They make a percentage of the team’s revenue. I believe the players get 49% and the owners get 51%. So yes, they get a large paycheck. But that’s because the team makes a lot of money.
Not quite. Previous revenue sets the salary cap, but the teams have players on contracts that can put teams well over the salary cap. Every team is required to spend at least 90% of its salary cap. Quite a few go over using exceptions (primarily the Bird exception).
The
Salary Cap is calculated by multiplying projected Basketball-Related Income (or “BRI”) by 44.74%, less projected player benefits (like health and welfare benefits), and then dividing the result by 30 (the current number of NBA teams; if the NBA expands, to
Seattle for example, that number isn’t increased for the first two years the expansion team is part of the league).
Still - what they make isn't necessarily a share of current year revenues. Most contracts are multiyear and fixed for the current year. Teams then have to account for what happens to future salary caps. It's almost always gone up, but not always. Obviously the revenue is going to be down this year and will likely lower the salary cap in later years. Last season had reduced revenues because one GM angered people in China.
Back before the season began,
Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted out an image expressing support for protests that were going on in Hong Kong. That was met by a swift, emphatic
backlash by Chinese authorities, and the fallout resulted in Rockets games being pulled from Chinese airwaves along with dropped sponsorships.
The immediate aftermath was a PR nightmare for the NBA, and now its seeing the bill come due in the form of lower revenue. China is a huge market for the league, and even a slight drop in coverage is worth hundreds of millions of dollars for the league.
The NBA's salary cap is set based on league-wide revenue. The CBA dictates that players receive between 49 and 51 percent of basketball-related income, so functionally speaking, around half of the money that the league loses due to the China controversy will ultimately come out of the cap.