Ranking NBA’s 15 worst contracts: Trae Young, De’Aaron Fox in top five, but Joel Embiid is No. 1

In March, I ranked the 15 worst contracts in the NBA. Some of those rankings aged well. Joel Embiid was overpaid then and he’s overpaid now. Some of them do not. The ranking committee offers its sincere apologies to NBA champion Karl-Anthony Towns, who just had one of the greatest statistical playoff runs in league history.

In a quieter offseason, we might have left those rankings alone until next March. This obviously has not been a quiet offseason. We’ve seen plenty of stars get paid and plenty of others get moved in part because their teams seemingly didn’t want to pay them. The Charlotte Hornets (LaMelo Ball) and Boston Celtics (Jaylen Brown) both made relatively surprising trades involving extension-eligible All-Stars.

Neither Ball nor Brown landed on our updated list of the NBA’s worst contracts, but their trades underscore the need for its existence. The NBA has never demanded such austerity from its teams. Every dollar counts. Part of the reason the Knicks could handle that (seemingly shaky at the time) Towns contract en route to their championship run was that they had Jalen Brunson earning well below his fair market value. This is the era of fiscal responsibility in the NBA, and a single bad contract can derail otherwise successful roster construction.

So we’re going to update that top-15 list based on the new contracts signed this offseason and the new information we’ve received since March. Where little has changed, our explanations will be brief. Where things are different, we’ll explain why. The determining factor in who gets ranked where is how detrimental the contract in question would be in building a standard, contending-level roster. With that in mind, let’s dive in.

15. Donovan Mitchell, Cavaliers

Total owed: $322,990,940 (estimated)

Years left: Five

Here we have the first of several max contracts owed to star guards who are likely at or near the end of their primes. Mitchell, 29, is a cut above the other guards on this list, the only one still playing at an All-NBA level. He’s likely to play up to his existing $50 million or so salary this season, and could even stand up reasonably well to the supermax figure he’ll jump up to for the 2027-28 campaign.

But Mitchell is literally owed more money than any other player in basketball right now, and the contract is just so long. He’ll earn an estimated $75.5 million in his age-34 season. How many 34-year-olds in recent memory have ever lived up to a salary worth 37.5% of the cap? Certainly the holy trinity of modern, ageless stars in LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry. Kawhi Leonard a year ago fit the bill, as did Kobe Bryant in his last superstar hurrah, the 2012-13 season.

But Mitchell has never even grazed the standard those legends have set. He’s dealt with nagging lower-body injuries for years now, and he’s a deceptively tricky roster fit as someone who is point-guard-sized without being a point-guard-level playmaker or a defender capable of guarding high-level point guards. Cleveland has spent years navigating his complicated supporting cast needs, and it only gets harder on this contract. The downside risk here is tremendous.

14. Immanuel Quickley, Raptors

Total owed: $97,500,000

Years remaining: Three

Quickley was one of the best backup guards in the NBA when he played for the Knicks. The going rate for high-end backup guards, at best, is the $22.4 million per year Ayo Dosunmu just got from the Minnesota Timberwolves, and realistically, it’s closer to the mid-level exception. Quickley has to be a high-level starting point guard to justify this salary. All 15 point guards earning more per year than he is have made at least one All-Star team. Quickley has never come close. 

His statistical profile now with the Raptors is virtually identical to where it was with the Knicks, outside of a notable improvement as a playmaker. Even with that jump, he is not a primary ball-handler, yet he’s making primary ball-handler money. The contract isn’t totally underwater, but it’s never a good sign when your contract becomes the benchmark all remotely similar players point to in negotiations with their own teams.

13. Jalen Green, Suns

Total owed: $72,251,166

Years remaining: Two (player option for 2027-28)

This one is very straightforward. Green was paid on potential. The hope was that he would either live up to his No. 2 overall pick billing or get traded to someone who thought he could. Houston moved him before the upside potential started to dim. Now Phoenix is left holding the bag here. The likeliest outcome for this Suns season is Phoenix eventually realizing that Collin Gillespie, not Green, is best-suited as Devin Booker’s backcourt mate. At that point, this contract becomes a giant overpay for a third guard. Yet there’s minimal financial upside if Green reaches his considerable potential because he has a player option for the 2027-28 campaign. If this is a bad contract, it’s just a bad contract. If it’s a good one, he opts out and gets a pricier long-term deal.

