kcktiny wrote:Many of us know that in 1991 Pippen signed one of the worst contracts in the NBA. A five-year 18 million dollar deal that he played under much of his prime years.
I beg to differ.
That's $3.6 million/year. At the time of that signing Magic Johnson was making $2.5 million/year, so was Karl Malone, David Robinson, and a few others. Not many were making more than $3.5 million (maybe two?) and the highest salary was $4.2 million (Ewing).
Heck in 1991-92 Michael Jordan's salary was only $3.3 million. He did not get what we might consider a huge salary increase until 5 years later.
Plus in today's dollars Pippen's deal is some $32,000,000 over 5 years. Even if half was taken up by taxes, that's still some $16,000,000, or over $3,000,000/year.
That's far more than enough to live comfortably even today (let alone 30 years ago) over the rest of your entire life. He chose the path of long term security over short term risk, actually a wise move (think Nerlens Noel, or Dennis Schroder).
He may have foolishly wasted some of that, but nonetheless a far better position to be in than some 99.99% of us.
The big issue for Pippen's deal is just how much league revenue and the salary cap increased during the deal. The growth took a reasonable deal at the beginning into a massive bargain. It was also essentially a 7 year contract (or more precisely, it was a 5 year extension on top of the 2 years he had remaining on his existing deal. You can't sign a contract that long anymore so a contract that's severely underpaid doesn't run as long - guys get another chance at a full-value contract much sooner.
You can say that happened somewhat recently with guys who signed contracts in 2015 (especially if they were max limited deals to stars like Kawhi), then had them get passed by bigger deals as the cap jumped up. But the cap didn't go up as dramatically as the 90's jump, and players got a chance to reset their deals far sooner then Pippen.
