NBA players are some of the best-paid athletes in the entire world. A veteran minimum contract guarantee can net players with NBA experience almost $2 million. Most NBA contracts, especially for the stars, are completely guaranteed regardless of the number of games played. As a result, almost all top-tier NBA athletes accumulate generational wealth.
Their salaries seem hard to perceive for regular people, but there is a clear hierarchy within the NBA world where players on the larger end contracts take care of the ones around them that don’t have the same contracts.
Multiple players like Damian Lillard, Julius Randle, Christian Wood, and others, were asked who on their team would be the one to pick up the check. The most notable answers came from Christian Wood, who named his new teammate Luka Doncic and Gary Payton II, who named his new teammate Damian Lillard.
Dame and Luka picking up checks? 🤔
That's what their fellow NBA stars say 🤷♂️https://t.co/duKLNRb7lv
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) July 13, 2022
Doncic will see his massive rookie supermax extension kick in this season, where his salary will jump from $10 million to $37 million. Lillard signed one of the most lucrative contract extensions in history with his recent 2-year, $122 million extension that will see him earn well over $50 million for those two seasons.
Other notable answers came from Obi Toppin and Julius Randle. Randle believed he is the teammate that would pick up the check, but Obi named former league MVP Derrick Rose. Rose is known to be a great veteran in the league, so it is not surprising that Toppin named Rose.
These dinners are some of the best ways for teammates to build chemistry, and locker room leaders usually take the initiative of taking care of everyone in such situations. All the players named are league veterans or stars of their team, so they understand what it takes to ensure that morale is high.
