“I would say there are some guys in the league that are hurting right now because obviously a work stoppage is in place, there could be a pay stoppage. We are on pace to lose about 23.5 percent of income of this season,” McCollum told Williams.
The median salary of an NBA player as of 2017 was $2.5 million, according to Basketball Reference, while the average salary of an NBA player was $6,936,154.
So, some people out there may ask, but how is this possible for players to be living paycheck to paycheck?
The minimum NBA salary, in 2019-20, for a player with no prior NBA experience was eligible for an $893,310 minimum salary with the minimum set at 90 percent of the salary cap.
Obviously there’s a bit of discrepancy in the lower paid players to the highest paid, but there’s more to it than that goes into relying on the next paycheck as McCollum explained.