedly. That said, our research has shown that a few players you would expect to have been among the NBA's biggest earners at some point never have been. Be it by circumstance, timing, injury, benevolence, some combination thereof or just blind luck, many All-Star players have never had the elite tier salaries to match their elite tier play.
There follows a look at NBA stars over the last 35 years who were never in the Top 10 in salaries in any season of their career.
Anthony Davis
NBA seasons: 13 (ongoing)
Total career earnings: $311,521,148
Highest single-season salary ranking: 16th (2024-25)
It is a measure of what is to come that despite cracking the $40 million mark in salary this year, Davis is still not a Top 10 earner. In fact, he is not even the highest-paid player on his team right now, trailing LeBron James's $48,728,845 on this season's Lakers roster. This will reverse if both return for next season, however; by virtue of the three-year extension he signed all the way back in August 2023, Davis will receive a pay rise to $57,604,894 in 2025-26, which as things stand could be enough to give him a Top 10 salary in the league.
Ben Wallace
NBA seasons: 16
Total career earnings: $87,800,795
Highest single-season salary ranking: 13th (2006-07)
Having made his way into the NBA as an undrafted free agent, Wallace had to put in the hard yards before he started earning the big bucks. Indeed, it took until his fifth NBA season before he so much as cracked the $1 million mark in salary, and while his sign-and-trade inclusion in the 2001 Grant Hill deal saw him finally earn a substantial multi-year salary, he never earned more than $7.5 million in any season of his hallowed run with the Detroit Pistons. It was not until the 2006-07 season, his first in Chicago, that Wallace came close to the Top 10 salaries in the league, when his $16 million paycheck placed him 13th in the league, but by that time, his performance had peaked.
Chauncey Billups
NBA Seasons: 17
Total career earnings: $106,227,720
Highest single-season salary ranking: 35th (2010-11)
Like Ben Wallace above, Billups was also (from the team's point of view) wonderfully underpaid throughout his first run in Detroit. Having signed a then-permissible six-year mid-level exception contract when he joined the Pistons in the summer of 2002, Billups earned an average salary for his above-average play, creating the cap flexibility that allowed for the Rasheed Wallace trade that won the 2004 NBA championship. Unlike both of the Wallaces, though, Billups never got close to a Top 10 league-wide salary; even his career-high salary of $13.15 million in 2010-11 was still only good for 35th.
DeMarcus Cousins
NBA Seasons: 14
Total career earnings: $91,978,289
Highest single-season salary ranking: 48th (2017-18)
How much Cousins could have earned – and the heights he could have hit as a player – had he not had a career-altering Achilles rupture at the worst possible time will forever remain a great NBA "What If". It was the worst possible time for that injury to occur not only because it came as Cousins was entering unrestricted free agency for the first time, but also because it came right as the NBA salary cap was ballooning in size. Alas, Cousins never came close to earning his $18,063,850 salary of the 2017-18 season again, and his salary that year was only good enough for 48th in the league anyway.
Donovan Mitchell
NBA Seasons: 8 (ongoing)
Total career earnings: $142,153,611
Highest single-season salary ranking: 36th (three times)
Over the last four seasons, Mitchell has earned $127,589,590 in salary. And yet over those four years, he has ranked merely 36th, 36th, 37th and 36th across the whole NBA in salary. This comes at the same time as he leads the league-best Cleveland Cavaliers in minutes and scoring, and the relative discount Cleveland is getting on their perennial All-Star has allowed them to build – and keep together – an excellent 11-man rotation with size, shooting, defense, experience and youth. Nothing ever lasts forever, of course, and the financial pinch will start to be felt once Mitchell's extension kicks in next season, bolstering his annual salary to $48,787,676 and putting him either in or on the cusp of a Top 10 league-wide salary. But for now, enjoy the bargain and the benefits it reaps.
Elton Brand
NBA Seasons: 17
Total career earnings: $169,209,324
Highest single-season salary ranking: 17th (2011-12)
Fittingly, for a consistently excellent if not-quite-elite-tier player, Elton Brand earned a lot of money in his career without ever cracking the very highest tier of player salary. He earned eight figures every year from 2003 to 2013 inclusive without ever cracking more than $17.1 million in that time, and never ranked lower than 40th around the league in salary while also never quite cracking the Top 10. Brand was only an All-Star once in that span and never was the best player on a contender, but every team would have had him if they could have, especially at his acceptable price point.
