A Look At Some Of The Best Contracts Of The 2025-26 NBA Season

Another regular season is nearly in the books. So, it is time for our second annual addition of the best and worst contracts in the association.

It is easy to look at the numbers these guys are getting and just marvel at all the zeros attached to their checks. But basketball is just as much about money as it is anything else, whether or not we care to admit it. The best teams tend to use their resources wisely, while the bottom-feeders usually have reckless spending habits.

With this in mind, here is Part One, where we look at the best contracts of the 2025-26 NBA Season.

The Methodology

In the past, we have used multiple methods to try and project how much a player should make on their next contract. Well, in this article, we are going to focus on a method inspired by Seth Partnow’s book, “The Midrange Theory.”

In his book, the former Director of Basketball Research for the Milwaukee Bucks discusses a formula that teams use to estimate a player’s monetary value. In its essence, the formula involves multiplying how many points a player is “worth” by the amount a win “costs” in a given season. Unfortunately, Real-Adjusted Plus-Minus (RAPM) — a major component in the formula — is no longer available. So, I’ve revised Partnow’s formula a bit.

The Website Dunks & Threes offers a metric called Estimated Wins (EW). As the name implies, this measure quite literally estimates how many wins a player earned for their team in a given season. Theoretically, by multiplying this number by the amount a win is worth in a given season (3.8 million in 2025-26), we can get an idea of how much they should be making next season. From there, we can compare the average annual value of the contract they received to the amount this exercise produced to see the disparity in how much they got paid versus what they are actually worth.

Thanks to the help of Data Scientist Fran Huzjan (@FHuzjan on Twitter), we were able to calculate the production value of every NBA player who played meaningful minutes and subtract that number from their actual salary this season – giving us the best/worst contracts of the year.

Now, there are some shortcomings to using such a simple equation for calculating a player’s value. First, we are limited to the methodology used to compute EW. As is the case with any catch-all metric, EW can only tell you how many wins a player added in their specific role on their specific team.

And second, this sort of method biases against players who struggle with injuries — since they aren’t on the court to help have an impact on winning. In some instances, like with players who are consistently injured, this can be helpful. But in one-off cases, where a player is uncharacteristically unhealthy for a year, this can make a player look far less valuable than they actually are (we’ll talk more about these specific examples in Part Two).

Two Types Of Great Contracts

For this part of the series, we separated the best contracts into two categories. The first one consists of all the rookie-scale deals. With the way the current CBA is structured, you can only pay young players a certain amount of money based on where they were selected in the draft. That is what makes hitting on draft picks so important. If you can evaluate talent properly, you can get a 30-million-dollar player for a third of the price.

The other group will consist of all non-rookie contracts. It is much harder to get a massive disparity between production value and current salary, but when you can do it, you gain a massive strategic advantage over the field.

The Best Rookie Contracts

Now that all the background context has been established, here are the ten best rookie-scale deals in the NBA this year:

Honorable Mentions: Ausar Thompson, Brandon Miller, Jaylon Tyson, and Matas Buzelis.

Victor Wembanyama (no surprise that his contract grades out as the best of all), Amen Thompson, Dyson Daniels, and Toumani Camara all made this list last season. Jalen Williams led all rookie-scale players in contract value last year. However, injuries have held him to just 30 games thus far.

Kon Knueppel is getting paid like a rookie but playing at an All-Star level, which has played a key role in the Charlotte Hornets’ meteoric single season turnaround. He is the only rookie in the top ten this season. Donovan Clingan, Stephon Castle, and Cason Wallace have all made significant strides this season. Meanwhile, Jalen Duren is proving that he is deserving of a big payday this offseason. Also, notice how all ten of these players are on teams that are playoff/play-in bound.

The Other Best Contracts

Now, here are the other ten best contracts from this season:

Honorable Mentions: Ajay Mitchell, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Austin Reaves, Saddiq Bey, and Jordan Goodwin.

Man, do Brad Stevens and that Boston Celtics front office deserve all the respect in the world. Not only did they clean out their books and avoid paying substantial fines, but they also managed to keep around three of the best non-rookie contracts in basketball.

For the second straight year, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ranks first among all players not being paid on a rookie scale in contract value. Moussa Diabate has been nearly (if not just as) important to the Hornets this year as Knueppel. Julian Champagnie has proven to be the perfect three-and-D wing to complete the San Antonio Spurs’ starting five.

Collin Gillespie, Ryan Rollins (who I recently did an in-depth feature on), and Sandro Mamukelashvili were all players who signed new contracts this past offseason. Kudos to those organizations for making those deals happen. Also, Gillespie being second in this group only further adds to his case for Most Improved Player (MIP). And Donte DiVincenzo has done a nice job filling in as the starting point guard for the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Worth noting that Ajay Mitchell and Austin Reaves would have easily cracked the top ten had it not been for injuries sidelining them at different points in the season.

This time, we do have one player in our top ten (Rollins) who will not be playing basketball after the regular season concludes.

Which Teams Did The Best Job This Season?

You may be looking at these lists and noticing a lot of guys from the same teams. For those wondering, the teams with the greatest overall difference between their production value and the amount they paid this year (in order) are the Oklahoma City Thunder, San Antonio Spurs, Detroit Pistons, Boston Celtics, and Houston Rockets.

Of course, four of those teams (everyone but the Rockets) make up the top four teams in net rating this year. The Rockets currently rank eighth, but they would be higher had it not been for Steven Adams going down for the season.