The Los Angeles Lakers (3-15) Kobe Bryant and the Brooklyn Nets (5-13) Joe Johnson are the two highest paid players in the NBA this season. Their teams combined have won a total of eight games while losing 28. Bryant’s salary represents the last year of a lucrative deal he signed to say a proper sayonara to his Lakers legend — it pays him a cool $25,000,000.
Next on the list isn’t LeBron James, as you might expect — he’s third at 22,971,000. Nope it’s Brooklyn’s Joe Johnson, an enormously gifted veteran scorer who makes $24,894,863 this year. Rounding out the top five are Carmelo Anthony at No. 4 ($22,875,000) and Dwight Howard ($22,359,364) at No. 5, both of whose teams also have losing records early. Rockets are 8-11. Knicks stand at 9-10. You have to go down to No. 78 on the NBA salary list before you get to a player making less than $10 million this season — and that’s Memphis forward Zach Randolph at $9,638,555. (He’ll make more than $10 million next year in the final year of his current deal.)
