ESPNs worst contracts in nba history

"Meantime, there's no truth to the rumor K-Mart has a brother named Walter who answers to the nickname Wal-Mart."

That made me smile.

 

Wow, good find. I forgot all about Bryant "Big Country" Reeves. Remember when he shattered the backboard during practice in the Final Four? Lol. Too bad about his back issue, I liked him.

 

Vin Baker has to be the worst, considering that his contract caused the dissolution of the Sonics.

 

Ben Wallace takes the cake in my book. I remember thinking the salary figures were a joke when Chicago first signed him. No seriously, I thought somebody hacked the system and was messing with everybody. Apparently not.

 

Where is Brian Cardinal? Didn't he have a crazy contract?

 

I think they underrate Jon Koncak's deal. 13 million was a lot of money in 1989 for a scrub.

 

McIlvaine's contract was a lot worse than Baker's as it started Kemp's downward spiral. Baker was at least a proven commodity, McIlvaine was a straight up scrub.

 

Jim McIlvaine
Jon Koncak
Bryant Reeves
Jerome James
Raef LaFrentz not far behind

Everyone knew these guys were diddly poo. At least with Francis and the others there was some name recognition, high draft status and potential there.

 

I disagree with Francis and LJ being mentioned.

Francis was a logical move. at the time he looked like a franchise player.
LJ sacraficed his stats for New York, He was one of the main reasons they made it to the finals.

 

yeah, at least a lot of these contracts were signed on previous performance.

that's why the jim mcilvaine and juwan howard contracts are especially bad, juwan's should be number 1 all time undisputed. $100MM for Juwan Howard in 1996.

 

The funny thing about JH's contract is that Riles (you know, the guy who's coached 5 championships) tried to lure him to the Heat with that number and the Wizards matched it to keep him. Riles was ballistic but it ended up saving him from a big mistake.

I don't think this contract is the worst ever. Kelvin Cato's and many other deals were dumber.

 

Larry Johnson did his best, but his back gave out on him in NY.

I always hated Allen Houston's contract myself, which is also on that list. If I remember, it was a case of NY bidding against itself.

 

Hindsight is easy, especially when the only reason the contract ended up being bad is because of injury. The ones that get me are the ones everyone knew were bad contracts the day they were signed.

 

Like Jim McIlvaine, that one has always confused me but made me smile since it was the sonics who signed him.

 

Link does not work for me.

 

I would add Matt Maloney's contract as an honorable mention.