In no particular order, here are a few of the worst contracts ever!
9 - Jon Konack Jon Koncak has easily
thoroughly earned his nickname of “Jon Contract”. Although his contract wasn’t anywhere close
to being the biggest contract in the NBA, it’s still considered one of the worst NBA contracts
ever. Just for comparison, Koncak at one point was making more money than Michael Jordan,
Larry Bird, AND Magic Johnson! He was making all this money as a backup center!
The emergence of restricted free agency in 1988 led to some odd signings, but nothing compared
to Koncak’s six-year contract that totaled $13.1 million dollars back in 1989. Contracts
weren’t reported anywhere close to how they are now. And this contract filled the headlines!
Koncak was actually a decent, valuable defender for the Hawks. But
the problem was, he couldn’t really score. The season before he signed his megadeal,
he averaged under 5 points a game. And he never averaged more than that during
his contract! The reason Koncak got the contract is because of a series of events.
Starting forward Kevin Willis had broken his foot and couldn’t play. So coach Mike Fratello
had to start Cliff Levingston to take Willis’s place. But Levingston was late to practice one
day and Fratello got mad and decided to start Koncak instead as punishment. And Koncak
went on a mini tear and filled up the stat sheet with rebounds! For example,
there was one night where he grabbed a whopping 20 rebounds.
And during this time that Koncak was playing really well, the Hawks went 13 and 3.
And that’s when the Hawks front office deactivated their brain and gave Koncak the huge contract
for their backup center. Here’s a fun fact. This was when Shaq decided to drop football
in high school and focus on only playing basketball! He saw how much Koncak was making
and he saw how much more money he could have made in the NBA, all while taking on much less
risk. If Koncak didn’t get this contract, Shaq might have been Gronk in the NFL?!
8 - Timofey Mozgov
One of the worst contracts signed in the free agent summer of giving back in 2016 was the one
given to Timofey Mozgov by the Lakers. He signed a four-year contract for $64
million dollars! Here’s the quick backstory to why someone like Timofey was given a big contract.
In 2016, the NBA had a historic salary cap spike. It went from $70 million dollars to
a whopping $94.1 million dollars. Just for comparison, the cap had never risen by more
than $8 million dollars in a single season. And because the floor was $84.7 million,
teams HAD to spend that money on someone. And that meant it was a good time to be Timofey!
With the late great Kobe’s retirement in 2016, the Lakers didn’t have much of a
choice. They HAD to spend in free agency just to reach the salary floor. But the problem was,
EVERYONE else had more cash to spend too, and THEY had to spend it too.
The Lakers struck out trying to sign big name free agents, so Timofey was supposed to be one
of the consolation prizes for Laker fans. But no one could figure out why they chose Timofey.
In 2015, Mozgov made less than $5 million dollars and his production wasn’t exactly great.
He averaged under 10 points and 7 rebounds per game the two seasons prior. As soon as he signed
his huge contract that was basically a gift, his stats plummeted more than 30 percent in points and
rebounds. But not the money he made! His salary more than tripled, to $16 million dollars instead!
The year before his free agency, Mozgov was ranked the 59th best center out of 60 in the NBA in
ESPN’s plus-minus metric. In his first season with the Lakers, he finished 68th out of 71!
And because of that, there wasn't a second season in LA. The Lakers offloaded him to
the Brooklyn Nets, but it cost them their 2015 No. 2 pick D'Angelo Russell. Mozgov
played out two years on that contract, and has since been out of the league!
7 - Luol Deng Let’s repeat that the Lakers HAD to spend
that money on someone in 2016. Timofey wasn’t the only one who got paid for doing not much. Deng’s
contract was another terrible one that the Lakers gave out that summer, in an effort to show their
fans they were at least trying to do SOMEthing after striking out on premier free agents.
The lakers signed Deng to a four year contract worth $72 million dollars. At one time,
Luol Deng was actually a very good player in the league during his prime. But when the Lakers gave
him that contract, he was already 31 years old. By that time, his best days were already behind him.
In his first season for the Lakers, he played 56 games for the team,
but his scoring dropped by almost 40%. And in his second season, even though he was healthy,
he only played in ONE game all year! The Lakers were essentially paying him just to work out
with the team. That year, Deng earned more than a million dollars for each minute he played. He made
$17.1 million dollars for playing 13-minutes and scoring two-points on opening night!