Kyrie Irving
NBA Seasons: 14 (ongoing)
Total career earnings: $315,811,186
Highest single-season salary ranking: 12th (2022-23)
Irving is one of the biggest ever earners in the history of all professional sports, and after his career rejuvenation in Dallas, he has more yet to come. By the end of his career, he will have approached nearly half a billion in pure playing salary alone. And yet despite six times placing in the top 20 in the NBA in terms of highest individual player salary, he has somehow never quite cracked the Top 10, and ranks a mere 25th this season despite earning $41 million. If you are earning $41 million at your job and yet somehow have 24 higher-paid co-workers, I'm interested in any openings you may have, let's keep in touch.
Jayson Tatum
NBA Seasons: 8 (ongoing)
Total career earnings: $155,977,000
Highest single-season salary ranking: 36th (2021-22)
As with Kyrie Irving above, the fact that Jayson Tatum has yet to be a Top 10 earner in any given NBA season is something that will change. And it will change soon; the $34,848,340 Tatum is earning this season will skyrocket to $54,126,380 in the next, and will grow into the $60-70 million ranges from there. The best player on the defending NBA champion deserves to be paid like one of the very best, of course, but if this ranking list is ever to be repeated on HoopsHype, do not expect to see Tatum on it.
Jimmy Butler
NBA Seasons: 14 (ongoing)
Total career earnings: $312,683,265
Highest single-season salary ranking: 11th (four times)
For all the noise around him right now, driven by his curmudgeonly behaviour, Butler's career is still ongoing. His recent suspension for detrimental conduct, and Miami's resultant decrease in leverage, will have likely lowered his price in trade, as will the fact that he is now at the age he once said he could never see himself playing at. Yet whichever team does acquire Jimmy in trade will still have to part with significant cash to play him; in four of the last six seasons, including this one, Butler has ranked exactly 11th in the NBA in individual player salary.
John Stockton
NBA Seasons: 19
Career earnings since 1990: $65,975,000
Highest single-season salary ranking: 15th (1999-00)
While it is a reflection of his era rather than his individual abilities, only twice in his storied career did John Stockton earn more than eight figures in annual playing salary. Those two $11 million paychecks during the twilight of his playing years were good enough for 15th and 19th in league-wide salary, where only once previously had he ranked in the top 30. Like many players, Stockton topped up his playing salary with brand endorsement deals, including one with Pepsi, for whom he recorded this excellent TV advert.
Kevin Johnson
NBA Seasons: 12
Career earnings since 1990: $28,500,000
Highest single-season salary ranking: 13th (1996-97)
Johnson's total career earnings were deflated by the relatively early end to his career – he was a generation too early for the longer average career lengths enjoyed in the modern era, and played only six games after his 32nd birthday. This timeline also kept relatively low the salaries for a player who at his peak was among the world's best, a 20-points-per-game scorer back when such a thing was much rarer than it is now. Accordingly, in only the final two seasons of his career (brief 1999-00 comeback excepted) did he come close to being one of the 10 highest-paid players in the league, ranking 13th and 16th respectively having never previously been higher than 34th.
Kevin Love
NBA Seasons: 17 (ongoing)
Total career earnings: $276,212,518
Highest single-season salary ranking: 11th (2015-16)
Love has reinvented himself several times over his career. From young franchise big and dominant rebounder, he became a quality stretch big and third wheel, and is still earning $3.85 million today by virtue of the two-year, $8 million pact he took to re-sign with the Miami Heat over the summer. He earned a lot of money in his peak years, too – between 2012 and 2022, he was never lower than 30th in league-wide salary and was in the top 20 twice, peaking at 11th in the 2015-16 campaign before the NBA's transformative salary cap spike.
LaMarcus Aldridge
NBA Seasons: 17
Total career salaries: $215,090,968
Highest single season salary ranking: 11th (2015-16)
Aldridge was one of the last players to take what was once the customary full five-year maximum-value rookie scale contract extension, before a combination of both custom and rule changes made such practice rarer. Because of that, he was tied down across his first nine years in the league to contracts that only once saw him rank above 30th in highest individual player salary, that being the 20th place he ranked in the extension's final year. Hitting the free market in the summer of 2015 saw him leap up to 11th for the 2015-16 season, but the enormous salary cap spike the following summer saw him quickly drop down again to 27th, and he would only fall further down the rankings from there.
