{"id":712270,"date":"2026-04-17T08:01:56","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T08:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/712270\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T08:01:56","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T08:01:56","slug":"how-much-do-nba-players-get-paid-for-playoffs-explaining-playoff-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/712270\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Do NBA Players Get Paid for Playoffs? Explaining Playoff Pay"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe NBA playoffs tip off this week with the Oklahoma City Thunder a heavy favorite to lift the Larry O\u2019Brien Championship Trophy for the second straight year. The San Antonio Spurs and Boston Celtics<\/a> are next in line to win the NBA title among oddsmakers.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Thunder also posted the best regular-season record, which means they could have the highest possible playoff payday at $12.8 million if they win the title.<\/p>\n

\n\tNBA players\u00a0have\u00a0the\u00a0highest salaries<\/a>\u00a0in U.S. pro sports by a wide margin. The same holds true come playoff time. Players on NBA playoff teams will split $35.7 million this season, with each team receiving a chunk based on how far their teams go; teams earn more for each round they advance. The total is up $1 million from last year.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NBA also factors regular-season standings into its playoff pool, with an added bonus of $896,293 for the best record among all 30 teams. Players on playoff teams will receive anywhere from $480,715\u2014roughly $32,050 per player based on a 15-player roster\u2014to potentially $12.8 million ($853,700 per player) if the Thunder, who finished the season 64-18, win the NBA championship.<\/p>\n

\n\tClubs that finished as the seventh or eighth seeds do not receive any bonuses for their regular-season records, and players on those teams would earn $741,650 if they made a historic run to the championship. The Houston Rockets in 1995 were the lowest-seeded team to win the NBA Finals, doing so as a No. 6 seed.<\/p>\n

\n\tTeams do not earn anything for the play-in tournament beyond their regular-season salaries, which are typically paid out over 12 months.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NBA playoff pool is up 3% over last year. The\u00a0CBA<\/a>\u00a0reads: \u201cA Player Playoff Pool for each Salary Cap Year in an amount equal to the greater of: (i) $31,014,350 multiplied by a fraction, the numerator of which is BRI for the Salary Cap Year immediately preceding the then-current Salary Cap Year and the denominator of which is BRI for the 2021-22 Salary Cap Year, and (ii) the amount of the Player Playoff Pool for the immediately preceding Salary Cap Year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPlayoff bonuses took a big jump for the 2023-24 season when the new CBA kicked in. They rose between 12% and 17% for each round, except for the NBA champion, whose payout was boosted 79% to $8.55 million, up from $4.78 million. It meant an overall gain of 25%.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe amount NBA players earn in the playoffs is much higher than those in the NFL, NHL and MLB.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NFL\u00a0uses\u00a0part of the\u00a0playoff gate revenue<\/a>\u00a0to fund its player postseason pool. Players earned $53,500 to $58,500 during the first two weeks of this year\u2019s playoffs, per their CBA. Player paychecks jumped to $81,000 for the conference championship games. The Super Bowl was worth $178,000 for each player on the winning team and $103,000 for ones on the losing side. The maximum a player could earn during the playoffs was $376,000.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe MLB playoff pool, also culled from playoff ticket revenue, was\u00a0$128.2 million<\/a>, a tick below the previous year\u2019s record. The World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers split $46.15 million of the pool, with a full share worth $484,748.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NHL playoff pool is $24 million this season, up 4.3% from last year\u2014it will rise to $34 million next year under the new CBA. The Florida Panthers shared about $6.6 million in 2025 for their second straight Stanley Cup championship.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe average NBA salary is more than $10 million, led by Stephen Curry at $59.6 million. Seventy-five NBA players earned at least $25 million in salary this season before incentives, including the Thunder\u2019s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ($38.3 million) and Isaiah Hartenstein ($28.5 million). The playoffs serve as pocket change for those guys, but an NBA title would bump pay for Jared McCain ($4.22 million) and Ajay Mitchell ($3 million) 20% and 28%, respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA playoffs tip off this week with the Oklahoma City Thunder a heavy favorite to lift the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3783],"tags":[7,75,811,812,150,6,310,475,179,3966,3965,312],"class_list":{"0":"post-712270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oklahoma-city-thunder","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boston-celtics","10":"tag-cba","11":"tag-data-viz","12":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-oklahoma","15":"tag-oklahoma-city","16":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","17":"tag-oklahomacity","18":"tag-oklahomacitythunder","19":"tag-thunder"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116419003340804840","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}