Stephen Curry was the top-earning player in the National Basketball Association (NBA) between October 2024 and 2025, with on-court earnings of 59.6 million U.S. dollars and endorsements worth 100 million U.S. dollars. Trailing the legendary point guard was another basketball icon, LeBron James, with total earnings of 137.6 million U.S. dollars. NBA revenue streams Players in the NBA have two main sources of revenue: salaries from the team, and endorsements from companies and brands. NBA players not only have deals with sports brands such as Nike and Adidas, but also with consumer products such as Coca-Cola, Panini, Kia Motors, and Red Bull, to name a few. Shoe deals are particularly profitable for NBA players. Michael Jordan, for example, still profits from endorsements, as his signature Air Jordan shoes have a large share of the basketball shoe market. King James reigns supreme Although Steph Curry earned more in 2024/25, LeBron James remained the NBA player with the highest cumulative career earnings as of November 2025, with over 580 million U.S. dollars in on-court earnings. As a four-time MVP winner and the NBA's all-time highest scorer, James' earnings have certainly been backed up by his on-court performances.

This dataset merges player per-game and advanced statistics for the NBA's 2022-23 season with player salary data, creating a comprehensive resource for understanding the performance and financial aspects of professional basketball players. The dataset is the result of web scraping player salary information from Hoopshype, and downloading traditional per-game and advanced statistics from Basketball Reference.

Key Features:

• Player Information: Player name, team(s) played for during the season.
• Per Game Statistics: A wide array of per-game statistics, including points scored (PPG), assists (APG), rebounds (RPG), steals (SPG), blocks (BPG), and more.
• Shooting Efficiency: Metrics like field goal percentage (FG%), three-point percentage (3P%), two-point percentage (2P%), and free throw percentage (FT%) for assessing scoring efficiency.
• Advanced Statistics: A wide array of advanced metrics such as value over replacement player (VORP), win shares (WS) and true shooting percentage (TS%)
• Salaries: The financial aspect of the dataset includes player salaries for the 2022-23 season, offering insights into player earning

Potential Uses:

• Player Performance Analysis: Analysts can evaluate player performance in correlation with their earnings, identifying players who provide strong value for their salaries.
• Team Budgeting and Strategy: Teams can use this dataset to assess the financial implications of player acquisitions, trades, and salary cap management.
• Player Earnings Insights: The dataset offers insights into the income distribution of NBA players, helping fans and analysts understand the financial side of professional basketball.
• Data-Driven Decisions: Data scientists can leverage this combined dataset for predictive modeling and machine learning applications, including salary predictions and player valuation.

Acknowledgements: Basketball Reference, Hoopshype

As of November 2025, the player in the National Basketball Association (NBA) with the highest cumulative career earnings was LeBron James, with total earnings of approximately 581.32 million U.S. dollars. LeBron James has played for the Los Angeles Lakers since 2018. Before this, James also played for the Miami Heat and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The NBA and WNBA are the two top leagues for basketball in the United States for men and women, respectively. In the NBA, players took home an average annual salary of over ** million U.S. dollars for the 2024/25 season, with the league's minimum salary set at **** million U.S. dollars that year. In comparison, players in the WNBA received an average annual pay of ******* U.S. dollars in the 2025 season, with the highest-earning players in the WNBA receiving around ******* U.S. dollars annually.

Back in the 1984-85 NBA season, Magic Johnson was the highest earning player in the league, with his Los Angeles Lakers salary earning him 2.5 million U.S. dollars annually. In the 2022-23 NBA season, Stephen Curry's contract at the Golden State Warriors was worth an estimated 48.1 million U.S. dollars annually.

Basketball is a commonly watched sport both in the United States and worldwide. The National Basketball Association is a professional basketball league for men with 30 teams competing against each other in the United States. Over the past years, NBA has gained significant popularity and a significant increase in players' salaries has made it one of the best paid sports league worldwide. In 2019, the NBA's average annual salary reached 8.32 million U.S. dollars per player and total salaries approximated to 3.67 billion U.S. dollars.

