The NBA is recognized worldwide as the premier level of basketball. That means the world’s best athletes play in the NBA and are watched by millions across the planet. Players come into the league mostly through the draft process or through the NBA G League. There are thirty teams broken up into conferences, 29 of them in the United States and 1 in Canada. All 30 teams duke it out in the regular season of 82 games for a playoff spot. 8 teams from each conference get seeded based on their season record. That means 16 teams have a chance of making it to the final. They feature in playoff rounds of 7 games each. And then, the winners from each conference meet in the NBA finals to ultimately win the trophy.
The NBA 2021-22 Season is reaching its conclusion as the two finalists are announced. Golden State will play the Boston Celtics in a best of seven series of the NBA final. The winner will be the new NBA champion. Every year the National Basketball Association makes the pool and this time too, NBA prize money is there of about $22 million.
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The NBA is one of the richest sports and NBA winners have many advantages of winning the championship. Other than fame and following, the champion team also gets extra money.
The NBA is a lucrative sport and teams and players earn tons of money by playing basketball every season. But unlike other professional sports, NBA does not have a fixed amount of Prize Money set out for the winners. Instead, the NBA draws a Winner’s purse which is included in the Prize Pool. The players get a bonus fee if they qualify for the playoff.
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The NBA collects a prize money pool for all playoff teams and then the amount is distributed between the teams. The Player’s pool is Split up among the final 16 teams. The player’s pot for the 2020/21 season was $22 million. According to reports, the NBA prize money for the 2021/22 season would be around $25 million. Here is the Pool Money breakdown of the last season.
All playoff teams in the first round received $298,485 each
Teams participating in the Conference Semifinals received $355,159 each
The four teams in the Conference Finals received $586,898 each
The losing team in the NBA Finals received $2,346,947
The NBA Champion will receive $3,541,896.
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The Golden State Warriors faced the Toronto Raptors in the 2019 finals and each player took home a nice bonus even if they did not win. The “players’ pool” is split up amongst the final 16 teams. It is the league’s duty to help divide that amount amongst victorious teams. Last year, the prize pool was around $22 million, as confirmed by CNBC from an NBA representative. The winners for NBA 2021 is LA Lakers after beating Miami Heat 106-93. SB Nation offers data on which you can make rough estimates on what each team makes. The winning team from 2018 took home $3.3 million. Now, counting the inflation to each year of 10%, the winning team last year received $3.6 million. That rounds up to $240,000 per player in a squad of 15 players..
Now, in hindsight, that is not a lot of money for players like Stephen Curry or Kwahi Leonard, who have contracts worth upwards of $30 million a season. It is not even a week’s worth of wages for them. But it is a neat little sum for players lower down in the wage bracket, especially ones who make the league minimum of $2 million a year.
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