The NBA is something that millions of people watch, pay attention to, and it's something they put their heart and soul into. There are different tiers of fans, as there are fans who keep up with the league on a daily basis, there are fans who check their social media and get their news there, and then there are those 40-50 year old men who check Yahoo News and find out LeBron James signed with the Lakers. Wherever you lie, it's always interesting to learn some completely random information that feels like you shouldn't know about it, but you're glad that you're aware of it.
J.R Smith's brother
J.R Smith is a veteran in the NBA, whose days of making bank in the NBA may be coming to a close soon. If you know your NBA pretty well, you know J.R Smith is quite a unique one, as some may be shocked to hear that the 36 year old is an American college golfer for the North Carolina A&T Aggies. How about that? He also sent out a tweet five hours ago stating this:
You can't not love J.R.
Anyways, J.R was in a very good place in his career around 2013 as he was a pivotal bench player for the New York Knicks. He won 6th man of the year, was getting really good playing time whilst not starting, and he had a 4 year/24 million dollar contract going. Life sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Well, this had J.R thinking, and he must've thought what else he can get in this contract. The Knicks fans loved him, the organization loved him, and for great reason, which led to him negotiating with the front office to sign his brother, Chris Smith, to a 2 million dollar contract as well. You may be thinking, "Well that's nice but I'm sure his brother deserves a chance to shine in the NBA", you are wrong. I could show you the stats but due to a Sports Illustrated article, he was described as "definitively the worst player in the league" and completely undeserving of all that money from the Knicks. Although family is family, and you have to respect J.R for looking out for his family.
2.
Money is money right, who doesn't want it? Right, of course. You play in the NBA, you make money right? Where is this going? Aside from digging deep into the NBA financial rules, salary cap rules, I am going to explain this short story as simple and blunt as possible. Anybody heard of Monta Ellis? If you said yes, you are quite the NBA fan and I applaud you. He was a big time player for the Indiana Pacers, he played for the Bucks with Brandon Jennings, and he actually went head to head with LeBron James and Dwayne Wade on the Heat. Monta Ellis was a really talented NBA scorer, had a lot of success in his NBA career, but just sort of has seemed to drift away from NBA competition lately. There have been multiple reports of him working out and attempting to make an NBA return, but he unfortunately hasn't had much success. Teams have a salary cap and this goes up depending on how much they owe their players. Monta Ellis has been getting paid by the Indiana Pacers, his last team to play on, since 2016-2017. How is this possible, can you sign me up for this? Trust me, I've tried to do the Monta Ellis trick and it's a really rare occasion. On a serious note, this NBA season is the last year where the Pacers owe him money, and they owe him $2 million this year. He made about 10 million during 2016-2017, but has made 2 million every year after that.
There are a few other situations similar to Monta Ellis where there are geniuses also making money without having to play basketball. That should be me. I digress. The Lakers signed Luol Deng to a monster 4 year/$72 million deal. That's not normal, he is not an NBA superstar, he was averaging 12 points a game! Oh my. Interestingly enough, this 2016 NBA free agency year, where players sign new contracts, was the year where the NBA first begin signing players to incredibly expensive contracts and nothing we've ever seen before. Luol Deng made $18 million, $17 million, $14 million, and $5 million all from the Lakers in 4 years where he has barely played any basketball! Oh, and he also made $2 million with Minnesota in the 2018-19 season if you weren't already sick enough of this man's wealth. The big takeaway here is that Luol was already guaranteed to get all of that money whether he plays or not, and that is the beauty of signing guaranteed deals in life. He didn't have to be on the Lakers to keep making money, he could've retired from the NBA and became an employee at McDonalds and the man would still be getting his checks from the Lakers.
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