The NBA dataset contains comprehensive data on player and their performance from the National Basketball Association (NBA). The dataset includes information such as player statistics, team name, game results, player salaries, and draft information. The dataset can be used to analyze player and team performance over time, compare different teams and players, and develop predictive models for future games and seasons. The data is typically provided in a structured format, such as a CSV file, and can be easily analyzed using statistical software or programming languages like Python or R.

In the 2024/25 season, the Phoenix Suns franchise had the highest player expenses in the National Basketball Association. That season, the Suns spent 213 million U.S. dollars on player salaries and ranked 11th as the NBA's most valuable franchise. Meanwhile, the NBA's other LA-based franchise, the 17-time champions LA Lakers, had player expenses of 185 million U.S. dollars.

Context

This data set contains combined on-court performance data for NBA players in the 2016-2017 season, alongside salary, Twitter engagement, and Wikipedia traffic data.

Further information can be found in a series of articles for IBM Developerworks: "Explore valuation and attendance using data science and machine learning" and "Exploring the individual NBA players".

A talk about this dataset has slides from March, 2018, Strata:

https://www.slideshare.net/noahgift/social-power-andinfluenceinthenba-89807740?qid=3f9f835a-f3d7-4174-8a8c-c97f9c82e614&v=&b=&from_search=1

Further reading on this dataset is in the book Pragmatic AI, in Chapter 6 or full book, Pragmatic AI: An introduction to Cloud-based Machine Learning and watch lesson 9 in Essential Machine Learning and AI with Python and Jupyter Notebook

Followup Items

• You can watch a breakdown of using cluster analysis on the Pragmatic AI YouTube channel

• Learn to deploy a Kaggle project into a production Machine Learning sklearn + flask + container by reading Python for Devops: Learn Ruthlessly Effective Automation, Chapter 14: MLOps and Machine learning engineering

• Use social media to predict a winning season with this notebook: https://github.com/noahgift/core-stats-datascience/blob/master/Lesson2_7_Trends_Supervized_Learning.ipynb

• Learn to use the cloud for data analysis.

Acknowledgement

Data sources include ESPN, Basketball-Reference, Twitter, Five-ThirtyEight, and Wikipedia. The source code for this dataset (in Python and R) can be found on GitHub. Links to more writing can be found at noahgift.com.

Inspiration

• Do NBA fans know more about who the best players are, or do owners?
• What is the true worth of the social media presence of athletes in the NBA?

Context

• The National Basketball Association (NBA) is an American men's professional basketball league.
• It is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada.
• It is the premier men's professional basketball league in the world.
• The league was founded in New York City on June 6, 1946, as the Basketball Association of America (BAA).
• It changed its name to the National Basketball Association on August 3, 1949, after merging with the competing National Basketball League (NBL).
• The NBA's regular season runs from October to April, with each team playing 82 games.

• The league's playoff tournament extends into June. As of 2020, NBA players are the world's best paid athletes by average annual salary per player.

• The NBA is an active member of USA Basketball (USAB), which is recognized by the FIBA (International Basketball Federation) as the national governing body for basketball in the United States.

• The league's several international as well as individual team offices are directed out of its head offices in Midtown Manhattan, while its NBA Entertainment and NBA TV studios are directed out of offices located in Secaucus, New Jersey.

The NBA is the third wealthiest professional sport league after the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB) by revenue.

Content

1. GM, GP; GS: games played; games started 2.PTS: points 3.FGM, FGA, FG%: field goals made, attempted and percentage 4.FTM, FTA, FT%: free throws made, attempted and percentage 5.3FGM, 3FGA, 3FG%: three-point field goals made, attempted and percentage 6.REB, OREB, DREB: rebounds, offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds 7.AST: assists 8.STL: steals 9.BLK: blocks 10.TO: turnovers 11.EFF: efficiency: NBA's efficiency rating: (PTS + REB + AST + STL + BLK − ((FGA − FGM) + (FTA − FTM) + TO)) 12.PF: personal fouls 13.MIN: minutes 14.AST/TO: assist to turnover ratio 15.PER: Player Efficiency Rating: John Hollinger's Player Efficiency Rating 16.PIR: Performance Index Rating: Euro league's and Euro cup's Performance Index Rating: (Points + Rebounds + Assists + 17.Steals + Blocks + Fouls Drawn) − (Missed Field Goals + Missed Free Throws + Turnovers + Shots Rejected + Fouls Committed)

Inspiration

This is one of the most common questions of everyone's life that how are these basketball players such rich and how are they getting paid, and even the stats about how everything is done on a team.