12. Paul George, Celtics

Total owed: $110,713,050

Years remaining: Two

When I ranked George No. 4 on the March list, it was based on the assumption that the rest of the league viewed George as a negative-value contract. Most of it might have, but the fact that Boston didn’t touches on a pretty important concept when it comes to contract valuations: portability.

Paul George can play for anyone. Big wings that shoot a lot of 3s and defend multiple positions are always in demand. George doesn’t hog usage or turn the ball over. He has no weaknesses that a typical contender shouldn’t be able to cover up. As a player, he is purely additive. He might not add max-level value, but just by virtue of the ease of his fit, players like him are usually going to be more desirable than those who pose trickier fit issues in most lineups. Nobody wants to pay two small guards, for instance, or two wings who can’t shoot, yet the fact that the Celtics were willing to devote 70% of the cap to George and Jayson Tatum is a helpful reminder that players of that ilk are just almost always going to be movable if absolutely necessary.

11. Anthony Davis, Wizards

Total owed: $121,243,248

Years remaining: Two

Part of the impetus for remaking this list was the potential for an Anthony Davis extension in Washington. He became eligible for one on Aug. 6, but reports indicated that the Wizards plan to wait into the season to decide whether or not to offer Davis an extension. That is wise. A long-term extension for the 33-year-old, very injury-prone Davis would have landed near the top of this list.

As it stands, the contract is still a negative. Davis has played just 29 games since he was stunningly dealt at the 2025 trade deadline. His brief cameo last season was uninspiring. While he is still a very good player and one who is theoretically versatile enough for the playoff crucible, there’s just no way to argue that he lives up to a supermax salary at this point. He’s just not enough of a shooter or individual creator to offset the gradual declines he’s experiencing in terms of rim pressure and defense. He comes in lower on this list than he did on the March edition through inflation at the center position and the hope that he was healthier last season than the tanking Wizards would have us believe. Nonetheless, even on a two-year deal, this is just far too much for Davis at 33.

10. Domantas Sabonis, Kings

Total owed: $94,080,000

Years remaining: Two

Lottery reform has been kind to a handful of players like Sabonis. Suddenly, offensive floor-raising is a skill worth paying for under the right circumstances. No serious contender could justify paying Sabonis the max, especially coming off the season he just had. Even at his best, his defense is disqualifying, and he doesn’t make up for it with transcendent offense like Nikola Jokić or deadeye shooting as Karl-Anthony Towns did before his defensive growth. He’s a regular-season player, but regular-season players mean more today than they used to because even bad teams need to avoid the relegation zone. Sabonis is still overpaid, but he was No. 5 on the March list because this specific niche didn’t yet exist. Even if he shouldn’t be a part of a contending-level roster himself, he can help a rebuilding team get there eventually by maximizing their lottery odds.

9. Christian Braun, Nuggets

Total owed: $125,000,000

Years remaining: Five

Christian Braun is better than what we saw last season, but even the version of him from 2025 would have a hard time living up to this contract. He took on the hardest defensive matchups because the Denver Nuggets needed him to, not because he’s especially equipped to handle them. He’s a good-not-great defender whose offensive value is so inherently tied to Jokić’s presence that no other team could justify taking him. He only takes wide-open 3s. Look at who’s creating those 3s. His best offensive trait is what he does in transition. Look at who’s passing him the ball in transition. If Denver could get off this contract right now, it would. The Nuggets are trying to shed money to lower their tax bill after hopefully re-signing Peyton Watson. It’s just far likelier that the Nuggets trade Cam Johnson because, unlike Braun, he’s actually somewhat viable at his salary on another team. Throw in the scary five-year length here and Braun has one of the worst role player contracts in basketball. 

8. Patrick Williams, Bulls

Total owed: $54,000,000

Years remaining: Three

This is the lower-stakes but less excusable version of the Jalen Green contract. At least Green has been a productive, if inefficient, NBA player. The Bulls paid Patrick Williams $90 million because they drafted him No. 4 overall. That’s it. He has very impressive physical tools that have never manifested into consistent, winning basketball. He’s a minimum-level player at this point who’d probably get slightly more than that on the open market for upside alone, but he’s making more than the mid-level exception. The lesson: don’t compound your mistakes. The Bulls made a bad pick and compounded it with a worse contract.

7. Gary Trent Jr., Bucks

Total owed: $64,000,000

Year remaining: Four

Article 13 of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement states that salary cap circumvention “may be proven by direct or circumstantial evidence, including, but not limited to, evidence that a Player Contract or any term or provision thereof cannot rationally be explained in the absence of conduct violative of Section 2(a) or 2(b).”

