John Wall dislikes max salaries, knows he’s worth more than Reggie Jackson
When Washington Wizards point guard John Wall signed his max-level contract extension in the offseason of 2013, he did so at a time when his value was in question. Though he had shown flashes of brilliance in his first four seasons, Wall had not yet ascended to the clear-cut All-Star status he holds today. The Wizards took a chance on committing to a talented player who hadn’t yet proven himself to be a force, although counting on Wall arguably sped up his development. He’s now the face of the franchise and one of the best guards in basketball.
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Two summers later, Wall looks like a bargain with just one season of the five-year, $80-million deal completed. He made roughly $14.7 million in 2014-15 and will not become an unrestricted free agent until the summer of 2019, at which point Wall will be a few months shy of 29 years old. For the next four years, Wall will be one of the most affordable players in the NBA relative to on-court impact, especially once the salary cap leaps in accordance with the influx of TV-deal money next summer. His salary will allow the Wizards the flexibility to extend promising shooting guard Bradley Beal and chase D.C.-born superstar Kevin Durant, but it’s entirely possible that Wall will make a comparatively low figure while serving as the leader of the squad.
This situation does not make Wall very happy. In fact, he thinks max-level salaries are unjust and directly compared his deal to one of this summer’s most confounding contracts. From J. Michael for CSNWashington.com (via PBT):
“People talk about me getting $80 million, now you got people getting $85 million that haven’t made the All-Star (Game) or anything like that,” Wall said Tuesday while watching his summer league team compete vs. the Dallas Mavericks at Thomas & Mack Center. “I guess they came in at the right time. That new CBA kicked in and they’re good now. Reggie Jackson gets five years, $80 million. I’m getting the same as Reggie Jackson.”
Assessing Wall’s claim requires some background on the NBA’s maximum salary structure. A player with zero to six years of experience, like Wall, can make 25 percent of the salary cap in the first year of a max-level extension. Furthermore, players receiving an extension on a rookie-scale deal, like Wall, can only see 7.5-percent raises (as defined by the first-year salary) in each season of the contract. That means that Wall’s $14.7-million salary for this past season can only rise approximately $1.1 million per season over the life of the contract, which will put him at a high of nearly $19.2 million in 2018-19. By contrast, Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans just signed a max-level extension under very similar circumstances (first pick in the draft, before the fourth season, etc.) that will pay him a predicted $29 million in 2016-17, the first season of the deal. With just two years between those extension, it’s easy to see why Wall would think he was handed a raw deal.
That’s not to say that he was right to single out Jackson, whose five-year, $80-million contract with the Detroit Pistons stood out as one of the most questionable moves of the summer relative to apparent market value. Apart from Wall’s apparent breach of etiquette in questioning the terms of another player’s contract, his complaint needs to be looked at in the context of a league that allows contract levels to fluctuate based on the level of the salary cap. With this offseason’s post-rookie maximum salary set at a little over $16.4 million, Jackson’s five-season contract is considerably below the current max and much lower than the 2016-17 max that will apply to Davis’s extension.
The free-agent market tends to pay out larger contracts from year to year in sports without a salary cap, too, if only because agents and players tend to start negotiations with the precedent of past deals. Yet the NBA’s recent and ongoing rises in earnings have skewed salary levels to a greater extent and will continue to do so as the new TV money flows in. The union’s rejection of the league’s “cap smoothing” proposal ensured as much, although it simultaneously served as an argument for players making as much money as possible. Union executive director Michele Roberts’s also expressed that philosophy withrhetoric against the concepts of the maximum salary and cap, and it figures that Wall liked what she had to say.
The complicating factor is that it’s not clear that Wall could have earned more in negotiations with the Wizards if there had been no maximum salary provision. While Wall’s deal now looks like a bargain for Washington, the extension gave him long-term protection after a third NBA season in which he missed time due to injury and didn’t quite establish himself as a can’t-miss star. A five-year max deal made him a fixture with the Wizards and put him in a position to rise to his current level of excellent play. It worked out for him given the circumstances.
However, Wall has a solid point on principle even if the specifics don’t easily apply to his situation. As Chicago Bulls wing Jimmy Butler proved this offseason, stars coming off rookie-scale contracts have very few options apart from taking a five-year max from their current team or accepting a qualifying offer to become an unrestricted free agent the following summer. The latter option seemed too risky even one year before 2016’s coming windfall, a sign that the best young players won’t sacrifice a difference in salary for more freedom in choosing their employer. For instance, Davis is going to be a relative bargain towards the end of his new contract extension no matter how large it looks right now. Unlike LeBron James, he had no leverage to take a short-term deal in order to maximize his long-term earning potential. Never mind that Davis would fetch just as much, if not more, than LeBron in a truly open market.
If either the league or union opts out of the current collective bargaining agreement before July 2017, the union would do well to focus on the terms of restricted free agency in addition to issues such as the definition of basketball-related income. As currently constructed, the best players on or coming off their rookie contracts have no meaningful control over their futures.
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
