Wow, salaries of the 97-98 Chicago Bulls

[97 bulls]

#1, check post 5 where I clearly said the same thing you just said right here.

#2, you completely missed the point. there are heart surgeons that make like 500k to 1 mill for a year. There job is infinitely more important than being a basketball player. So to say that any athlete deserves 33 million in one season is ridiculous.

no its not ridiculous. remember that he getting paid not to play basketball, but for people around the world to watch him play basketball. i still think he was underpaid at 33+. jordan personally made the nba as popular as the nfl in the 90s.

[Chrono90]

using the name Michael Jordan can help the team sell lots of things to make it up...

tickets, jerseys, watevers

i remember the video games back then couldnt even afford to use jordan's name, they use "player" or "number 99" as jordan

[YoungRich]

yeah , Krause was seriously raping them, Even when pippen was a Free agent Krause wasnt trying to Pay him more than he was before. He was almost leaving the bulls for another Team and Jordan made them sign him or else he was leaving too. Bulls Management is stingy. I had to laugh when Gordon Turned down 50 Mil they were Offering him knowing the Bulls History.

lol i never thought of that...ridiculous

[kidachi]

Pip? 2.8mil only? wow.

[Vragrant]

Funny enough, I remember Jordan getting 36 mill, but I guess I was wrong. Wow, Pippen was really underpaid, but he had beef with his contract even BEFORE the Bulls won thier first title.

I remember Reinsdorf saying before the 97/98 season that Jordan deserved the 30 plus mill he was going to receive that year.

[Loki]

Funny enough, I remember Jordan getting 36 mill,

So do I. I thought it was $30M for 1997 and $35-36M for 1998. That's what I recall hearing around the time.

[puppychili]

Jordan signed a very long term deal around his second or third year. Although he was being underpaid according to the market rate just a few years in he never complained cause he felt it better to honor the contract he signed AND he was making huge money outside of the NBA. Those 2 huge contracts he got at the end were the Bulls way of making it up to him for vastly underpaying him for the majority of his career.

Pippen on the other hand signed a silly deal. He wanted a bunch of up front money along with long term security. Krause himself told Pippen not to do that. He told Pippen something along the lines of "Look, if this is really what you want I'll do it for you but don't come back to me in a few years saying that you're being underpaid. I don't do contract renegotiation's for anyone. Whether you're a scrub or an allstar in the future, you're getting paid according to the terms of this contract. Nothing more, nothing less."

Pip said ya ya whatever and signed it. Then bytched that he was being underpaid a few years later. Krause stood firm and didn't reopen the contract and somehow got labeled the bad guy over all of this.

Krause gets way too much blame for the Bulls break up.

[meh]

What jumped out at me wasn't that MJ was making more than the rest of the team together... I mean, he IS Micheal Jordan, after all.

But it's crazy that Luc freaking Longley made three and a half mil. I've always thought that tall white stiffs getting overpaid was just a recent trend. Apparently, I was wrong.

[mattreis62]

#1, check post 5 where I clearly said the same thing you just said right here.

#2, you completely missed the point. there are heart surgeons that make like 500k to 1 mill for a year. There job is infinitely more important than being a basketball player. So to say that any athlete deserves 33 million in one season is ridiculous.

Do people pay 50 bucks for a seat to watch a heart surgery? Do they buy "Dr. Brown" jerseys after the surgery is over, and then go on eBay and buy Dr. Brown autographs and shoes endorsed by Dr. Brown? 33 million dollars is nothing compared to how much cash players like MJ, LeBron, and Kobe generate.

There are tons of heart surgeons in the world, but there are only a few superstar athletes. It's called supply and demand. You can argue that certain players are overpaid (Rashard Lewis anyone?) but the highest tier of players is underpaid if anything.

[Scott Pippen]

So do I. I thought it was $30M for 1997 and $35-36M for 1998. That's what I recall hearing around the time.

Jordan wanted $36, Bulls wanted to pay $30, so they compromise at $33

[mvp_status]

Somebody answer this for me

If the lockout never happened, would the Bulls dynasty still have been broken up?

[Scott Pippen]

Jordan, 33 million? Wow, you would think with that much money, he wouldn't have murdered his own father by not paying his gambling debts. He's a bigger ******* than I thought. But hey, he needed that extra mercedes more than his own father.

go back to troll sohh coliseum & lakersground. Please do not bring this crap to insidehoops

[EricForman]

Taken from Basketball-Reference.com

1997-98 Chicago Bulls Salaries
1 Michael Jordan $33,140,000
2 Toni Kukoc $4,560,000
3 Ron Harper $4,560,000
4 Dennis Rodman $4,500,000
5 Luc Longley $3,184,900
6 Scottie Pippen $2,775,000
7 Bill Wennington $1,800,000
8 Scott Burrell $1,430,000
9 Randy Brown $1,260,000
10 Dickey Simpkins $1,235,000
11 Robert Parish $1,150,000
12 Jason Caffey $850,920
13 Steve Kerr $750,000
14 David Vaughn $693,840
15 Keith Booth $597,600
16 Jud Buechler $500,000
17 Joe Kleine $272,250
18 Rusty LaRue *$242,000



MJ's Salary = 33 Mill
The rest of the team's combined salary = 30.36 Mill

If this was todays making money first, winning a title second NBA, I bet the majority of the team would've just sat out, starting with Pip.

Jordan's last two seasons was merely a makeup for preivous years because he as VASTLY underrated all his career up until 97.

The Bulls management was very smart and locked up Pip and Jordan before salaries blew up. Jordan considered breaking out of the contact in the early 90s because he was so underpaid but decided against it.

[bjtrdff]

Then why is Ben Wallace's contract with the Bulls one of the biggest topics on this forum when Ben got very underpaid with the Pistons considering he won 4 DPOYs and a championship during that time?

Wallace's giant contract was a big topic because

a)it was obviously WAY too much, because the bulls needed to pry him away
b)everyone could see 10 miles away it would be a cap killer shortly
c)he left the pistons, the only team where he had real success and won a title to goto a team that people thought was a piece or two away from being a legit contender


There's a big difference in signing MJ to a giant contract to keep him, to make up for him being underpaid, when even at 30 mil a year he was a bargain, and signing up for Wallace because he happened to be underpaid for a few seasons, in a completely different cap era.


The only remotely non-retarded thing about that contract is that it didn't increase in value each year.

[loot]

Weren't there a lot of bonusses?