Photo: Atlanta Hawks
The 10 Highest Paid NBA Players Per Minute Played This Season
While we can easily find out who the NBA’s best paid players are, it definitely requires some time to calculate who the best paid players per minute played are.
Redditor CaffeineDoctor did exactly that and found out which player in the 2019-2020 season has earned the most money for every minute he was on the court, while not taking into account the time the players spent outside of the games with practice, media sessions, film sessions, travels and other team events.
Seeing Chandler Parsons on top of that list isn’t all too surprising. In the 2012-13 season, Chandler Parsons was one of the breakthrough stars of the league. He had an amazing year for the Rockets and averaged 15.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and 1.0 sterals per game. In the 2013-14 season, Parsons proved that the previous season wasn’t a fluke and improved some more with averages of 16.6 points, 5.5 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 1.2 steals per game.
This led to the Mavericks offering Parsons a great contract in the summer of 2014, a three-year, $46 million offer. After a great first year with the Mavs, the knee injuries started to come in regularly. In the 2015–16 season, the former Gator suffered a torn meniscus in his right knee. In come the Memphis Grizzlies.
Even though he was just coming of a major knee surgery (the second one within a year), the Memphis Grizzlies decided to offer Parsons an (back then) gigantic $94 million contract for four years in 2016. After recovering from his torn meniscus, the swingman played 34 games before he was forced to miss time again with, yep you know what’s coming, a partial tear of the meniscus.
Ever since, Parsons has barley seen the floor and if so he played incredibly underwhelming. While injuries always suck and Parsons definitely would have become a great player in this league for many years without them, the Grizzlies ignored the red flags that were already there before signing him to this huge contract.
Then, before this season, Parsons was traded to the Atlanta Hawks, who gladly took on his expiring contract. In Atlanta, Parsons barley was part of the rotation and has only played five games this season (he played 25, 36, and 34 games in the three seasons prior), even though he was the team’s top earner with his $25,102,511 salary. On January 15, Parsons was hit by a drunk driver, suffering a concussion and whiplash and other injuries that could be career-ending. On February 5, Parsons was then waived by the Hawks.
