Introducing Still Capping: A New Way to Compare NBA Contracts

In 2015, Kyrie Irving started a 5 year, $94.3M contract with an average annual value of $18.9M with the Cleveland Cavaliers. One year later, Chandler Parsons signed a 4 year contract with the Memphis Grizzlies with an average annual value of $23.6M. How?

Did you know there was a Chandler Parsons ladies’ night?

Everyone knows about the Great Cap Spike of 2016 that caused this. Even with this in mind, comparing the relative value of contracts has become difficult with a ballooning cap. For example, Roy Hibbert in 2012 made $13.7M and in 2024-2025 Mitchell Robinson makes $14.3M. Roy Hibbert’s contract wasn’t too bad, right? Maybe not in the season when refs let him foul people at the basket, but in 2015-2016 when the Pacers had already imploded due to, uh, chemistry issues, he was making $15.5M — 22% of the salary cap — the equivalent of someone earning $31.3M in 2024-2025. That makes Mitchell Robinson look like a bargain (when healthy).

The cap has mostly continued to rise year after year, making it difficult to compare contracts after the Great Cap Spike to the present day. For example, Timofey Mozgov got paid $16M, or 17% of the cap, in 2016-2017. In 2024-2025, that’s the equivalent of $23.9M—around what Jaden McDaniels makes. The cap is set to go up 10% yearly under the new NBA TV deal, which will continue to distort direct comparisons.

That’s where Still Capping comes in. I’ve built a tool that lets you easily compare contract values across years. With NBA discourse more focused on transactions than ever, this will help you be a more informed fan. I remember podcasts trashing Julius Randle’s contract after the 2021-2022 season. He was set to make $26.1M the next year—about $14M in 2015-2016 terms, when Roy Hibbert was getting a subsidized Weight Watchers membership from the Pacers.

Julius Randle has been a polarizing player — but his contract extension with the Knicks was pretty cheap to start.

The calculator won’t account for real-world inflation. If you want to know how many more Robux Joel Embiid can buy now versus in 2014, ChatGPT is there for you. For now, the tool focuses on cap-relative comparisons, and I’ll be posting lighthearted content exploring NBA salary minutiae every week.

In the future, I hope to add a tool that lets you input a player’s contract in a given year and get back the 2–3 closest contracts as a % of the cap in another year. That’ll take more data and dev work, but I’m excited to dig in.

Let’s explore the CBA and salary cap together.