Do Elite Basketball Athletes Deserve their High Salaries?

Get to know more if basketball athletes that deserve higher salaries if they fall in the elite category. Read to check it out and know about the players

Basketball

By SD Desk Last updated Feb 27, 2023

Image Credit: twitter.com/@Yankees

The most significant contracts in NBA and NFL history have been signed in recent years. 28 NBA players have contracts worth more than $27.5 million for the 2019–2020 season, including the highest-paid player in the league, Stephen Curry, who makes more than $40 million annually. In the NFL, quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs agreed to a 10-year, $503 million deal agreement. He’s not the only NFL player that signed contracts for yearly earnings between $20 and $43 million in 2020–21, though! These are simply the most recent instances of how, in the twenty-first century, professional athletes’ pay has increased to previously unheard-of heights, igniting a discussion about whether they merit them. Here are three justifications for why athletes should receive high compensation.

Athletes Make a Lot of Sacrifices

Professional athletes give up critical facets of their lives, particularly their families and health. For instance, away games that take athletes away from their families occur during each season of every professional sport. The fact that players put their bodies in peril every day is more crucial, though. Professional athletes who sustain physical harm may be permanently impaired or crippled; NFL players who sustain many concussions may develop a degenerative condition that progresses over time and results in dementia and depression.

Also, student-athletes want to make the professionals spend all of their free time exercising, as opposed to most teenagers or college-age students who spend their downtime studying, working, or hanging out. Because of the enormous amount of time and effort they invest in training and the significant health risks they face, professional athletes deserve to be paid a decent wage, especially given that their careers often conclude around the age of 35.

Sportspersons Aren’t Paid as Much as We Assumed

Although top-paid athletes receive more media attention, most athletes receive fair compensation. Also, we tend to overlook that published professional athlete earnings are gross salaries. They can seem enormous, but so do the conclusions from them. Besides the taxes everyone pays, including the federal, state, local, and pension, players also have to pay agent fees, $10,000 union dues, and a Jock Tax for each away game. Although their net incomes may be higher than ours, they are still considerably less than advertised and less than what we like to believe.

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Professional sports are a lucrative industry. Sports organizations hire the best athletes because they understand that to be lucrative, they must succeed. The star players on the squad, also known as “franchise players,” are its public face. They improve the team by helping their teammates (think Tom Brady, Kevin Durant, Michael Jordan, etc.). More victories result in more viewers, more sales of items, and a higher brand value. A team typically has one franchise player who earns a big salary—possibly more than his estimated value—as he propels the organization’s financial success.

Franchise players frequently receive compensation from team owners at the expense of other players. Franchise players like LeBron James are under added pressure to live up to their star power because fans are ready to spend over 100% more for tickets to see individual stars. Also, because of their fame, they attract more paying customers. They ought to be paid more as a result.

Do professional athletes truly deserve their high salaries?

Pro athletes are well compensated, and they merit every dollar of it. Athletes are paid for taking risks and competing, not for watching from the side-lines. Athletes are compensated even after they stop competing in sports. Because there are so few elite athletes, they will always be wealthy. Play major league football or baseball if you’re an athlete and want to get rich; don’t play basketball. Only so many people can compete at the highest level in those sports since it requires a particular kind of person to do so.

Mariano Rivera, the pitcher for the New York Yankees, is perhaps the highest-paid professional athlete. He has been referred to as “the best player in baseball” and earns a $1 million paycheck. With the Yankees, Rivera also made three World Series rings. He is merely the most recent in a long line of outstanding pitchers who have collaborated with George Steinbrenner’s ownership group to generate substantial revenue. The truth is that since the Yankees’ current ownership group took control in 2009, all of the team’s highest-paid workers have been players or coaches that former Yankees manager Joe Torre employed during his time as the team’s president.