Who Is the NBA Paying?

You would think by now the NBA would be good at talent evaluation, especially with veterans who have a lot of years of film to look at.  Apparently not.  ESPN just put out a list of the highest paid athletes in the world and broke them down by sport.  The NBA's Top Ten Paid Players is shocking.  Let's examine the Top 5 a little further:

1. Kobe - This one makes some sense although no one except Kobe thought he would play this year.  His contract also all but guarantees that the Lakers cannot get enough good players and stay under the salary cap to be relevant.
2. Dirk Nowitzki - He is their team but is getting really old.  He isn't the player he was but is still decent.  This one is defensible only because he is in the last years of a longer contract.
3. Gilbert Arenas - WHAT!?!  HOW!?!  WHY!?!  He hasn't started more than half the games in a season since 2006!  This is the definition of the down side of a guaranteed salary.
4. Amare Stoudemire - The second best player on a team that missed the playoffs and will probably finish 10 games below .500.  He has started 56 games total in the last three seasons.  Total waste.
5. Carmelo Anthony - The best player on a team that missed the playoffs and will probably finish 10 games below .500.  The only two things Melo has proven over his long career is that he is a scorer only and that he can't carry a team at all.  The best stat I can give you to perfectly describe Carmelo is from a game earlier this year when he scored 62 points and had ZERO assists - how is that even possible?  He shot 35 times and didn't pass once.

Other than Dirk, the top five is pretty poor, and none of them would be considered to be one of the top 5 NBA players this season.  The next five highest paid are Joe Johnson, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Chris Bosh, and LeBron James.  You could make an argument for Dwight and Bosh being paid appropriately and LeBron is underpaid by a factor of three.  The rest of them are very good players but not top 10.  Get your shit together NBA - maybe watch some games every now and then.

"The face of the Knicks - welcoming in another decade of irrelevance."