The 25 worst contracts in the NBA for 2025-26

Current contract: 4 years, $242.9M (extension begins next season)

Joel Embiid will earn $55.2M this season before his three-year, $187.5M extension kicks in next season. He also has a player option on that third year, so I'm going to go ahead and report right now that Joel Embiid is expected to opt into his $67M player option in 2028-29. The 31-year-old has only appeared in 58 total games since his MVP season in 2022-23, and doesn't appear to be over his nagging knee problems. Perhaps the Sixers can figure out a way so that he's in fairly good shape heading into the playoffs and he miraculously stays healthy for multiple rounds...but I doubt it!

Current contract: 4 years, $211.6M (began 2024-25)

Yet another brutal long-term contract for the 76ers. PG13 has a player option for $56.5M in 2027-28...going to go ahead and predict with near certainty that he's going to pick that option up. In his prime, he was one of the smoothest and best two-way players in the game. Now, he's an overly profound podcaster. 

Current contract: 4 years, $96.3M (began 2022-23)

Once an above-average starting point guard who averaged 20.2 PPG and 4.6 APG with 44-37-82 shooting splits from 2020-21 to 2022-23, Terry Rozier is almost unplayable (10.6 PPG and 2.6 APG with 39-30-85 shooting splits last season) in Miami. Oh, and he's still under federal investigation from a game in March 2023 where a better placed 30 bets on Rozier player prop unders, and all 30 bets won after Rozier left the game early with an alleged foot issue. Not ideal!

Current contract: 5 years, $90M (began 2024-25)

Patrick Williams, selected fourth overall in the 2020 NBA Draft, was the Bulls' highest pick since Derrick Rose (2008). Unfortunately, Williams, who was a raw wing when he was drafted after one COVID-shortened season at Florida State, is essentially the same exact player today (9 PPG, 3.8 RPG, 2 APG, 40-35-72 shooting splits) as he was as a rookie (9.2 PPG, 4.6 RPG, 1.4 APG, 48-39-73 shooting splits), maybe worse! After he almost certainly picks up his player option in 2028-29, he might be out of the NBA.

Current contract: 4 years, $114.2M (began 2024-25)

I hate penalizing players for injuries, but Dejounte Murray's contract probably would have been on this list even if he hadn't ruptured his Achilles tendon in the middle of last season. With a game that is predicated on athleticism as opposed to shooting (he had dismal 39-30-82 shooting splits last season), stacking an Achilles injury onto a body that has already had a major knee injury that caused him to miss the entire 2018-19 season doesn't bode well for the remainder of Murray's deal. 

Current contract: 4 years, $90M (began 2023-24)

When Kyle Kuzma was still on the Wizards last season, you could have convinced me that he wasn't practicing basketball and simply just showing up for games. After a couple of contending seasons with the Lakers, Kuzma was shipped to the Wizards and proceeded to play totally unserious basketball for the next three-and-a-half seasons, culminating in the 32 games pre-trade last year when he averaged 15.2 PPG with 42-28-60 shooting splits. And while the Bucks bailed him out of basketball purgatory, he was miserable in the playoffs, averaging 5.8 PPG on 34-20-50 shooting splits (yes, those are real shooting percentages).

Current contract: 5 years, $160M (began 2023-24)

This contract was a complete head-scratcher when it happened, and remains a confounding deal today for Jerami Grant. When Grant signed this whopping extension, he was heading into the final year of his contract that paid him approximately $20M per season. At $20M per season, Grant was a desirable trade target. Despite there being zero benefit or pressure to lock Grant up to a long-term deal, Portland signed him to a deal that pays him an average $32M per season. Nobody wants him at that number. And to make matters worse, Grant severely regressed last season and averaged only 14.4 PPG on 37-37-85 shooting splits. Yikes!

