Jaylen Brown, the All-NBA forward for the Boston Celtics, joined the vaunted halls of Mike Conley during the waning days of the grit-and-grind Grizzlies as the possessor of the single richest NBA contract in history — for a moment. A five-year, $303.7 million dollar extension. That's $60 million a year. For context: the entire Charlotte Bobcats franchise sold for $175 million in 2010.
Salary Cap Trajectory
The NBA salary cap has grown at a remarkable rate over the past three decades, with two notable spikes: the mid-1990s, and most famously 2016, when the new TV deal caused a single-year cap jump that allowed multiple teams to simultaneously hand out max contracts and contributed to some widely criticized roster decisions (looking at you, various franchises).
The cap trajectory through the late 2020s is projected to continue climbing sharply, driven by new TV rights deals that made even the 2016 spike look modest. This means contracts that look absurd today will look more reasonable in hindsight — it's happened every decade.
Brown in Context
Looking at Brown's contract as a percentage of the salary cap across its duration tells a more interesting story than the raw dollars. In the 2024 season, Brown is actually in the bottom of the top 25 paid players by cap percentage. But as other supermax deals roll off the books and the cap climbs, his percentage share increases. By the mid-2020s, he and a few other players will represent 35–40% of their team's cap space.
The obligatory "Laughing Out Loud" moment: Ben Simmons, who at time of writing was collecting $177 million over three years without notably contributing to wins, appears on any honest list of this era's contract decisions. Compare that to Brown, who helped Boston win a championship, and the market starts to look at least somewhat rational.
The Boston Question
Should Celtics fans panic about their cap situation? Maybe. But compare being stuck with Jaylen Brown at 40% of cap to, say, whoever traded for Damian Lillard and Phoenix being stuck with Bradley Beal at a similar rate. Given the age difference, the defensive value difference, and the championship production difference — I'll take Brown every time.