Manu Ginobili
NBA Seasons: 17
Total career earnings: $129,539,615
Highest single-season salary ranking: 26th (2012-13)
Whether it was facilitated by his willingness to come off the bench or not is hard to say. But Ginobili consistently took team-friendly deals to stay with the San Antonio Spurs during both his and their glory years. In particular, his second contract that he signed in the summer of 2004 tied him down for six years, without ever making him one of the highest-paid players in the league (peaking at 52nd in the 2009-10 season, the last of that contract). Both on the court and in the accounts, Ginobili was a huge help for the Spurs.
Mitch Richmond
NBA Seasons: 14
Career earnings since 1990: $51,911,000
Highest single-season salary ranking: 20th (1999-00)
Prior to the $10 million he earned in the 1999-00 season, which bumped him up to 20th in the league in terms of highest individual player salary, Richmond had never been higher than 42nd. That ranking had come all the way back in 1994-95, and had gone backwards significantly since then; indeed, in the 1998-99 season immediately before his big payday, Richmond had ranked a mere 142nd, despite having been an All-Star for each of the previous six seasons. Unfortunately for the then-Washington Bullets, the Mitch Richmond that they opened the books for was no longer the star of his middle career; Richmond appeared in only 37 games for that $10 million, was cut at season's end, dropped to a career-low 4.1 points per game the year after, and then never played in the NBA again.
Rudy Gobert
NBA Seasons: 12 (ongoing)
Total career earnings: $261,348,195
Highest single-season salary ranking: 13th (twice)
Across the last four seasons, Gobert has ranked 16th, 13th, 13th and 15th in salary, and he is still under contract to the Minnesota Timberwolves for three more years to come. However, those final three years come with a pay cut; Gobert's salary will drop to $35 million starting next season, and never again will he foreseeably come close to being in the Top 10 highest paid players around the league. [By the way, try and imagine a life where taking home $35 million represents a pay cut. What a world the NBA is.]
Shawn Marion
NBA Seasons: 16
Total career earnings: $134,936,762
Highest single-season salary ranking: 12th (2007-08)
When Steve Nash (below) was being vastly underpaid for his MVP-caliber play, Marion was earning a lot more to be his wingman. The six-year, $75.35 million contract he signed with the Phoenix Suns before the 2003-04 season was one of the biggest in the league at the time, and brought about much of the ugly cap-cutting maneuvers that the Suns engaged in at the time – even during the midst of a period of competitiveness – so as to avoid luxury tax penalties deemed too punitive. This included going down to the smallest possible roster (at the time, 12 players) for the longest possible period of time (at the time, two weeks), so as to save every dollar possible. At least Marion, in his own inimitable way, came through with three All-Star caliber seasons of play in that time.
Steve Nash
NBA Seasons: 18
Total career salaries: $146,936,620
Highest single season salary ranking: 33rd (2009-10)
What better testament can there be to how surprising Steve Nash late-career breakout can there be than the fact that, during his first Most Valuable Player season of 2004-05, he was only the 50th highest-paid player in the league. This was the first year of his third contract, too, so it is not as if he was tied to a previous underpayment at the time. The sixth and final year of that deal saw Nash climb to the 33rd highest salary in the NBA, but it was his only season higher than 40th, a remarkable return for a two-time MVP.
Tim Hardaway
NBA Seasons: 13
Career earnings since 1990: $46,661,390
Highest single-season salary ranking: 14th (2000-01)
The one year, $12 million contract that Hardaway took to re-sign with the Heat for the 2000-01 season was more than double the highest amount he earned in any other season, that being the $5.6 million he took home in 1998-99, which ranked a lowly 44th. Hardaway did nearly crack the Top 10 once previously, when he earned $3.34 million in the first season of his second contract back in 1993-94, good for sixteenth in the league. But the $12 million single-season dollar amount stands anomalous.
Tony Parker
NBA Seasons: 18
Total career salaries: $168,282,460
Highest single season salary ranking: 31st (2010-11)
Parker was never the best point guard in the NBA, and accordingly, he was never paid like it. But what he was was a very good guard, ideally situated for his talents alongside the great Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili. By virtue of having both Parker and the aforementioned Manu tied down to team-favorable contracts throughout their best years, the Spurs were able to keep their Big Three together despite their revenue limitations and were able to always be there or thereabouts in the NBA title conversation.
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: NBA stars who were never in the Top 10 in salaries
