2023 NBA Draft Projected Contracts For Victor Wembanyama And Other First-Round Picks

 

It was merely a formality when Victor Wembanyama crossed the stage at Barclays Center on Thursday night, sporting a San Antonio Spurs hat and posing for pictures with NBA commissioner Adam Silver. The 7-foot-5-inch French phenom had long been expected to go No. 1 in the 2023 NBA Draft, no matter which team won the lottery. And so for the 19-year-old Wembanyama, the hype has now officially paid off. His selection at the top of the draft should also guarantee him more than $50 million in salary over his first four seasons.

“This is accomplishing something that I have been dreaming of my whole life,” Wembanyama told ESPN after the pick was made. “Hearing that sentence from Adam Silver, I’ve dreamed of it so much now. I gotta cry.” And then he did.

And if Wembanyama can actually live up to his way-above-the-rim expectations—he is widely considered a “generational talent” and frequently compared to LeBron James, who entered the league straight out of high school—that money may look like a steal.

“Put it this way, if he doesn’t get hurt, he’s going to be amazing,” says Torrel Harris, CEO of Unique Sports Management International, which represents his son Tobias Harris as well as Kelly Oubre Jr. and Kevin Obanor, a draft hopeful from Texas Tech. “He can shoot, he can block shots, he can hammer the ball. He’s got the whole package.”

Based on the NBA’s rookie salary scale, Wembanyama’s contract could be worth as much as $12.2 million in his first season. While the slot for the first overall pick is estimated to be just over $10 million this year, teams are allowed to exceed it—or come just under it—by as much as 20%. The last two top picks—Paolo Banchero (who came out of Duke and plays for the Orlando Magic) and Cade Cunningham (an Oklahoma State point guard who now plays for the Detroit Pistons)—both received maximum value on their rookie-season salaries. (Banchero earned $11.6 million as a rookie last season, the first of a four-year contract worth just over $50 million including options. Cunningham signed a rookie pact worth $10 million in 2021, which can max out at just over $45 million across four years.)

In total, Wembanyama’s on-court earnings could be as high as $55.2 million through the first four seasons of his NBA career, based on current salary-cap projections. Under the league’s collective bargaining agreement, the first two years are guaranteed while teams are then granted consecutive options for Years 3 and 4. Salaries incrementally rise throughout rookie deals.

Each slot in the first round, however, has a diminishing value. The contracts for the second and third overall picks, if maxed out, carry projected values of $49.4 million and $44.4 million over four seasons.

The NBA first instituted a predetermined pay structure for rookies back in 1995, a year after No. 1 pick Glenn Robinson signed a ten-year, $68 million contract with the Milwaukee Bucks out of Purdue, where he was the Big Ten player of the year and the NCAA scoring leader during his senior year. At that time, agents could negotiate any sum for incoming players. Those 1995-96 guidelines called for the top pick, Maryland’s Joe Smith, to be paid just over $2 million in his first season, according to RealGM.

Today, changes to the rookie scale run in tandem with the salary cap. The figures for this year’s draft class reflect a roughly 10% projected increase in the cap from $123.65 million in 2022 to $136 million this year.

The NFL similarly caps rookie pay, a practice it started in 2011. A year earlier, the Rams (then based in St. Louis) had signed Sam Bradford to a six-year, $78 million contract, with $50 million guaranteed. This year’s top NFL pick, Bryce Young, won’t come close to that amount—or to Wembanyama, for that matter. Spotrac projects the total value of Young’s contract to be roughly $38 million over four years.

And Wembanyama’s upside extends far beyond his rookie contract—he is also a marketing dream. Before playing a single game in the NBA, he is already a Nike athlete, thanks to a multi-year deal he signed during his French pro-league career. Brands are seemingly keen to get involved. In February, his agent, Bouna Ndiaye, told ESPN that Wembanyama is already “rejecting some rich, million-dollar deals right now because he wants to focus on basketball.”

There is plenty of precedent for global basketball stars to experience marketing success. Both Giannis Antetokounmpo, the 28-year-old “Greek Freak” from Athens, and Luka Doncic, from Slovenia, appeared on Forbes’ annual list of the world’s highest-paid athletes in May, with off-court earnings of $45 million and $10 million, respectively. Wembanyama could be in line with those numbers, and perhaps even exceed them, if he lives up to hoop dreamers’ expectations.

“He’ll be a guy in a lot of commercials and everything else,” Harris says. “The dollar amount is unlimited for him.”