When Jaylen Brown agreed to a five-year, super-max extension with the Celtics, it was widely reported to be a $304MM deal. That number is subject to change though, since the value of the contract will depend on the value of the NBA’s 2024/25 salary cap, which won’t be officially determined until next June.
Brown’s contract will start at 35% of the ’24/25 cap and will feature 8% annual raises after that.
The $304MM estimate for Brown’s super-max deal is based on a projected salary cap increase of 10%. The NBA and NBPA have agreed not to increase the cap by more than 10% per year in order to avoid a repeat of the 2016 offseason, when a 34.5% bump helped create a Warriors super-team and resulted in a number of regrettable contracts for other teams around the league.
With that ceiling in mind, a 10% cap increase next summer would represent a best-case scenario for Brown. But it’s also a realistic outcome — the cap has risen by 10% in each of the past two offseasons, so it’s forecasting it to happen again is certainly within reason.
If the cap were to increase 10% for 2024/25, Brown’s contract would look like this:
| Year | Salary |
|---|---|
| 2024/25 | $52,368,050 |
| 2025/26 | $56,557,494 |
| 2026/27 | $60,746,938 |
| 2027/28 | $64,936,382 |
| 2028/29 | $69,125,826 |
| Total | $303,734,690 |
Of course, the NBA hasn’t actually formally projected a 10% cap increase for 2024/25, so it’s a little early to lock in those figures for Brown.
If the cap were to instead increase by a more modest 5%, his deal would instead look like this:
| Year | Salary |
|---|---|
| 2024/25 | $49,987,700 |
| 2025/26 | $53,986,716 |
| 2026/27 | $57,985,732 |
| 2027/28 | $61,984,748 |
| 2028/29 | $65,983,764 |
| Total | $289,928,660 |
In either case, Brown’s contract would become the richest deal in NBA history, comfortably surpassing Nikola Jokic‘s five-year, $276,122,630 deal that begins in 2023/24. The only scenario in which Brown’s extension wouldn’t exceed Jokic’s is if the salary cap doesn’t increase at all in a year — then Brown’s deal would look exactly the same as Jokic’s.
A lot could happen in the next 11 months, but it would require very unusual circumstances for the cap not to rise at all. Since 2010, that has only happened amidst shortened seasons (due to a lockout and the COVID-19 pandemic). So we can confidently project Brown’s contract to be worth more than Jokic’s.
For what it’s worth, Brown won’t be the only player earning 35% of the cap in 2024/25. Devin Booker and Karl-Anthony Towns also signed super-max contracts that will go into effect a year from now, and their deals will look exactly the same as Brown’s from 2024-28. The only reason those aren’t considered record-setting contracts in their own right is because they’ll cover four years instead of five, since Booker and Towns signed extensions with two years left on their respective contracts rather than just one.
Of course, even Brown’s record is unlikely to stand for long. With an in-season tournament being introduced later this year and a new media rights deal around the corner, the NBA’s revenue and salary cap will likely only continue to grow in the coming years.
Brown’s Celtics teammate Jayson Tatum, who met the super-max performance criteria this spring and will meet the service time criteria in 2024, is the best bet to be the next recipient of the richest contract in league history. If the cap increases by 10% next year and another 10% in 2025, this is what a super-max deal for Tatum could look like:
| Year | Salary |
|---|---|
| 2025/26 | $57,604,750 |
| 2026/27 | $62,213,130 |
| 2027/28 | $66,821,510 |
| 2028/29 | $71,429,890 |
| 2029/30 | $76,038,270 |
| Total | $334,107,550 |