After several one-and-done players excelled on the college stage last season, most pundits have maintained that teams can’t go wrong with any one of the top four prospects in this year’s NBA draft class. But even with the razor-thin margins between A.J. Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer and Caleb Wilson—all of whom should hear their names called near the top of the first round on Tuesday night—the differences in the contracts they end up signing will be as large as ever.
A wage scale has dictated the value of every rookie deal since the 1995 draft, with first-rounders signed to four-year contracts that include two fully guaranteed years along with two years that are subject to team options. Each pick has a designated slot value, and teams can sign their first-round picks for between 80% and 120% of the corresponding figure, although most offer 120% as a gesture of goodwill.
That means that Tuesday’s No. 1 overall pick—whoever it turns out to be—is expected to sign a four-year, $69 million deal with the Washington Wizards, including a $15.2 million salary for the player’s rookie season, according to a projection by the contract database Spotrac that was confirmed by a league insider. Those numbers drop to $61.8 million total and $13.6 million in Year 1 for the second pick, held by the Utah Jazz, and continue to gradually decline to $15.5 million over four years and $3 million in rookie pay for the last pick of the first round at No. 30.
Selections in the draft’s second round, which will be held Wednesday night, do not automatically get guaranteed contracts and have to negotiate their deals individually with teams.
Dybantsa, a 6-foot-9 forward, is the current favorite to earn the top prize after earning first-team all-American honors in his lone season at BYU, although some believe Peterson, a 6-foot-5 guard out of Kansas, remains in the mix at No. 1. (Boozer, a 6-foot-8 forward from Duke, and Wilson, a 6-foot-9 forward from North Carolina, would be nice consolation prizes for the Memphis Grizzlies at No. 3 and the Chicago Bulls at No. 4.)
It is possible that all of the top ten picks could be college freshmen for the first time ever, with no international prospects thought to be on par with that group.
The NBA implemented its rookie wage scale after 1994’s No. 1 overall pick, Glenn Robinson, held out for a ten-year, $68 million contract. With veterans frustrated that unproven rookies were making more than many of the league’s established players, the next season’s top pick, Joe Smith, was slotted into a three-year, $8.4 million deal.
Three decades later, if the Wizards go on to exercise their third- and fourth-year options for whoever they choose—a near certainty for a top pick who performs anywhere close to expectations—the $69 million value of the deal would set a record as the largest rookie contract ever, surpassing Robinson’s $68 million total. (Of course, adjusting for inflation, Robinson’s deal was worth around twice as much in today’s dollars.)
Coincidentally, that milestone would come the same year that the slot value for the No. 1 NFL draft pick—Fernando Mendoza, taken by the Las Vegas Raiders—finally exceeded Sam Bradford’s $50 million guarantee from 2010, a deal that prompted the NFL to establish a similar rookie wage scale.
For a prospect like Kansas guard Darryn Peterson, falling from No. 1 to No. 2 in the NBA draft will likely mean a $1.6 million lower salary as a rookie.
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But while Robinson locked in most of his career earnings with that $68 million spread over a decade, Dybantsa, Peterson and their peers hope their starting salaries will be springboards to much bigger paydays four years down the line. The NBA’s salary cap is projected to be $165 million next season, and young players who are already racking up all-NBA honors can sign extensions of their rookie deals for up to 30% of the cap, or nearly $50 million in salary this year. Veterans can make up to 35% of the cap on supermax contracts, or about $58 million, and the cap is expected to keep rising as the NBA’s new national television deals send league revenue skyward.
Those veteran-friendly rules are a big reason the NBA is the most-represented league on Forbes’ 2026 list of the world’s highest-paid athletes, occupying 20 of the top 50 spots, but the system has also made it more difficult for teams to retain championship-level rosters and build dynasties around multiple superstars. Eight different franchises have won the last eight NBA championships, an unprecedented run of parity.
In a clear sign of the challenge facing title-winning teams, days after the New York Knicks ended a 53-year drought by hoisting the Larry O’Brien Trophy, owner James Dolan said in an interview with WFAN that “you’d have to be suicidal” to go into the “second apron,” a payroll threshold that comes with severe roster-building restrictions and taxes for teams that cross it. That attitude will make it almost impossible for the Knicks to hold on to all of their impending free agents, including Mitchell Robinson, Landry Shamet and Jordan Clarkson.
Meanwhile, the Knicks’ opponent in the NBA finals, the Western Conference champion San Antonio Spurs, showcased the value of building around youth, with their stars Victor Wembanyama, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper all still on affordable rookie deals. The 7-foot-4 Wembanyama, playing on a four-year, $55 million deal as the first pick of the 2023 draft, could be eligible for a five-year max extension worth as much as $300 million if he makes another all-NBA team next season or wins the Defensive Player of the Year or Most Valuable Player Awards.
However, teams hoping to emulate the Spurs will be up against more stringent anti-tanking rules that go into effect next season and lower the chances that the league’s worst teams receive top draft picks. And even if the ping-pong balls bounce a club’s way, teams will no longer be allowed to possess a top-five pick in three straight drafts, which would have prevented the Spurs’ run of good fortune that led to the Wembanyama, Castle and Harper selections.
With those obstacles, it has never been harder to be an NBA general manager, making it all the more impressive that Knicks president Leon Rose plucked Jalen Brunson from the Dallas Mavericks in free agency in 2022 for four years and $104 million and then tacked on a team-friendly four-year, $156 million extension in 2024, a year before Brunson could have been eligible for a $269 million supermax extension. That $113 million sacrifice may have been the point guard’s greatest assist en route to being named this year’s NBA Finals MVP.
Still, a $156 million payday isn’t too bad for a former second-round pick who made a total of $6.1 million on his initial rookie deal with Dallas, and there are sure to be other difference-makers hiding in plain sight this off-season, whether it’s in the draft on Tuesday and Wednesday or at the start of free agency on June 30. Spotting them is just easier said than done.