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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:
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.
Every year, NBA royalty disappears from the league for good. More often than not, that happens quietly. But that was not the case in 2016, when Kobe Bryant went out with a Hollywood ending by scoring 60 points in a widely expected final game against …
Every year, NBA royalty disappears from the league for good. More often than not, that happens quietly. But that was not the case in 2016, when Kobe Bryant went out with a Hollywood ending by scoring 60 points in a widely expected final game against the Utah Jazz.
Kobe was not the only big-time NBA legend to finish their career that season, as Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett left the game that year too. All in all, the players who retired from the NBA that season combined for 71 All-Star appearances, which makes it easily the most decorated retirement class in league history.
How do other retirement classes compare to 2016? You can see for yourself below. (We start with 2022 because we’re not sure some of the 2023 guys like John Wall or Victor Oladipo are 100 percent done with the league).
LeBron James has famously reached the NBA Finals 10 times, ranking third in conference titles behind only Bill Russell and Sam Jones. This is a pretty amazing feat considering he has played in a 30-team era where three playoff rounds are required to …
LeBron James has famously reached the NBA Finals 10 times, ranking third in conference titles behind only Bill Russell and Sam Jones. This is a pretty amazing feat considering he has played in a 30-team era where three playoff rounds are required to make the championship series, compared to often just one in the 1960s when Russell and Jones played.
However, there’s a caveat: while Russell played in the toughest conference (or division, as it was called then) in each of his seasons in the league, LeBron has only done so in five of his 21 years as a pro – just 23.81 percent of the time.
Among the greatest players ever, this puts him near the bottom in terms of conference difficulty faced, per HoopsHype research.
In contrast, Dirk Nowitzki spent 19 of his 21 years in the league playing in the strongest conference, the most of any player. That he made all those playoff runs under those circumstances and without All-Star sidekicks says a lot about how underrated his career is.
Below, we’ve ranked the players in our HoopsHype78 based on how frequently they competed in the toughest of the two conferences (defined by the most regular season wins).
Back-to-back games have always been contentious for teams and fans alike. Teams worry about player injuries, while fans are disappointed when their favorites sit out. Over the past decade, load management has emerged as a strategy to address …
Back-to-back games have always been contentious for teams and fans alike. Teams worry about player injuries, while fans are disappointed when their favorites sit out. Over the past decade, load management has emerged as a strategy to address back-to-backs.
But who gets the short and long end of the stick when it comes to the NBA scheduling those games?
We looked up all regular season games since 2004-05 (when the league expanded to 30 teams) to find out. The main takeaway: The Lakers score a major win with the fewest back-to-backs in the league in the last 20 years at just 336. (For context, the Clippers had 382, which amounts to 2.3 more per season on average.)
Here’s the overall ranking:
A couple of weeks ago, we released our updated GOAT players list, which for the first time featured LeBron James at No. 1 ahead of Michael Jordan. Today, we’re following that up with a breakdown of the amount of time the players in the ranking spent …
A couple of weeks ago, we released our updated GOAT players list, which for the first time featured LeBron James at No. 1 ahead of Michael Jordan.
Today, we’re following that up with a breakdown of the amount of time the players in the ranking spent playing for each of the NBA franchises.
Unsurprisingly, the Lakers and Celtics are leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else, with the Spurs coming at No. 3, which is quite commendable for a franchise that didn’t join the NBA till 1976.
HoopsHype puts together a list of the 25 easiest paths to an NBA championship in league history, including the 2023-24 Boston Celtics.
With the Boston Celtics officially sealing the 2023-24 NBA championship for the franchise’s record 18th title, surpassing the Los Angeles Lakers once more for the most championships won by a single team, much was made about the path Boston had to the title.
The East, even by its own standards, was weak this season, and that’s before considering all of the injuries to Boston’s playoff counterparts in the East, including former league MVP Joel Embiid suffering through various physical issues in the postseason, Jimmy Butler missing for the Miami Heat due to injury, OG Anunoby being hobbled and Julius Randle being out for the Knicks, and so on.
Oh, and the team that made it out of the West, the Dallas Mavericks, wasn’t injured but wasn’t exactly a powerhouse, finishing the season 50-32 with a +2.1 net rating, the No. 15 mark in the NBA this year.
Regardless, after doing the research, the 2023-24 Celtics had merely the 20th-easiest path to a championship in NBA history based on opponent regular-season win percentage (58.23 percent), so it wasn’t the most difficult path but it wasn’t a complete cakewalk, either.
The 2022-23 Denver Nuggets, on the other hand, had the fifth-easiest path to a championship ever, with an opponent combined regular-season win percentage of 53.05 percent.
(If you’re really looking for a way to downplay this Celtics title run besides opponent injuries in the playoffs, you can just say Boston had the fourth-easiest path to a championship of the 2000s.)
Below, check out the full list of the 25 easiest paths to a championship in NBA history based on opponent combined win percentage in the regular season.
HoopsHype takes a look at the NBA players who made the biggest scoring jumps from the regular season to the NBA Finals.
For NBA players, there’s stepping up in the playoffs, an impressive enough feat, and then there’s stepping up in the NBA Finals, a whole different level of greatness.
Throughout NBA history, there have been various examples of players who made huge scoring leaps in the NBA Finals, from Jerry West in 1969 to LeBron James in 2015 and Kevin Durant in 2017, and much more.
Today, we’ll highlight the NBA stars who elevated their scoring the most from their regular-season averages to the Finals stage, a list featuring some of the biggest names in the history of the sport as well as a few surprises.
Check out the list we put together below.
From 5-foot-3 through 7-foot-7, HoopsHype presents the highest-paid NBA players ever in every single height bracket.
Today, we’re going to do a fun exercise where we present the highest-paid NBA player by every single height, ranging from 5-foot-3 all the way to 7-foot-7
Of course, this list is about to be dominated by various active players considering how high player salaries have gotten, but there are a few old-school legends thrown in there, too.
Below, check out what our research showed us when we looked up the highest-paid NBA players ever by height.
HoopsHype lists the Top 50 NBA players who made the most money and never made an All-NBA team.
Did you know 22 players in NBA history have made over $150 million without earning an All-NBA selection?
HoopsHype ranked the 50 highest-paid players who never made an All-NBA selection, combining to earn over $8 billion, according to our database.
HoopsHype’s Alberto de Roa contributed research to this report.