Current contract: 3 years, $120M (begins this season)

Former Raptors' Team President Masai Ujiri has one of the more confusing tenures for a decision-maker in recent memory. The guy threaded the needle on a Kawhi Leonard deal that worked out beautifully when they won the 2019 NBA Championship. After that, basically every move he made (or didn't make) was befuddling. Fittingly, his final major move as the Raptors' top executive was trading for Brandon Ingram - a distressed asset that literally nobody wanted to trade for or pay big money to - and extending him to a superstar-sized $40M per season contract with a player option on year three, no less!

Current contract: 4 years, $128M (began 2023-24)

Jordan Poole is an inefficient chucker on a bad contract. After learning how to win and be a professional in Golden State (sans the punch he received from Draymond Green) during the first four years of his career, Poole had all of those good habits destroyed by playing two years of totally unserious, unsupervised basketball in Washington DC - did you see what happened why Kyle Kuzma tried to lock-in last postseason? We'll see if he can get back to at least being an occasional impact player in New Orleans this season, but I'm skeptical because NOLA is much closer to Washington than Golden State in terms of franchise culture.

Current contract: 3 years, $149.5M (began 2024-25)

Since joining the Clippers in 2019-20, Kawhi Leonard has only played in 60-plus games once, has missed an entire season, and has gotten injured three times in the playoffs. Obviously, when Leonard plays, he's one of the best two-way players in the NBA still. But $50M per year for a player who is frequently in street clothes is brutal in today's NBA.

Current contract: 3 years, $93M (began 2023-24)

To be fair to Khris Middleton, this was a contract that was commensurate with his production back when he signed it in Milwaukee. Unfortunately, injuries have robbed him of the backend of his prime as he's only appeared in 125 games combined in the past three seasons. Unless he turns back the clock on both ends of the court this first half of the year in Washington, his $33.3M contract will be impossible for the Wizards to trade, and they may buy him out.

Current contract: 5 years, $215.2M (began in 2022-23)

Zach LaVine still has one season at $47.5M and a player option for $49M. This contract was crippling the moment it was handed out to LaVine and has remained crippling ever since. LaVine, who is an excellent offensive player, would have thrived as the third banana on a good team. Unfortunately, largely because of his max contracts (he's had multiple), he's never been on a good team. And that will continue through the end of this deal.

Current contract: 5 years, $162.5M (began 2024-25)

Don't blame Immanuel Quickley for the Raptors' stupidity. It's not his fault that Toronto gave a sixth-man caliber point guard an All-Star's contract. IQ only played 33 games last season and averaged 17.1 PPG and 5.8 APG with 42-38-87 shooting splits. If he took a leap this season, this contract would be much easier to stomach (and trade!). 

Current contract: 5 years, $179.3M (began 2022-23)

Michael Porter Jr. is paid like a star - he'll earn $38.3M this season and $40.8M next season - but has never quite reached the lofty standards of an NBA star. He's still a good player who averaged an efficient 18.2 PPG on 50-40-77 shooting last season, but how much of that was driven by playing alongside the best player in the world, Nikola Jokic. We're going to learn a lot about MPJ's ceiling this season in Brooklyn, that's for sure.

Current contract: 5 years, $197.2M (began 2023-24)

Do you trust that Ja Morant has put his off-court issues behind him? I do, but it's certainly not a sure thing that he gets his career back on track and performs like a player making nearly $40M per season. And assuming he does stay clean off the court, will he stay healthy enough to get the Grizzlies back towards the top of the Western Conference again? Last year, he regressed a bit statistically, but there was a lot of franchise turmoil with the coaching situation, so this year will be pivotal for Morant.

Current contract: 5 years, $203.9M (began 2024-25)

LaMelo Ball is incredibly talented, incredibly entertaining and incredibly productive. So what's not to like? Well, he's also incredibly unavailable and has only appeared in 105 games over the past three seasons. If you're a franchise player, you need to play the majority of games or else your team is going to live in the play-in territory or lottery like the Hornets have for the entirety of Ball's career. 

Current contract: 5 years, $197.2M (began 2023-24)

Look, I'm still a Zion believer. Unfortunately, he's rarely been healthy in his six seasons as a pro. In fact, he's played between zero and 30 games four times, including last season. In all likelihood, if Zion ever becomes the player he has the potential to be, it'll be somewhere besides New Orleans. 

