Top 5 Worst Contracts Ever
In researching the worst contracts in the history of league, I was able to come across some serious, serious albatross deals. Simply narrowing down the five nastiest was tough business, and then putting those five in any sort of order proved even harder. The moral of the story here is that some GMs in our favorite league’s not-too-distant past have made awful mistakes.
To make the hard decisions, I had to put some criteria in place, and in this case I cut GMs some slack if the player had proven themselves to be consistently good with at least the potential to be great, but just got burned after the contract was signed. Giving a guy money who, at the time, clearly deserves it, is not a boneheaded thing to do. Did anyone think the Orlando Magic were doing the wrong thing when they signed Grant Hill? Or even Indiana when they re-upped Jermaine O’Neal?
Of course not, because those weren’t bad deals; they were just bad luck. The worst kinds of contracts are the ones given to people who didn’t deserve them. There have been players that had done almost nothing to warrant big money, yet got it anyway. Also, had to give some consideration to how grossly overpaid that particular player was. Dollars-to-output also matters. That’s where I find the most fault, and that’s how I narrowed down all the horrible contracts in league history to these five:
#5 – Brian Cardinal, Memphis Grizzlies, 6 years, $37 million – The Grizzlies had big dreams for Cardinal, who turned a great season in Golden State into a $6+ million-per-season deal, but after his first year with the team in which he scored nine points a game, his output pretty much settled back to reality, and he’d never score more than 4.5ppg a season again. He finished out his contract last season with the Minnesota Timberwolves, appearing in only 29 games and scoring a total of 48 points all year long.
#4 – Sagana Diop, Dallas Mavericks, 6 years, $32 million – The Mavs decided to bring back Diop for a second stint with the team in the summer of 2008, giving him the exorbitant amount of money mentioned above. Seven previous NBA seasons should have told Dallas that, at best, Diop was a 3ppg, 5rpg, 1.5bpg kind of player. This particular deal translates to about $5.3 million per season—a contract that Dallas happily passed off to Charlotte a mere 34 games after offering it.
#3 – Raef LaFrentz, Dallas Mavericks, 7 years, $70 million – In 2002, the Mavs took a gamble and traded for LaFrentz, but the following summer they signed him to a pretty embarrassing contract. It took them only one season to unload him onto Boston, where he immediately experienced an injury-prone season. By years five and six of the deal he was in Portland playing in a limited role, averaging only 1.7ppg and 1.7rpg in his final season before retirement. Here’s some fun math for you—that last season the Blazers paid him $100,000 for every point he scored.
#2 – Jim McIlvaine, Seattle SuperSonics, 7 years, $35 million – While $5 million per season for a promising young big man doesn’t sound like much by today’s standards, by 1996′s standards it was quite a bit of money. Considering that McIlvaine’s best year before the contract was a 2.3ppg, 2.9rpg season with Washington, it’s hard to imagine him getting two years at that money, let alone seven. He’d only get the opportunity to play out five of those years, though, and his best remaining season was the first after he signed the deal, where he put up career-high numbers: 3.8ppg and 4.0rpg. It’s hard to imagine ways a team could be more wasteful with their money.
#1 – Jerome James, New York Knicks, 5 years, $30 million – The year before signing this contract with Isiah Thomas’s Knicks, James averaged a paltry 4.9 points and 3.5 rebounds per night. How that translates into $6 million a year for half a decade is beyond the understanding of pretty much every intelligent basketball mind on the planet. Few players have ever done so little for so much money.
Honorable Mention:
Austin Croshere, Indiana Pacers, 7 years, $51 million – Croshere simply cashed out at the perfect time in his career. Not only did he put up career numbers in points (10.3) and rebounds (6.4) the year before he became a free agent, but his Pacers also made it to the NBA Finals, where Croshere played a significant role. He turned that into $7.3 million a season for the better part of a decade. In the last year of that contract he was traded to Dallas, where he poured in 3.9 points a night while also pulling down 2.4 boards.
