The and have agreed to a new five-year, $252 million contract extension, according to ESPN, and Wembanyama is leaving some money on the table in doing so.
Wembanyama’s new deal is reportedly a maximum rookie-scale contract extension with a player option in the fifth season. There were iterations of the deal that could have included the 30% supermax escalators, bringing it to a max of $303 million over its full lifespan. Instead, Wembanyama opted for the 25% maximum to provide the Spurs with extra financial flexibility moving forward.
That will come in handy when and , both of whom are still on their rookie contracts, begin their own extensions. Castle is eligible to sign his next summer. Harper can do the same in 2028.
Wembanyama will make $16.9 million this coming season, the final year of his rookie deal, and then his new one begins in 2027-28. , Wembanyama will make $43.5 million in the first year of the new deal, nearly $9 million less than the $52.2 million he could’ve made.
Victor Wembanyama locks himself into the 25% max (contract on the left), saving the Spurs $10 million annually should he qualify for the 30% max.
He would’ve qualified if he wins MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, or makes All-NBA next season. That possibility is now eliminated.
As if this guy isn’t popular enough in San Antonio, now he’s taking less money so more can be doled out to his teammates, most notably, as mentioned, Castle and Harper, whose first non-rookie paydays will both eventually overlap with Wembanyama’s new contract.
It’s the Jalen Brunson blueprint, and it just won the Knicks their first championship in more than half a century. As was well chronicled at the time, Brunson signed a $156 million deal in the summer of 2024 when he could’ve signed for $269 million a year later.
It looked like a $113 million sacrifice on paper, but with Brunson structuring a player option into the fourth year of the deal, which he will surely opt out of for a new contract beginning in 2028-29, the savings were actually closer to $37 million for the Knicks.
Nonetheless, it was a hell of a sacrifice. Brunson could get hurt between now and 2028, or he could even wait until 2029 and sign for more than $400 million. If that happens, he will make his money back by hitting free agency a year earlier, but his production could fall off by that point, or he could get hurt. No contract is guaranteed until you sign on the dotted line, so pushing your biggest possible payday down the road so your team can afford to put together a championship roster is pretty selfless stuff. With more money to work with thanks to Brunson, the Knicks traded for and extended him for $150 million, re-signed for $212 million, and traded for and his $220 million contract.
When the dust settled on this past year’s championship, Brunson, despite being the best player and Finals MVP, was the third-highest-paid player on the team. Without his willingness to give up all that guaranteed money, the Knicks wouldn’t have been able to pay all those other guys while staying under the second apron, which team owner James Dolan just refused to cross even after winning the title.
This is when championship teams start having to break up. They win, and everyone gets corresponding raises. The team gets too expensive, and salaries start getting trimmed. When the won it all in 2024, was making $31.8 million. The next season, his super-max extension started and now he was making $49.2 million. Last year, that number increased to $53 million, coinciding with the start of own super-max at $54.1 million.
Neither of those guys took the Brunson discount, and that meant bye-bye to , , , and . And now Brown is gone in large part because he makes too much money.
The Spurs haven’t won a championship yet, but we can all see it building toward that end, perhaps as soon as this coming year. Wembanyama doesn’t want anything to get in the way of that happening, and he proved with this new deal that he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is.
It’s easy to brush that off and say, “Big deal, this dude’s going to make a billion dollars in salary alone by the time his career is over,” but that’s not really the point. He doesn’t have to do this. Many other people would not do it.
But as we move forward, at least under this current Collective Bargaining Agreement, you have to wonder if this will become more of an unspoken expectation for stars to take less money than they could make. Not to put more in the pockets of even richer owners, but to preserve roster-building flexibility when the alternative is breaking up championship teams, or worse, teams that haven’t gotten to a championship yet and need more time together or one more player to get over the hump.
It’s a sticky subject. There are probably a lot of players who look at what Brunson did and what Wembanyama is about to do, and feel it puts pressure on them to do the same. Everyone’s situation is different. If you’re later in your career and this is your last chance at a big contract, or you don’t have the sort of appetite for risk that is required to postpone paydays, you shouldn’t be expected to do this. At the same time, if more of your competitors do start doing it, you’re going to be at a real disadvantage.