But of course, it’s not really Deng’s fault. He DID want to play,
but the Lakers just chose to develop the younger guys instead. In total,
Deng played only 57 games in two seasons with the Lakers before he got bought out.
6 - Gilbert Arenas Before James Harden and Steph Curry
were chefs cooking defenses in the NBA, the true original chef was Gilbert Arenas on the Hibachi
grille! He used to call out Hibachi all the time whenever he started cooking teams trying to guard
him. When he was playing on the Wizards, he was an All-Star from 2004 to 2007, when he averaged
almost 28 points a game. He was easily a top 5 player in the league. And it was his outlandish
personality that also played a major part in making his contract one of the worst ever.
When the Wizards gave him a contract for 6 years, $111 million dollars,
it made sense at the time. That’s even if the season before he signed his big contract,
Arenas had torn his MCL. That’s because a player of Arenas’s caliber doesn’t come around often.
But things quickly fell apart for Arenas and the Wizards. The very first season on his huge
contract, he only played 2 games because of lingering issues from that knee injury. The
lingering knee injury was bad luck, but something the team could live with since
it was a calculated risk. But what happened in 2009 was an unmatched situation ever in the NBA!
Basically, Gilbert was playing cards with teammate, Javaris Crittenton,
and they started trash talking each other. The media at first
thought that it was because someone owed money, but that wasn’t the case at all. It
was just trash talking that was brought to another level. Arenas had joked around that
he was going to shoot Javaris and he actually laid out guns in the locker room. But then
Javaris pulled out his own gun, and pointed it at Arenas, which was actually loaded!
Arenas tried to play off the situation, however serious that it got. He held up
finger guns during pregame introductions. Not only that, he also had in-game shooting
celebrations after he made shots all while the league was still investigating the incident.
However, for Arenas, his life could have easily gone another direction that day.
Crittendon seemed to have been completely serious. That’s because Crittenden later
went to prison for an actual shooting! Of course then Commissioner David Stern didn’t
find it funny at all. He suspended Arenas for the rest of the 2009 season without pay after
just 32 games. From the knee issues, to his suspension, Arenas played in a total of just
55 games for the Wizards after signing his 111 million dollar contract!
5 - John Wall
Back in 2017, the Wizards signed John Wall to a four-year contract worth a
little over $171 million dollars. It’s considered one of the worst
contracts in the NBA today! After signing the contract, reporters started to suspect
that Wall was complacent and getting out of shape, something he denied.
But unfortunately for the Wizards, they struggled badly as Wall’s production seemed
to have declined. Wall barely shot 30 percent from the three-point line despite chucking up
more than five 3s a game. He averaged just 8.7 assists, and this sounds like a lot,
but it was Wall’s lowest assist totals in 5 years. This WASN’T the production
the Wizards wanted to see after they just signed him to a supermax extension! Not
only did Wall look to be a step slower, but after 32 games, he blew out his achilles.
Wall got paid a whopping $38 million dollars the next season even though he couldn’t play
a single game. At the time of the signing, it seemed like a logical move. Wall had made
All-Star teams and only missed 12 games from 2013 to 2017.
AND the Wizards were looking like a team that was going to consistently make the playoffs.
But 2 years after he signed the deal, Wall only played in 73 total games. The Wizards
finally moved on from his contract after they were able to trade Wall for Russell Westbrook,
but they had to give up a first round pick for the Rockets to take on Wall’s contract.
For what it’s worth, Wall has looked much better playing for the rockets,
but he’s still not worth the 41 million dollars he’s getting paid for 2021!
4 - Joakim Noah
2016 really was a willllld summer for the NBA. Besides Mozgov’s and Deng’s contracts,
Joakim Noah got paid for doing not much as well,
except he was paid by the Knicks! He signed a four-year deal for $72 million dollars.
In his prime, Noah was a high-value defensive player. Before signing his contract,
he had won the Defensive player of the year in 2014, and he was a two time All-Star. But
his game took a big nosedive from 2015 to 2016. Noah wasn’t even a starter that season. He was
backing up the new starter, Nikola Mirotić. On top of his bad stats,
he also only played 29 games the season before 2016 free agency because of shoulder injuries.
All the injuries Noah had suffered over the years had added up, and it sapped him of his abilities.