Vin Baker, Seattle SuperSonics, 7 years, $86 million – Once upon a time, Vin Baker was truly a force at power forward, even earning himself a quartet of All-Star appearences between 1995 and 1998. But of those pricy seven years he signed on to be the next big stud in Seattle, only the first was All-Star caliber. From there, the numbers simply got mediocre, and a public bout with alcoholism made the huge payout from the Sonics that much more embarrassing.
Juwan Howard, Washington Bullets, 7 years, $105 million – We know that Howard has had a long and relatively illustrious career, but at no point was any more than a second fiddle (at best) earning first fiddle money. No way could anybody have ever guessed he’d be the league’s first $100 million man.
Brian Grant, Miami HEAT, 7 years, $86 million – Grant really did have a decent career, and he definitely earned more of his money than a lot of the other guys mentioned here. But what’s most confusing about his gigantic deal is the fact that it was given to him after a season in which he averaged only 7.3 points and 5.5 rebounds a night. That doesn’t exactly seem like the sort of guy that deserves $12.3 million a season.
Ben Wallace, Chicago Bulls, 4 years, $60 million – It was exciting at the time because Wallace was the highest-profile free agent of that particular summer. But as a Bull his rebound numbers immediately died as it became very clear very quickly that Big Ben’s better years were behind him. Having no other real aspect of his game, that $15 million per year deal got nothing but more painful for the Bulls, until they were able to deal him to Cleveland a couple years later.
{AUTHOR_BOX}Eddy Curry, New York Knicks, 6 years, $60 million – To be fair to Curry, his first season with the Knicks was a good one in which he averaged 19.5ppg and 8.1rpg, but he only appeared in 59 games the next season, and a grand total of ten in the last three seasons combined. Perhaps the worst part of that particular sign-and-trade was the fact that New York gave up two first-round picks for Curry, which turned into Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah, the latter of whom would’ve been an amazing fit in the Big Apple.
Peja Stojakovic, New Orleans Hornets, 5 years, $64 million – Chris Paul needed a top-tier sidekick, and the Hornets thought Peja was it. While Stojakovic scored a ton of points before coming to Louisiana, his PPG averages dropped every year of his deal. Now, in his final season under contract, he’s battling injuries and averaging a career-low 8.1ppg.
Elton Brand, Philadelphia 76ers, 5 years, $80 million – Admittedly, Brand has played better so far this year, but even at 14.9 ppg and 8.8 rpg, it’s hard to justify a contract that pays out $16 million a season. Perhaps worst of all is that he still has two years left on his contract after this current season plays out.
Darius Miles, Portland Trail Blazers, 6 years, $48 million – After being acquired from the Cleveland Cavaliers in the middle of the 2003-2004 season, Miles showed quite a bit of progress just in time for his rookie scale contract to end. That was parlayed into a huge contract from Portland that only got played out half of the way through before knee injuries irreparably destroyed Miles career. The Blazers got a nice chunk of their money back because of that knee injury, but only temporarily; Miles played 34 games for Memphis in 2008-2009, putting Portland back on the books for $18 million.
Larry Hughes, Cleveland Cavaliers, 5 years, $70 million – Brought aboard to keep LeBron happy, but he just never quite paired up properly with James. He deserved to make a decent paycheck, just not quite that much. It’s a bad contract, but not even close to the worst.
Samuel Dalembert, Philadelphia 76ers, 6 years, $64 million – Dalembert has had some great years a shot-blocker in Philadelphia, but his last two seasons with the Sixers and this current one with the Kings have made him look grossly overpaid. While the Sacramento situation hasn’t been easy for him, his 4.3 points and 6.5 rebounds per game are the lowest he’s posted since his rookie year. At over $10 million a year, that’s tough to swallow.
The trend here, obviously, is that teams tend to overpay for big guys. That’s no excuse, but it is an explanation. Talented centers are hard to come across, so when one shows some promise, team execs lose their minds and throw way more cash their way than would ever be necessary.
But organizations make mistakes—with trades, with the draft, and in free agency. The hope is always going to be that good decisions outweigh the bad ones. Nobody’s perfect, after all, and the good news is that even the most imperfect of us are capable of getting paid millions of dollars. We live in a beautiful world.
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