The NBA playoffs tip off this week with the Oklahoma City Thunder coming in as the slight favorite over the Boston Celtics to win the title, with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Lakers the next top picks.
The Thunder were the NBA’s youngest team and also had one of its lowest payrolls, but Thunder players can earn an NBA-high $12.4 million in total bonuses if they win the title after posting the best record in the NBA.
NBA players have the highest salaries in U.S. pro sports by a wide margin. The same holds true come playoff time.
Players on NBA playoff teams will divvy up $34.7 million this season, with each team receiving a chunk based on how far their teams go. The total is up $1 million from last year.
Teams earn more for each round they advance, and the NBA also factors in regular-season standings in its playoff pool, with an added bonus of $869,345 for the best record among all 30 teams. Players will receive anywhere from $466,263—roughly $30,400 per player based on a 15-player roster—to potentially $12.4 million ($828,000 per player) for the NBA champion if it is the Thunder, who finished the season 68-14.
Clubs that finished as the seventh or eighth seed do not receive any bonuses for their regular-season records, and players on those teams would earn $719,000 if they made a historic run to lift the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy. The Houston Rockets in 1995 were the lowest-seeded team to win the NBA Finals, doing it as a six seed.
Teams do not earn anything for the play-in tournament beyond their regular-season salaries, which are typically paid out over 12 months.
The NBA playoff pool is up 3% over last year after a 25% bump the previous season when the new collective bargaining went into effect. The CBA reads: “A Player Playoff Pool for each Salary Cap Year in an amount equal to the greater of: (i) $31,014,350 multiplied by a fraction, the numerator of which is BRI for the Salary Cap Year immediately preceding the then-current Salary Cap Year and the denominator of which is BRI for the 2021-22 Salary Cap Year, and (ii) the amount of the Player Playoff Pool for the immediately preceding Salary Cap Year.”
Last season, playoff bonuses rose between 12% and 17% for each round, except for the NBA champion, whose payout was boosted 79% to $8.55 million, up from $4.78 million.
The amount NBA players earn in the playoffs is much higher than those in the NFL, NHL and MLB.
The NFL uses part of the playoff gate revenue to fund its player postseason pool. Players earned $49,500 to $54,500 during the first two weeks of this year’s playoffs, per their CBA. Player paychecks jumped to $77,000 for the conference championship games. The Super Bowl was worth $171,000 for each player on the winning team and $96,000 for ones on the losing side. The maximum a player could earn during the playoffs was $357,000.
The MLB playoff pool, also culled from playoff ticket revenue, was a record $129.1 million last year, thanks to a pair of big market teams—the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees—in the World Series. The Dodgers split up $46.5 million among the players, with each receiving $477,441.
The NHL playoff pool is $23 million this season, up 4.5% from last year. The Florida Panthers shared $6.54 million in 2024, while the runner-up Edmonton Oilers got $3.78 million. The rest of the NHL playoff breakdown included $2.06 million for each team that lost in the conference finals, $859,375 for those out in the semifinals, and $429,688 for each team that fell in the first round. The New York Rangers won the Presidents’ Trophy, which carried a $859,375 bonus their players.
The average NBA salary is more than $10 million, led by Stephen Curry at $55.8 million. Forty-nine NBA players earned at least $30 million in salary this season before incentives, including Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ($35.9 million) and Isaiah Hartenstein ($30 million) on the Thunder. The playoffs serve as pocket change for those guys. But a pair of players on their playoff roster, Dillon Jones and Jaylin Williams, earned less than $3 million this season. An NBA title would bump each of their seasonal pay more than 30%.
