@@National Basketball Association

Everyone knows Scottie signed a terrible contract, but Charles Barkley signed a far worse one

  • August 11, 2022


The only difference is Charles has never complained about it.

Scottie’s career earnings: https://www.spotrac.com/nba/chicago-bulls/scottie-pippen-47554/cash-earnings/

Charles’ career earnings: https://www.spotrac.com/nba/houston-rockets/charles-barkley-16239/cash-earnings/

Scottie made 109.9M, while Charles made 40.6M.

Now, this is a bit misleading because Scottie played later than Charles when contracts got bigger. So I will only include 1987-2000. In this time period, their two careers overlapped (both were in the NBA at the same time).

When you only include these years, Scottie made ~48M and Charles made ~40M. So Scottie still made more in the overlapping years (before the huge contracts Scottie made at the end). Even in Charles’ 1992-93 MVP year, Scottie made more. Keep in mind that Charles was clearly the better player too, and yet he made less in this overlapping time period. Even if he had made more, it would need to be probably 10M+ more to make their career earnings “equal” (so like an 18M difference). And more importantly, Scottie easily made up for any low earnings towards the end of his career, something Charles never got to do.

Charles signed the same “bad” (locked into many years) contract Scottie did. A lot of players did. The only difference is Charles has never complained about it so no one really knows.

I checked almost every other star in the 90s (Hakeem, David Robinson, Karl Malone, etc.), and Charles had it worse than everyone, but everyone just knows about Scottie.

15 comments

  1. Scottie keeps saying he isn’t recognized enough.
    Charles keeps saying it’s amazing he got paid this much for playing a game.

  2. Its not like Jordan made that much more than Pippen either, until the last two seasons.

  5. Pippen without MJ: One Conference finals appearance(lost to Shaq Kobe lakers in 7) and one game 7 loss to eventual finals runner up(who lost the finals by 4 points)

    MJ without Pippen: swept twice in first round

  8. https://www.thehoopsgeek.com/average-nba-salary/

    Avg salary around 1M/year in late 90’s, which was 25 years ago. Currently avg salary is 8.5M/yr. By the time we are in 2027, given new TV rights will double or triple revenues, those salaries should average 17M/year.

    That means salary cap will be well north of 250M, and a supermax of 35% cap will be worth nearly 500M. That’s Lukas next supermax

  11. Scottie is a clown. He made similar amounts to MJ til 97 even. Then after MJ retired he made even more bank that he didn’t deserve.

    He made over 100mil off nba contracts while Jordan made 85 mil and barkley made even less. Don’t know why scottie cries

  12. Lol such dumb comparison given the time difference, like compare Jordan to Wiggins contract.

  13. >Keep in mind that Charles was clearly the better player too

    I think you’ll find there is a very convincing argument to be made that Scottie was as great a player as Michael Jordan

  14. Well Scottie Pippen is a Robin who constantly acts like it, the reason he got so pissy about the Last Dance is because he didn’t like being confronted with his own choices even though Jordan had no problem digging up a lot of his on dirt, if I’m Jordan I regret not putting that old gun story in there as well🤣, I actually used to think Scottie Pippen was a little underrated but with people constantly trying to tear down Jordan’s legacy, a lot of what Scotty did has actually become very overrated, at the end of the day still a 6 ft 7, apparently well hung, multi-millionaire and a top 40 NBA player all time, nobody’s crying for this man haha

    And as far as bad contracts, I understand it was a different time but what the fuck was Magic thinking with that 25-year 25 million contract, our boy Earvin out here was getting robbed 😭

  15. I mean Charles does complain about it but in his own way. I think his jokes on buying a jet like elroy jetson on tnt was just him making fun of himself just as much as it was him noting the huge pay disparity the modern nba has undertaken. He’s made a joke like that several times because he knows he was underpaid, most notably also when Gobert got that huge extension. Even Shaq was annoyed but he didn’t show it too much either. A lot of older players are mad at how their NBA treated them as opposed to how modern owners and org understands the benefit of having players be a larger shareholder in the game. Now I think the fact that he actually made a lot of money after his career has helped but certainly he still holds some type of grudge it is just not public. He has also been noted to have been angry at Scottie because he took a pay cut to get him to the Rockets when he tried to ring chase late. He even publicly said that Scottie owed him money as a joke. Scottie didn’t perform as a superstar and Charles was mad that he had to lose money to not win. That’s understandable from Chuck but he made the decision to lose money. He definitely was pissed back then but I think publicly mellowed out on that particular sticking point.

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