Why did NBA salaries surge in the mid-1990s?

[Flashbeanie]

I remember that overnight in 1995 or 1996, a whole bunch of players signed $85 million contracts. Seemed like a huge shift from the previous decade and a half which only saw gradual increases. Was the major concession the rookie salary cap? Seems to me that that moment in NBA history was when the NBA that most people loved started to disappear. Of course, older NBA players like MJ continued to play with passion, but once they left by the early 2000s, that seems to coincide with the start of an era that most people bash as being inferior to the 1990s and 1980s. Is the change in salary structure in 1995 to blame for this nostalgia? or is it simply the tighter handcheck rules or a combination of both? Seems each collective bargaining agreement or after-season meeting of the rules committee introduces some aspect that makes the NBA worse and worse.

[andgar923]

Economy?

Almost every sport was prospering due to many reasons.

So teams could afford to pay players more money.

Now... whether or not they deserved it is another question.

But if you look at sports in general, people were getting huge contracts, some even before they proved anything.

[DuMa]

rise in popularity mostly due to MJ

[loot]

it became a more player orientated game instead of a team orientated game. certain players got huge hype through magazines, sponsor deals etc etc. lots of marketing. the whole focus became a spotlight on stars. hence the overpaying of unproven players and team tying up their cap with unproven players and having troubles building a team around those two.

[D-Rose]

Was a domino effect after Minnesota gave Garnett the huge deal.

[samballs]

MJ

Why ded salaries in the PGA surge in the late 90's early 2000's? Tiger

[miller-time]

when did shaq get a new contract and how much for?

[L.Kizzle]

Didn't Glenn Robinson get some crazy rookie contract??

[Biddy77]

didn't Larry Johnson have one of the two giant contracts that led to all of that stuff? iirc, he was the first to break 80 million, then garnett was the first over 100m. is that right?

[CarpeDiemKJ]

Summer of 1996 was pivotal too.

Pat Ewing inking that 4 year 68 million contract with the Knicks, MJ's much deserved 1 yr 30 million dollar contract, Juwan Howard, and Alonzo Mourning inking 7 year 100+ million dollar deals.

[JayGuevara]

Didn't Glenn Robinson get some crazy rookie contract??

It was like 10 years, 70 million. Then his only other contract was a veterans minimum with the Spurs I think.

[DonDadda59]

rise in popularity mostly due to MJ

Yup.

MJ's popularity and the world's fascination with him made the NBA the hottest sport in America, so the league and teams were raking in the dough and the players' association reasoned that players should see more of this revenue, and thus salaries became inflated. Now the league has to roll back on out of control salaries or many franchises will face bankruptcy because the NBA doesn't have the same pull in had in Jordan's era.

[TheBynumProject]

No one has answered this correctly yet.

The answer is the TV contract with NBC, which took over the NBA is 1990. Jordan, along with Magic and Larry, are big reasons why NBC doled out so much money for the NBA, but the network's TV contract with the league is the direct reason why salaries began to rise in the early 90s and continued to rise throughtout the decade.

NBC started paying the league something like ten times as much money as CBS was paying in the 80s, and as the 90s went on the NBA re-signed with NBC for even more money. They were negotiating four-year contracts (90-94, 94-98, and 98-02) and each contract was worth much more than the previous one.

In 2002 Stern made the terrible mistake of leaving NBC becasue they were no longer willing to give the league the raises it had become accustomed to.

[EllEffEll]

No one has answered this correctly yet.

The answer is the TV contract with NBC, which took over the NBA is 1990. Jordan, along with Magic and Larry, are big reasons why NBC doled out so much money for the NBA, but the network's TV contract with the league is the direct reason why salaries began to rise in the early 90s and continued to rise throughtout the decade.

NBC started paying the league something like ten times as much money as CBS was paying in the 80s, and as the 90s went on the NBA re-signed with NBC for even more money. They were negotiating four-year contracts (90-94, 94-98, and 98-02) and each contract was worth much more than the previous one.

In 2002 Stern made the terrible mistake of leaving NBC becasue they were no longer willing to give the league the raises it had become accustomed to.

:applause: Ding. We have a winner!

[hateraid]

Lol, 20 years ago I remember when John Hotrod Williams was the highest paid player in the league at 5 million a year surpassing Ewing. Hotrod was paid higher than Mark Price, Daugherty, and Nance combined.

[indiefan23]

Was a domino effect after Minnesota gave Garnett the huge deal.

Naw, not that at all. Thats what forced teh lockout and had them put in the cap. So just the opposite. I think it was just at some point players got enough money to get really smart people negotiating for them and the league's teams who had been making enormous profits for years off players found out agents were going to play a bigger role from here on out.

So yea, I'd say agents. The NBA had gotten away with so much that the dam just burst once player's agents figured out how much they were actually worth.