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Long gone are the days when New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago produced much of the talent we saw on NBA courts. Today, players come from all over the place, creating new millionaires across the globe. We’ve delved deep into NBA salary information …
Long gone are the days when New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago produced much of the talent we saw on NBA courts. Today, players come from all over the place, creating new millionaires across the globe.
We’ve delved deep into NBA salary information (our data goes back to 1990) to identify the highest-paid players born in each major basketball hotbed – from Seattle to Melbourne, Belgrade to Los Angeles, and everywhere in between.
Take a look below:
There are many NBA players with multiple MVP awards, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who won six such accolades in his career, the most of any player ever. His lead there should be pretty safe, too, especially as LeBron James’ career continues to …
There are many NBA players with multiple MVP awards, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who won six such accolades in his career, the most of any player ever. His lead there should be pretty safe, too, especially as LeBron James’ career continues to wind down. James has four in his own right.
But what if NBA players could only win the award once in their careers, as is the case with, for example, writers and the Literature Nobel prize.
We went back in time and looked up the MVP vote through the years to find out.
Check out the results below.
Nikola Jokic has an absolutely incredible imagination.
Nikola Jokic’s Denver Nuggets have been dominant over the Los Angeles Lakers in recent years.
With Denver’s 127-102 road win over L.A. on Saturday night, the Nuggets have now won 13 of 14 games over their Southern California rivals and have ended their season in two straight playoffs. The Nuggets’ dominance over the Lakers has been so profound lately that it’s probably time to unveil a proper nickname like “NikoLA” or “Jok Angeles.”
This success is mainly thanks to Jokic’s sheer brilliance, of course, which is why you’re here in the first place.
READ MORE: Nikola Jokic is somehow better than ever
In the midst of another sublime 34-point, 13-rebound, eight-assist performance, the reigning NBA MVP kinda just started screwing around as the Nuggets toyed with the Lakers in a 70-39 second half for Denver.
With just 0.3 seconds left on the third-quarter clock, Jokic directed promising Nuggets forward Peyton Watson to inbound a generous lob in his direction. Jokic proceeded to one-tap the ball nearly the full length of the court like he was playing water polo, not basketball. And folks, it was actually a lot closer than you’d ever expect it to be. In fact, because of Jokic’s quick one-tap approach, it would’ve beat the buzzer, too!
The big man’s imagination knows no bounds:
one of my favorite missed shots ever. pic.twitter.com/1lXPIPnqaY
— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) November 24, 2024
This is how seriously Jokic takes the Lakers now: he starts doing personal side quests in the middle of blowout wins.
Nonetheless, let’s think about this. How many NBA players would even think of trying something as incredulous as this? Jokic’s outside-the-box thinking and creativity as a professional athlete are things we should really appreciate more.
It’s also worth mentioning that Jokic did make a more reasonable (but still ridiculous) water polo-type shot earlier in the game with three Lakers surrounding him in the paint:
WOW, Nikola Jokić with the water-polo finish
This guy, man pic.twitter.com/tIGdX14J8o
— Matt Brooks (@MattBrooksNBA) November 24, 2024
Man, Jokic is impossible.
What a joy to watch the Nuggets’ superstar center play this game.
Former Vol Dalton Knecht’s results for the Lakers against Denver.
Denver defeated Los Angeles, 127-102, on Saturday at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, California.
Former Vol Dalton Knecht totaled nine points, five rebounds and one assist in 28 minutes for the Lakers.
He converted 3-of-7 field goal attempts, 1-of-4 3-point attempts and 2-of-2 free throw attempts.
The former Vol was selected in the first-round of the 2024 NBA draft (No. 17 overall) by Los Angeles.
Knecht was a transfer from Northern Colorado and played for the Vols during the 2023-24 season under coach Rick Barnes. During his one season at Tennessee, Knecht averaged 21.7 points, 4.9 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game.
He led the Vols to a SEC regular-season championship and an appearance in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament for the second time in school history.
Knecht was the 2024 SEC Player and SEC Newcomer of the Year. He was a consensus All-America standout and earned the Julius Erving Award.
HoopsHype presents the first NBA players to reach every single-season major salary milestone, from $100,000 to to $55 million.
Let’s take a journey through NBA history to find out the first players who reached major salary milestones.
Starting in the 1965-66 season, we’ll explore the first NBA player to earn $100,000, $250,000, $500,000, $1 million, and so on, up to the most recent milestone of $55 million in 2024-25.
You’re about to see a lot of legends on this list, though there are a couple of very fun blast-from-the-past surprises.
Cleveland Cavaliers center Jarrett Allen spoke with HoopsHype Senior NBA Insider Michael Scotto about Cleveland’s historic start to the season, what Donovan Mitchell’s extension meant for the city and the team’s future, how Kenny Atkinson has changed, reuniting with several former Nets teammates and coaches in Cleveland, his goals, and his Thanksgiving event.
After helping the Cavaliers achieve the second-best start to an NBA regular season ever with a 15-0 record, Jarrett Allen helped the Cleveland community begin the holiday season with a terrific start.
Allen hosted his eighth annual Meals + Math Thanksgiving event and provided 25 children from Urban Community School and their families with groceries while teaching kids about math and budgeting.
Following the event, Allen spoke with HoopsHype about Cleveland’s historic start to the season, what Donovan Mitchell’s extension meant for the city and the team’s future, how Kenny Atkinson has changed, reuniting with several former Nets teammates and coaches in Cleveland, his goals, and more on his Thanksgiving event.
