How much the NBA’s top scorers were paid per point in the 2022-23 season
The NBA regular season officially came to a close this past Sunday, leaving 12 teams anxiously awaiting the playoffs and eight others preparing for the play-in tournament. While Joel Embiid claimed the scoring title with an impressive average of 33.1 points per game, it wasn’t quite enough to surpass Jayson Tatum as the player with the most points throughout the regular 2022-23 season. SportingPedia’s latest report looks into how much money the highest scorers earn for each point they bring to their respective franchise.
- Seven out of the top 10 players with the most points during the regular season play for teams from the Eastern Conference
- Giannis “Greek Freak” Antetokounmpo tops our ranking for $ per point among the NBA’s Top 10 highest scorers for the regular season with $21,691 for each of his 1959 points
- Anthony Edwards from the Minnesota Timberwolves is on the other end with “only” $5,516 per point
- Only four players have managed to score more than 2,000 points throughout the regular 22-23 NBA season
- Of the 10 top scoring players, only Luka Doncic and his Dallas Mavericks failed to even reach the play-in tournaments
- All but two of the top 10 scorers have contracts of over $30 million for the current season
- Joel Embiid is the NBA scoring champion this season (average points per game), but he ranks 2nd for most overall points and only 6th in our $ per point ranking
Giannis Antetounmpo (Milwaukee Bucks) ranks 5th for most points this season, but the “Greek Freak” comes out as the player with the costliest points among the 10 best scorers. Antetounmpo, who has a contract worth а whopping $42,492,492, each of his 1,959 points throughout the 2022–23 season came at a price of $21,691.
Jayson Tatum, the superstar of the runner-up in the playoffs last year, the Boston Celtics, finished 2022-23 as the player with the most points in the NBA this season. Tatum earned $13,641 for each of the 2,225 points he scored, which drops him to eighth position in our $ per point ranking.
Only four players managed to break the 2,000-point mark during the 2022–23 regular NBA season. Another interesting finding is that seven of the top 10 played for teams in the Eastern Conference and only three in the West.
We can boldly state that Julius Randle (New York Knicks) and especially Anthony Edwards (Minnesota Timberwolves) punched above their weight, as they were the only two players who managed to finish among the top 10 scorers despite having an annual salary below $30,000,000. Edwards, who is in his 3rd season in the league after being the #1 pick of the 2020 draft, notched a total of 1,946 points. Each point brought him $5,516 given that he has a contract worth $10,733,400 for the term. Of all 10 top scorers in the NBA, “Ant-Man” is the best value for money, as he is the only one costing his team less than 10k per point.
Nine of the best scorers in the league will feature in the play-in tournament or the play-offs, with only Luka Doncic and his Dallas Mavericks failing to reach the decisive phase of the season.