Current contract: 4 years, $186M (began 2024-25)

Domantas Sabonis is a bad player - because he's not, he's a very good player - the issue is that he's paid like a superstar, but isn't a superstar, especially in the playoffs. After a surprise three-seed in 2022-23, the Kings' front office and ownership (mostly their ownership) have made some serious blunders since then, and the franchise arrow is pointing in the wrong direction again.

Current contract: 5 years, $224.2M 

Scottie Barnes has found himself in the Joe Johnson/Zach LaVine sweet spot where his team desperately wants and needs him to be a franchise player, so they're paying him like a franchise player despite mounting evidence suggesting he's most likely a fringe All-Star (aka an Eastern Conference All-Star). Barnes' main issue is that he cannot make three-pointers at even close to an efficient clip (27.1 percent last season and 30 percent for his career).

Current contract: 4 years, $195.9M (begins this season)

Lauri Markkanen is a good player in his prime, but this is too massive of a contract in the second apron era in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement for a fringe All-Star player. Whether it's due to a lack of motivation playing for such a bad team or some actual slippage, Markkanen has regressed quite a bit over the past two seasons after his Most Improved Player award-winning season in 2022-23 where he averaged 25.6 PPG, 8.6 RPG and had 50-39-88 shooting splits. This past year, he was down to 19 PPG, 5.9 RPG and had 43-35-88 shooting splits. 

Current contract: 3 years, $105.3M (begins this season)

They say the playoffs reveal your true colors, and the 2025 NBA playoffs revealed that Jalen Green is not ready to be a go-to scorer on a playoff team yet. After averaging 21 PPG in the regular season, Green's numbers plummeted to a meager 13.3 PPG with very inefficient 37-30-67 shooting splits in a seven-game series loss to the Warriors. The Rockets couldn't wait to send him packing to Phoenix in the Kevin Durant deal this offseason, where he'll have an opportunity to either refine his game and become the star he seemed destined to be when he was drafted, or continue on his Zach LaVine-lite trajectory.

Current contract: 4 years, $134.4M (began 2024-25)

This one feels icky because 30 teams would love to have a great defender, leader and proven playoff performer like Jrue Holiday. However, in this second era of the new CBA, paying a 36-year-old guard who isn't an All-Star over 20 percent of your team's salary cap space just isn't something you want to be doing. Perhaps he'll play well enough to convince a fringe contender to make a move for him around the deadline. Otherwise, he's probably playing out the rest of his contract (and perhaps career) for the rebuilding Blazers.

Current contract: 5 years, $123.1M (extension begins next season)

Technically, Jakob Poeltl is in the middle of a four-year, $78M contract and then a three-year, $84M extension running through 2029-30, when he'll be 34 years old. And while the deep cut basketball nerds will tell you that this is close to market value, that's a bunch of nonsense - Poeltl is a solid, low-end starting center. You can find those guys on the scrap heap for $10-15M any offseason. You don't extend those guys two years before they hit free agency for nearly $30M per season, which is exactly what the Raptors did this offseason - especially when you're one of the worst teams in the NBA!

Current contract: 3 years, $66M (began 2024-25)

When Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, a two-time champion and ideal three-and-D guard, left the Nuggets to sign this deal with the Magic, it seemed to be a slight overpay, but nothing too insane. Unfortunately for the Magic, KCP was a bust last season and did not provide Orlando with the spacing or defense they were hoping for. After averaging 8.7 PPG with 44-34-86 shooting splits last season, KCP will look to rebound this season while playing alongside one of the more electrifying guards in the game, Ja Morant.

Current contract: 5 years, $259.5M (extension begins next season)

De'Aaron Fox makes $37.1M this season, which is decent value for what he brings to the table, but the four-year $222.4M max extension he just inked is a hefty price to pay for a player who has only made one All-Star team in his eight-year career. That said, he's a very good player and deserves an opportunity to play alongside Victor Wembanyama before we etch this contract in stone as a terrible deal.