With each player taking home a handsome 8.32 million U.S. dollars every year, the NBA is the professional sports league with the highest player wages worldwide. In second place is the Indian Premier League, an annual cricket competition contested each year between eight franchises representing eight different Indian cities.

Big money in the NBA Although the wages that players in the NBA take home are astronomical, the average annual salaries vary from one team to another. Whilst the New York Knicks pay their players an average of 7.08 million U.S. dollars a year, Portland Trail Blazers spent around 10.04 million U.S. dollars annually on each of their stars in 2019/20. NBA salaries have tremendously increased throughout the years reaching 8.32 million U.S. dollars in 2019/20 compared to 4.6 million U.S. dollars in 2015/16.

The NBA and WNBA are the two top leagues for basketball in the United States for men and women, respectively. In the NBA in 2024, players were paid around 50 percent of the league revenue. In comparison, players in the WNBA took home around 10 percent of the revenue generated in the league.

Context

Forbes is not just one of the most popular business magazines!! It contains countless articles on numerous subjects (e.g., business, investing, technology, entrepreneurship, etc.), reporting valuable data and insights.

For instance, Forbes publishes annual lists of wealthy people reporting their worth such as "Forbes 400" and "Forbes World's Billionaires list".

Athletes are not an exception, and every year lists are published for the top highest paid individuals.

Content

The data are scrapped manually from Forbes articles listing the top 10 highest-paid athletes in tennis, NBA, and soccer.

Athletes can have multiple sources of income. • Team sports athletes earn a salary paid by their team whereas individual sports athletes compete in tournaments for prize money (such as tennis players). • Most of the time, brands are paying athletes to promote their products (on and off the court) as a marketing promotional strategy to reach a wider target audience and boost their sales / profit.

The dataset contains 11 years of data starting from 2011.

Source

Forbes official website: https://www.forbes.com/ (dataset last updated on 3rd of January 2022)

Inspiration

• Which sport rewarded its athletes the most in each year? • Is there a trend across years for the total earnings of the top 10 highest-paid athletes of each sport? • Does this trend change when looking into salaries (or prize money) and endorsements separately? • Which country 'earns' the most out of those three sports each year?

These are examples of interesting questions that could be answered by analysing this dataset.

If you are interested, please have a look at the Tableau dashboard that I have created to help answer the above questions, and report some of my insights. Tableau dashboard: https://public.tableau.com/views/AthelesSaleries/SportsEarningsAnalysis?:language=en-US&publish=yes&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link

Content

LeBron

This folder contains the data behind the story The LeBron James Decision-Making Machine.

lebron.xslx contains the data used to create the hypothetical depth charts for what every NBA team might look like with LeBron James. Each player carries a rating on offense and on defense, based on our CARMELO projection system. For team projections, a player is also allocated a certain number of minutes per game at each position, guided by CARMELO's playing-time projections. Players with 0 allocated minutes are no longer on the team in question, and are indicated with orange cells. The spreadsheet indicates a team's projected payroll after adding LeBron, compared with the NBA salary cap and luxury-tax thresholds. Players with salaries listed under "$$$ Shed" have left the team, for a reason indicated to the right. (Players departing for special reasons, such as the stretch provision, are color coded when applicable.) A team's projected W-L record is generated from its players' ratings and playing-time projections, and that is used (along with the team's average age and the wins added by its best player) to calculate the team's odds of winning a championship over the next four seasons."

Context

This is a dataset from FiveThirtyEight hosted on their GitHub. Explore FiveThirtyEight data using Kaggle and all of the data sources available through the FiveThirtyEight organization page!

• Update Frequency: This dataset is updated daily.

Acknowledgements

This dataset is maintained using GitHub's API and Kaggle's API.

This dataset is distributed under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Comprehensive YouTube channel statistics for NBA, featuring 23,600,000 subscribers and 16,578,563,315 total views. This dataset includes detailed performance metrics such as subscriber growth, video views, engagement rates, and estimated revenue. The channel operates in the Sports category and is based in US. Track 71,934 videos with daily and monthly performance data, including view counts, subscriber changes, and earnings estimates. Analyze growth trends, engagement patterns, and compare performance against similar channels in the same category.