Why do I bring this up? Because the NBA is currently investigating this contract, and beyond an extremely optimistic belief that Trent could return to his form from a few years ago, there is no rational explanation for this contract except cap circumvention. The Bucks signed Trent for the minimum two summers ago and kept him last year, allowing him to build up the Early Bird Rights they needed to sign him to this contract. Yet in that time, Trent went from a former starter whose availability for the minimum was perceived as a surprise to a minimum-caliber reserve who even fell out of Milwaukee’s rotation at points last season. 

NBA looking into Gary Trent Jr.’s contract: Why $64 million extension with Bucks has raised eyebrows

Sam Quinn

He got the eighth-most guaranteed money of any free agent following a season in which he just barely topped eight points per game. The Bucks re-signed Ousmane Dieng for three years and $17.25 million this offseason. He is five years younger than Trent, averaged more points, rebounds and assists for Milwaukee and plays a position that is not only scarcer around the league, but within Milwaukee’s own, guard-heavy rotation. This contract defies the rest of the market so brazenly that the easiest explanation for its existence is that it might be illegal. The only reason it isn’t higher on this list is that $16 million per year, even flushed down the toilet, can only do so much damage.

6. Devin Booker, Suns

Total owed: $251,351,098

Years remaining: Four

Booker’s supermax deal has one fewer season than Mitchell’s, but he’s a level below Mitchell as a player. He’s a low-end All-Star at best at this point, and probably a shade worse. His 3-point shooting has been declining for a few years now, and so much of what worked last season relied on an outlier free-throw rate. His size makes him a bit more portable than most of the other guards on this list. Just look at his Team USA performance as evidence of what he can do in a smaller role. But the entire value proposition of paying Booker relies on him being an absolutely elite shotmaker, because that’s his only elite skill. He wasn’t that player last season, and if he isn’t, even if he remains valuable, the gap between what he makes and what he’s worth will be enormous.

5. De’Aaron Fox, Spurs

Total owed: $223,104,000

Years remaining: Four

Take a deep breath, people. The NBA Finals are not the be-all and end-all of De’Aaron Fox. He is a much better player than that. Despite his high-ankle sprain, the San Antonio Spurs would have lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder without him. Remember the 20 turnovers Stephon Castle committed in the first two games of the Western Conference Finals? Fox settled the offense down. Most teams don’t have a Castle and a Dylan Harper. Those teams would probably be happy to have Fox, albeit at a slightly reduced salary. San Antonio’s specific circumstances somewhat exaggerate the degree of catastrophe this contract represents. He made the All-Star team last season.

Nonetheless, this is a bad contract. It’s not quite as expensive as Booker’s over the same term, but Fox’s peak relied on league-best speed that is beginning to wane. He doesn’t pressure the rim at nearly the same level anymore, his 3-point shot has been inconsistent for far longer, and he’s trickier to fit into a normal defense given his size. You’re getting much better playmaking than you would from Booker, but how much of that playmaking is tied to the gravity he generates at the basket? Ultimately, those portability concerns force him to this point on the list. Committing four years of max money to a player who relies on a trait we’d expect to keep declining just offers minimal reward for a substantial risk.

The next Jaylen Brown? Three high-paid NBA players whose contracts could eventually make them trade candidates

Sam Quinn

4. Jakob Poeltl, Raptors

Total owed: $103,584,000

Years remaining: Four

This is the worst of the role player contracts we’ll cover. The Poeltl contract is essentially the center version of the Braun deal. It’s roughly $25 million per year for someone who’s probably best-suited as a backup on a contender… except Poeltl is five years older than Braun and spent most of last year dealing with chronic back problems. Even with Poeltl’s deal lasting one fewer season, those factors demand a higher ranking. There’s far more reason to believe Braun can turn things around than Poeltl can. There have been several reports of the Raptors trying and failing to trade Poeltl at the deadline, and don’t expect those efforts to get any easier in the years to come. He ranked ahead of Ja Morant in March, but continued inflation at the center position, coupled with a few healthy-ish months down the stretch, swapped their placements this time around.

3. Ja Morant, Trail Blazers

Total owed: $87,053,440

Years remaining: Two

The argument against Morant ranking this high is that he has only two years left on his deal and didn’t cost draft picks in a trade. We can’t say for certain, but the last handful of players we ranked probably would cost assets to move.