A longstanding NBA tradition (especially this time of the year) is to throw stars under the bus for not leading their teams to the title. If Michael Jordan (before the 90s) and LeBron James had to endure that, you know nobody is safe. This approach …
A longstanding NBA tradition (especially this time of the year) is to throw stars under the bus for not leading their teams to the title. If Michael Jordan (before the 90s) and LeBron James had to endure that, you know nobody is safe. This approach puts a lot of emphasis on the star’s perceived shortcomings and not enough on the context in which the failure occurred. It could be due to injuries, but very often, it’s simply not having enough star power around them to go all the way.
The truth is, few things predict success better than the quality of your teammates, which is kind of duh considering no player is going to play more than 20 percent of the minutes on any given team. But we wanted to put that to the test with a fun exercise where we awarded points to each player in NBA history based on the star power of their teammates. We gave 10 points for playing with the MVP, nine points for the second-place finisher, and so on down to one point for playing with a 10th-place finisher. This is admittedly an arbitrary way to measure the star company of a player, but pretty telling all the same.
Below, you’ll see a ranking of the 75 players who played with the most star power, a list that includes both big-name players and rank-and-file ones. On average, they won 3.03 championship rings. For context, the players selected to the NBA75 list, the finest the league has ever seen, won 2.12 rings on average. It’s almost like playing with stars gets you closer to a title than playing like a star.
At the top of the list is Derek Fisher, who played with five players who finished in the Top 10 of the MVP voting with him on the team. Also worth noting: Seven of the nine winningest players in NBA history (rings-wise) crack the Top 9 of this ranking.
The All-Star game is ruined, folks.
Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey. Now, here’s Mike Sykes
Happy Friday, folks! Welcome back to Layup Lines. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you’ve had an excellent week and have a great weekend ahead of you.
Well, folks. We’ve done it. Or, actually, excuse me — they’ve done it.
The NBA All-Star game has officially jumped the shark. It’s not even the All-Star game anymore. It’ll actually be the All-Star games.
According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the NBA has decided to turn the game into a quick flash pickup game format. There will be a four-team tournament between the All-Stars with two semifinal games between teams and then a final game to win the All-Star “tournament,” which seems to be what they’re calling it.
There are more details about the format, but if I’m being honest, I don’t care. I don’t like this. Everything about it feels forced. This doesn’t feel right, you know? This isn’t how the All-Star game is supposed to go. It’s not what it’s supposed to look like.
The NBA All-Star game means something. Or, at least, it was supposed to. It’s supposed to be a celebration of the game and its top talents. However, with the players barely trying, the game has become a shell of itself in recent years.
We’ve had moments of greatness. But, more often than not, we’re getting record-breaking scoring performances, half-hearted shot contests and half-court 3-point bombs. It’s not fun anymore. It doesn’t feel special. No matter how many solutions we all devise plans to try and fix it, it doesn’t mean anything if the players aren’t trying.
That’s how we ended up here. That’s why the NBA has turned the league’s biggest stage into a glorified pickup game.
As much as I hate it, I can’t blame the league for it. The players have pushed things this far. They know it’s bad. The league’s stars have acknowledged it. There’s no real workaround — the players just have to play harder. But they won’t. It’s just not going to happen. There’s too much money involved to risk injury and we’ve collectively devalued the regular season so much that it simply doesn’t mean what it used to mean. It’s a relic. A trophy. An accolade to simply throw on a resume.
Here’s my suggestion: Let’s just treat it like that. The All-Stars selected should be All-Stars in name only. Stop playing the game. End the weekend. Just give the players a week off and see how that goes.
The All-Star game is important. But if players can’t be interested enough in the game to celebrate and compete, so be it. Let’s not make them.
Is that a boring solution? Extremely. But it’s also far less embarrassing than trying to tweak a game repeatedly to continue getting the same result.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Maybe once the game is gone for a few years, it’ll come back and a new generation of talent will be ready to make it mean something again.
Until then, can we please stop messing around?
Bryan Kalbrosky hit me up earlier this week to ask if I thought Franz Wagner was an All-NBA player so far this season. I kind of scoffed at the idea.
Obviously, Franz is in incredible player. But is he one of the best 15 players in the league today? I found that kind of hard to believe.
Then, he did this.
Going toe-to-toe with LeBron James to put up a 37-point, 11-assist double-double and hitting a game-winner on the road against the Lakers? Yeah, man. I don’t know if he’s a top 15 guy. But I’d be silly to say he’s not at least in the conversation at this point.
He’s averaged 25.4 points per game since Paolo Banchero went down on Halloween.
According to HoopsHype’s global rating rankings, Wagner is the 10th best player in the world early on this season and the best under 26 years old.
Simply put, he’s got the juice. So, yeah, Bryan. I think you’re onto something here.
— Guys, Kendrick Lamar dropped an album! Bryan tracked the sports references included in it. There are lots of NBA joints in here.
— It’s hilarious how you still can’t read Russell Westbrook’s 200 triple-double sign. Robert Zeglinski has more.
— If you missed Prince Grimes’ last Layup Lines column, he made a great case for Dalton Knecht as rookie of the year.
— It’s insane how good Egor Demin has been early on in this NCAA season.
That’s a wrap, folks. Thanks so much for reading. Have a fantastic weekend. Peace.
-Sykes ✌️
