Hoop Dreams: How Many Years It Would Take You To Match Career Earnings of the Average NBA Player
As the NBA playoffs take center stage among sports this month, it’s easy to get lost in the thrill of the game and forget that we are watching a sport that pits millionaires against one another.
It's big entertainment -- the NBA is a $14 billion industry. Few people make what the average NBA player does.
As we have been watching the tall guys put the round leather object through the twine, we have wondered just how many years it would take the average person to match the career earnings of the average NBA player. See how it breaks down.
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How Much Does the Average NBA Player Earn?
Per Basketball Reference, the median NBA salary is $4.9 million per year. The most common NBA career lasts about five years (almost no one plays for nearly a quarter of a century like LeBron James or Vince Carter), according to basketball data website The Ball Zone.
That means an NBA player making the median salary over the course of a five-year career earns approximately $24.5 million – and that’s not counting any side income such as endorsement deals.
How Much Does the Average American Earn?
The annual salary for the average American varies year by year; however, the most recent National Average Wage Index provided by the Social Security Administration (SSA) found that in 2024 the national average wage was $69,847.
So, How Long Would It Take To Match an NBA Player's Earnings?
At $69,847 per year, it would take the average American a staggering 350 years to earn what the average NBA player does.
Of course, most Americans don’t make the same amount of money every year; even at the same job, there typically are raises that grow your salary. If you added an annual 4% cost-of-living increase, you could cut the time to match the $24.5 million down to 70 years.
But how many people work 70 years? And how many companies give 4% raises every year that grow a salary from around $70,000 to over $1 million? Odds are pretty low of either of those things happening.
The reality: Wages for middle-income earners have increased by a total of about 29% (less than 0.6% per year) over the past 40 years, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
What if you invested your money the way experts suggest? Putting aside 20% per year for retirement for 40 years and netting the historical profit margin from the stock market of 8%, you still could get to only around $4.4 million by retirement. That's just about 18% of the income an NBA player at the median earnings over the average five-year career.
A 20-year bull market that returned an average of 18% per year could help get you close -- maybe up to $16 million. The stock market has been returning about 15% per year over the last decade, and the 1980s and 1990s were at around 17%. So it's not inconceivable to hit eight figures.
But, even in those most optimistic of scenarios, the average American is not going to be able to match a five-year NBA contract payout in a working lifetime.
The bottom line: Unless your vertical jump is around 30 inches and you have a killer jump shot, you are probably not going to end up with the same kind of paydays as the pros you’ve been watching in the playoffs.
This article was provided by MoneyLion.com for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal or tax advice.
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