But none of that stopped the Knicks from gifting him a four-year contract. What was
Noah supposed to do, tell them to pay him less?! His contract was arguably the worst
contract ever in Knicks history! In total he only played 53 games for the knicks,
with his last game played in 2018. However, because the Knicks cut Noah using the stretch
provision, they are still paying him money! Noah got $6.4 million in 2020,
and he got another $6.4 million in 2021. The Knicks paid him millions to go away!
3 - Chandler Parsons
Have you gotten the feeling that 2016 was a year filled with bad contracts yet? It’s not
over. That year Chandler Parsons got a four year deal worth $94 and a million with the Memphis
Grizzlies! This was arguably one of the worst contracts in terms of value received for a team.
Parsons was never an All-Star, but the Grizzlies made him the 15th-highest-paid
player in the league in 2016 anyways. They even committed to increasing his salary by roughly a
million per year throughout his contract. Parsons wasn’t a stat stuffer either. The
Grizzlies wanted him for his combination of size, playmaking and spot-up shooting.
That combination made him a rarity in the NBA. But none of that mattered because of injuries.
The warning signs were there in the first place. Both the seasons prior to signing his
giant contract with the Grizzlies, Parsons ended those seasons with knee surgeries. The Grizzlies
bet that Parsons could get healthy and become the player they can see him be. Unfortunately for the
Grizzlies, his knee never got better. He played only 95 games in his three seasons with the team!
And when he was actually available to play, he wasn’t anywhere close to the player he was.
Even if he were the player that he used to before the deal,
it would have still been a bad contract. Signing Parsons and tying up so much money forced the
Grizzlies into full rebuild mode, where they lost Marc Gasol and Mike Conley in the process.
2 - Jerome James For some reason
the Knicks signed Jerome James to a five-year contract worth a total of $30 million dollars
in the summer of 2005! Jerome came into the deal averaging just 5 points a game the previous year.
AND he was already 30 years old and past his prime when he became a free agent!
But the Knicks decided to sign Jerome because of his performance through 11 games in the 2005 NBA
Playoffs. In two series against the Kings and the Spurs, James averaged 12 and a half points,
almost 7 rebounds and around 2 blocks. But Jerome’s production for the knicks
never got near that point. The problem for Jerome was staying in shape!
He got to training camp after signing his contract heavier and out of shape. He never
played more than 45 games in a season during his four years with the Knicks.
In fact, from 2007 to 2009 James pretty much just rode the bench and watched the games!
He only played in 2 games each of those seasons. Throughout his entire contract,
he never averaged more than three points per game! He scored over 10 points just three times,
and he had over 10 rebounds exactly zero times. That’s what the Knicks got for 30 million dollars.
But James’s production wasn’t entirely his fault. He wasn’t exactly given a
chance to put up stats. Even though he was signed to be the starting center,
the Knicks in that same year, for some weird reason, decided to sign:
1 - Eddy Curry
With this signing, this effectively made Jerome James a 6 million dollar backup center! Yes,
in one single offseason, the Knicks made 2 consecutive terrible deals for centers. Why? No
one knows. It was the Knicks led by Isaiah Thomas, so anything that didn’t make sense, makes sense!
Curry was a talented young player with potential at that time. He averaged over
16 points and almost 5 and a half rebounds the season before with the Bulls. But
those numbers shouldn’t have commanded what the Knicks gave him.
They signed Curry in that same 2005 offseason to a six-year,
$60 million dollar contract. Combined with the contract they gave James,
that’s 16 million dollars tied up in just one position! This would be like investing
$100 thousand dollars in your bathroom when your home is worth just $300 grand!
AND this deal was made despite Curry hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat when he was just 22.
Doctors at that time wondered whether he had a congenital heart condition. The Knicks didn’t
bother getting that tested out. They just handed him $60 million dollars anyways. PLUS
they essentially gave up 4 draft picks to get him!
At the beginning, Curry was actually a very good player. He led the Knicks in scoring for a while.
He topped out at almost 20 points and seven rebounds per game in 2006. But towards the end,
he was a disaster, and he wasn’t anywhere close to earning his contract. Everything changed when
he got injured. The injuries affected his production on the court. Injuries combined
with weight issues eventually kept Curry out of the rotation permanently. He remained on the
Knicks all the way through 2011, but he never played in that final season for the Knicks.
Here’s what’s next!