Kobe Bryant Believes Players and Owners Are Overpaid

By MH
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Updated: October 15, 2014

Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant believes NBA players are overpaid, but so are owners according to Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com.

Bryant spoke on the matter after a Lakers practice on Tuesday.

“Listen: business is business,” Bryant said. “I think people get that confused very easily in understanding that players should take substantially less than their market value in order to win championships.

The whole issue of player contracts and money arose after the NBA announced a record-breaking nine-year television contract with ESPN and Turner Broadcasting. According to ESPN.com the deal is worth 24 billion dollars. After the deal was announced Kobe Bryant had this to say on Twitter.

Players are “encouraged” per new CBA to take less to win or risk being called selfish+ungrateful while nbatv deal goes UP by a BILLION #biz

— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) October 7, 2014

Yesterday, the Lakers superstar expressed his thoughts again following the team’s practice. Bryant spoke to ESPN and said, “players are overpaid, but so are the owners. And you have to fight for what your market value is.”

“It’s very easy to look at the elite players around the league and talk about the amount of money that they get paid and compare that with the average [player],” Bryant said. “But we don’t look at what the owners get paid and how much revenue they generate off the backs of these players.”

Kobe Bryant signed a two-year extension last year which is worth a reported $48.5 million. According to ESPN.com’s Ramona Shelburne, Bryant will continue to carry out his status as the NBA’s highest-paid player by the end of his extension contract, making $23.5 million in the first year and $25 million in the second.

ESPN.com’s Larry Coon, cited league sources and reports that the current TV network deal will produce $1.03 billion in league revenue in 2015-16, and this number will increase by about $1.1 billion in 2016-17 when the new deal kicks in.

More importantly, the new deal will provide an average of $2.66 billion per year to the NBA, which nearly triples the money made from the current deal paid (nearly $940 million per season!!).

“And now,” Bryant continued, “you have a TV deal that comes out and you look at it almost being up a billion dollars [more] than the previous one, and this is coming off the back of a lockout [in 2011] in which the [salary] cap — it’s not a hard cap, but it’s pretty close to being a hard cap.

“It’ll be interesting to see what happens in this next labor agreement, because my understanding is this TV deal kicks in the last year of this current agreement. So I’m sure they’ll try to lock us out again [in 2017] and harden the cap even more.”

“I think as players, you’ve kind of got to hold your ground a little bit and not be afraid of what the public perception is,” Bryant said. “Instead, you try to educate the public a little bit and understand it’s not about complaining about how much you’re making, because that’s ridiculous. We are overpaid, but so are the owners. And you have to fight for what your market value is.”

When ESPN asked Bryant what his recent extension means given the financial reality, Bryant said: “I’m the luckiest basketball player in the league, because I got very fortunate to be with an organization that takes care of its players, rewards its players and has a long history of doing that.”

He added: “I think it speaks volumes, not only to me and to this city but to other players around this league as well. You look around at some of the other owners that try to milk their players or get rid of them or discard them, this organization doesn’t do that.”