How Much Do NBA Rookies Make? Breaking Down NBA Draft Pick Salary (2024)

The 2024 NBA draft will commence on Wednesday, June 26 at 8 p.m. ET. Much has been made of this draft's lack of top-end talent, but the perceived lack of upside does not change any of the details. The draft will happen, somebody will be fortunate enough to get selected first overall, and the landscape of the league will be forever altered. Perhaps not dramatically, but with an influx of 60-plus new faces, altered nonetheless.

Another immutable detail of the draft is how much the players selected will be paid. The salaries of rookies in the NBA, similar to other sports, is set in stone as part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. It does not matter if the future No. 1 pick is the greatest or worst player of all time— they'll be paid the same amount.

How does it all work? How do the salaries change based on where a player is drafted? Let's get into it.

How much rookies make over the duration of their first NBA contracts is determined by the CBA. Specifically, the mechanism that determines their salary is called the "rookie wage scale."

What is the rookie wage scale?

Glad you asked! The rookie wage scale assigns a limit on how much rookies can get paid before they step foot on a professional court for the first time. The mechanism was introduced in 1995 because longtime NBA vets were getting upset that unproven rookies were negotiating contracts richer than what they might receive from their own teams after years of service.

The peak example, and the one that led to changes in the CBA, came in 1994. Glenn Robinson was selected first overall and signed a 10-year deal worth a whopping $68 million. Contracts of that length were just as unheard-of then as they are now, and it's a huge amount of money for a rookie. The hammer was brought down swiftly and Joe Smith, the No. 1 pick in the 1995 draft, signed a three-year contract worth $8.3 million in total.

The salary numbers have increased dramatically since then, but the concept remains the same. Rookies across the league, no matter what team they're drafted to, have their salaries predetermined with no wiggle room. The higher they are picked, the more that predetermined salary is. The salaries for each year are determined by the overall salary cap; the wage scale ties the value of all rookie contracts to a percentage of the salary cap for the upcoming season.

How Much Does the No. 1 Pick Make?

The natural next question is how much that rookie wage scale is in 2024. According to Spotrac, the first overall pick in the 2024 draft is expected to sign a contract worth $57 million over four years. Their rookie season, the player is expected to make $12.6 million.

As a reference point, that puts the No. 1 pick in the same range as Toronto Raptors journeyman Kelly Olynyk ($12.1 million salary) and sturdy Dallas Mavericks center Daniel Gafford ($12.4 million).

After the No. 1 overall pick, the salaries and overall value begin to slide. The top pick, as mentioned, will make about $12.6 million in the 2024-'25 season; the last pick will make about $2.5 million. It's quite a dramatic difference and only emphasizes how much changes for these young prospects on a pick-by-pick basis.

Below you'll find a table outlining how much each draft slot will make in 2024-'25.

How Much Do Second-Round Picks Make?

As your keen eye undoubtedly observed, the above table only concerns the first round of the NBA draft. What about those who go in the second round?

The rookie wage scale does not apply to players picked outside the first 30 selections. Once Pick 31 is on the clock, teams are permitted to sign these players to whatever contracts they'd like. Since the players who go in the second round are not seen as assured NBA-caliber talents the way their first round brethern are, that means second round picks receive contracts far less favorable.

Usually second round picks sign contracts that contain little or no guaranteed money. Many will sign two-way contracts that allow their teams to split their time between the NBA and the G League.

For example, Jalen Pickett was picked No. 32 overall in the 2023 NBA draft and signed a four-year $8.2 million contract with the Denver Nuggets that came with $5.8 million guaranteed. Denver clearly thought highly of him. Conversely, the last pick in the second round of last year's draft, Chris Livingston, got a four-year deal from the Milwaukee Bucks worth $7.6 million in total and included $3.01 million guaranteed.

One of the many interesting ways to examine how much the NBA has grown over the years is looking at the salary of the first pick in each draft. Here's what the past 10 years have looked like on that front.