During the 2025 season, Kelsey Mitchell of the Indiana Fever had the highest salary among players in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) with ******* U.S. dollars. In second place was Arike Ogunbowale with ******* U.S. dollars. How much do WNBA rookies earn? In the lead up to the 2025 WNBA season, one of the most pressing issues surrounding the league was the pay structure. The previous year had seen college basketball superstar Caitlin Clark enter the league as the overall number one pick. Despite being a major draw for the WNBA, Clark's rookie salary stood at under ****** U.S. dollars. In 2025, this increased marginally for the number one pick Paige Bueckers to ****** U.S. dollars. How much are men’s National Basketball Association (NBA) players paid? Compared to the top earners in the women’s league, the picture in the men's league is a little different. Some of the highest-paid male professional basketball players take home eye-watering amounts each year. Steph Curry of the Golden State Warrior sat at the top of the pile in 2024/25 season, earning ** million U.S. dollars for his appearances in the NBA, on top of a further *** million U.S. dollars' worth of endorsements. Overall, average annual salaries in the NBA are much higher than in the WNBA. On average, NBA players took home more than ** million U.S. dollars in 2024/25, while WNBA players earned roughly ******* U.S. dollars in 2025.

In 2024/25, the 30 franchises comprising the National Basketball Association (NBA) recorded a total revenue amounting to **** billion U.S. dollars. This was an increase of over *** billion dollars from the previous year. What are the NBA's main sources of revenue? Among the NBA's main sources of income are broadcasting deals, sponsorships, and gate receipts. In particular, the NBA's sponsorship revenue has consistently exceeded one billion U.S. dollars since the 2017/18 season. One of the league's main sponsors since then has been Nike, which is the league's official outfitter. Meanwhile, the share of overall revenue from gate receipts in the NBA was around ** percent in 2024/25. Which NBA team generates the most revenue? With a revenue of *** million U.S. dollars, the Golden State Warriors were the NBA team with the highest revenue in the 2024/25 season. Between 2015 and 2023, the Warriors were a dominant force in the NBA, appearing in six of eight finals and winning four championships, ending their trophy drought stretching back to 1975. However, the Warriors still have some way to go to match the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers as the NBA teams with the most championships, with the Celtics winning a record **** championship title in 2024.

As of 2024, the largest luxury tax bill footed by a team in the NBA came in the 2023/24 season, when the Golden State Warriors were taxed 176.9 million U.S. dollars by the league. The Warriors also held the other top-three spots, bringing their overall luxury tax payments from 2021/22 to 2023/24 to 510.9 million U.S. dollars.

In 2018, Antoine Griezmann, football player for Atletico Madrid, was the highest paid French sportsmen with an annual salary which amounted to 33 million euros. Born in Mâcon, Antoine Griezmann won the 2017 Europa League with its club and the 2018 FIFA World Cup with the France national football team. That same year he was considered as one of the most valuable French football players with a market value of 100 million euros.

Basketball players vs Football players

In 2018, the top three best-paid French sportsmen were all football players. Antoine Griezmann was followed by Kylian Mbappé and Paul Pogba, respectively playing in 2018 for Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester United. Mbappé, who had an estimated transfer value of 186.5 million euros as of June 2018, earned more than 24 million euros compared to 22.1 million euros for Paul Pogba. But this ranking also shows that French basketball players in the NBA were some of the highest-paid French athletes. Nicolas Batum, currently playing for the Charlotte Hornets, earned more than 20.9 million euros in 2018.

European football on top of the world of sports

Despite the impressive revenue of the NBA, the European football leagues keep having one of the highest revenue in the sports industry. With a revenue of more than 16 billion euros for the season 2018/2019, the “Big Five” of European football remain the financially most successful and probably the most popular sport clubs worldwide. Footballers playing in the big clubs of European football leagues are part of the world’s highest-paid sports teams and players like Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo are some of the most valuable athletes in the world.

In the 2024/25 season, the Golden State Warriors had the highest operating income from all the National Basketball Association teams. Specifically, the NBA franchise reported an operating income of *** million U.S. dollars by the end of the season.