Where Morant, 26, differs from the max-salary other guards we’ve covered — Fox, Booker and Mitchell — is that all three are still very productive players. While their contracts are longer and pricier now, their worst-case outcomes beyond an immediate, career-altering injury would essentially be becoming what Morant is now. They are all still at points in their careers in which they should be expected to produce at or near an All-Star level. All three of them literally did make the All-Star team last season. If things go badly, it would probably take them two or three years to get to where Morant is now, at which point their contracts would be about the length his is now.

That’s what makes Morant’s contract so detrimental. You’re paying for a max-salary player with very little chance that he actually has max-level production left in him. He’s perhaps the least portable player on this list. He’s small, he doesn’t defend and he can’t shoot. All of his value is tied to having the ball in his hands and getting to the rim. He doesn’t get to the rim at nearly the same level that he used to, and he therefore shouldn’t have the ball in his hands as often as he once did. It’s therefore difficult to find a role for him on any sort of competitive team beyond, frankly, backup point guard, and it would obviously be impossible for most teams to justify paying that much for a backup. 

All of this is before we factor in the injuries, the off-court issues and the potential for locker room problems after his feud with former Grizzlies coach Tuomas Iisalo last season. He might be a negative regardless of salary. Morant was a no-brainer for this portion of the list.

2. Trae Young, Wizards

Total owed: $212,799,690

Years left: Four

Young is the last of the famous guards in their late-20s for us to cover, and none of them are more useful for this exercise than he is. Remember, the Atlanta Hawks were so desperate to avoid paying Young roughly $50 million for one season that they cap dumped him onto Washington and even took on Corey Kispert’s long-term deal to do so. The Wizards proceeded to give him a four-year max contract in that salary range. 

Now, that deal was perhaps preceded by external interest. We’ll never really know for sure. But this still represents perhaps the starkest difference in contractual valuations for the same player between two teams in recent NBA history, and considering how tepid Young’s trade market was, the Hawks seem to have held the majority opinion here.

The theory of maxing Trae Young is that letting him run dozens of pick-and-rolls every night will get you a top-10 offense. Well, the NBA is moving away from such heliocentric offense. In that world, his off-ball limitations stand out more than ever. He’s scored 106 points off of cuts in eight NBA seasons. He has never averaged more than two catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts per game in his career. He can only do so much as a screener given his size, and speaking of his size, he has, at times, been the worst defender in the NBA.

Trae Young’s $212 million Wizards contract is a huge overpay, so why are they doing the deal?

Brad Botkin

He doesn’t get to the rim or the line as frequently as he once did. He led the NBA in assists in his last healthy season… but also turnovers, and the possession game has never been emphasized more than it is now. He’s starting to lose some burst, and given the enormous physical limitations his size imposes, that’s a very scary proposition. 

A Young pick-and-roll is still good offense. Exclude the tiny five-game Washington sample last season and the points generated per possession on Young pick-and-rolls, including passes, have always ranked in the 73rd percentile or better in the NBA, according to Synergy Sports. It’s just that the NBA values that specific skill less than it once did, and the areas it is starting to emphasize matter more than ever. Couple that with any oncoming physical decline and this contract just seems to be based on a player and a league from a few years ago rather than the reality of the current moment. 

1. Joel Embiid, 76ers

Total owed: $188,244,000

Years remaining: Three

The playoffs encapsulated the Joel Embiid experience perfectly. He missed the first three games of the Boston series and was spectacular in the last three games of that series. Then he missed one game against the Knicks and struggled through all of the others in the second round.

Embiid has played in 93 games over the past three regular seasons, and he is now entering his age-32 season. He is capable of All-NBA-level play under very narrow circumstances. He can still destroy the wrong defensive matchups, but his lost mobility and regression as a 3-point shooter mean that he is only really valuable under those specific circumstances. He’s a high-usage world-beater against someone who can’t defend him, or he’s far less valuable against someone who can. And when he faces a team he can’t defend — like the high-flying, fast-shooting Knicks — he’s toast. He can’t move defensively. He doesn’t rebound like he used to. He’s one of the least portable bigs in the NBA.

We’re probably going to see some of these problems play out for a Philadelphia team this season that is now loaded with high-usage scorers. They need a center that defends and does the dirty work. That’s not Embiid, so if their talent doesn’t prove so overwhelming that it can overcome those flaws, you shouldn’t be surprised if Embiid’s name pops up in trade rumors. Given the size of this contract, though, moving him will almost certainly cost meaningful draft capital and perhaps involve taking a player on this list.