The Biggest Contracts in NBA History

As of the 2025 offseason, the largest contract in NBA history by total value is Jayson Tatum’s five-year supermax extension with the Boston Celtics, worth roughly $314 million and signed in July 2024. It edged past the previous record, teammate Jaylen Brown’s roughly $304 million deal from 2023, in the ongoing arms race at the top of the NBA pay scale.

The biggest NBA contract is a moving target. Because star salaries are pegged to a salary cap that rises almost every year, the record total is broken again and again, so any list of the largest deals is really a snapshot in time. Here is where things stand as of 2025, with the numbers dated and framed as the estimates they are.

The record: Tatum’s $314 million supermax

Tatum’s extension, agreed in July 2024 after Boston’s championship run, is the largest total-dollar contract ever signed in the NBA at the time. It is a supermax, the special tier that lets a franchise pay one of its own stars up to 35 percent of the cap, and its five-year length pushes the total past $300 million.

What makes it notable is not just the number but how quickly it arrived. Brown’s deal had set the record only a year earlier, and Tatum’s promptly beat it, a perfect illustration of how fast the ceiling is rising.

The leaderboard of biggest NBA contracts

The table below ranks the largest NBA contracts by total value as of 2025. Every figure is an estimate tied to the deal’s signing date and rounded, because cap-percentage contracts shift as the cap changes.

Player	Team	Value (est.)	Signed	Type
Jayson Tatum	Boston Celtics	~$314M / 5 yrs	2024	Supermax
Jaylen Brown	Boston Celtics	~$304M / 5 yrs	2023	Supermax
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander	Oklahoma City Thunder	~$285M / 4 yrs	2025	Supermax
Nikola Jokic	Denver Nuggets	~$276M / 5 yrs	2022	Supermax
Devin Booker	Phoenix Suns	~$220M+ / extensions	2021-24	Max/extension

Tatum leads by total value, with Brown just behind. Gilgeous-Alexander’s 2025 deal is shorter but carries the highest average annual salary in league history, a reminder that total value and yearly value are two different records.

Total value versus average salary

It is worth separating two things people often merge. Total value is the full sum across every year of a contract, which favors longer deals. Average annual value is the per-season figure, which a shorter contract can top even with a smaller total.

By total value, Tatum’s five-year deal leads as of 2025. By average annual salary, Gilgeous-Alexander’s four-year 2025 supermax set the mark. Both are records, just of different kinds, which is why headlines about the biggest contract can seem to conflict.

Why the supermax drives the record

Nearly every deal at the top of this list is a supermax, formally the Designated Veteran Player Extension. It rewards a team’s homegrown star, someone who has made All-NBA, won MVP or been named Defensive Player of the Year, with up to 35 percent of the cap. Because that percentage is applied to a cap that keeps climbing, the supermax is the engine behind every new record.

That structure is also why the biggest deal in the league changes hands so often. As the cap rises, the next star to sign a supermax frequently jumps the previous record holder, sometimes within months.

Where NBA deals sit among all sports

Even at $300 million-plus, the biggest NBA contracts are not the largest in all of sports. Guaranteed baseball deals and long-term soccer contracts have reached even higher totals, as covered in our look at the biggest contracts in sports history. Within basketball, though, the supermax defines the ceiling, and the players signing them dominate our ranking of the richest NBA players.

The short version: as of 2025, Jayson Tatum’s roughly $314 million supermax is the largest NBA contract by total value, Jaylen Brown’s $304 million deal held the record before it, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander owns the highest average annual salary, with the record set to keep climbing as the cap rises.