30 richest players in the NBA
By John Buhler
Richard Jefferson
Small Forward, Cleveland Cavaliers
This one might shock you, but yes, Richard Jefferson is the 26th richest player in basketball. The 36-year-old rotational small forward for the Cleveland Cavaliers has earned an estimated $110,243,869. If he plays out the last two years of his Cavaliers deal, Jefferson will make a projected $115,356,3609 before calling it a career.
Jefferson is a 16-year NBA veteran, now on his seventh NBA team in Cleveland. While he faded into relative obscurity for most of this decade, people tend to forget that he was an All-Star for a really good Brooklyn Nets team that went to two NBA Finals in his early 20s.
Jefferson was drafted No. 13 overall by the Houston Rockets in 2001 and traded to the Nets. He signed a three-year, $4.4 deal with New Jersey in July 2001. The Nets would exercise their team option for 2003-04, offering him $2.27 million for that season. In August 2004, Jefferson would sign a six-year $78 million rookie scale extension.
He would play four seasons of that in New Jersey. Jefferson would be traded to the Milwaukee Bucks in 2008 and the San Antoni Spurs in 2009. In July 2010, Jefferson would terminate his deal a year early to re-up with San Antonio on a four-year deal worth $39 million. San Antonio would trade him to the Golden State Warriors in March 2012, where he exercised his player option in 2013.
Golden State didn’t like that and quickly traded him to the Utah Jazz. Utah would renounce his rights in July 2014 and Jefferson would go on to sign a one-year deal with the Dallas Mavericks worth $1.45 million. Jefferson would sign a one-year deal with Cleveland in 2015 worth $1.5 million.
As part of the 2016 NBA Championship team, Jefferson was able to turn that into a three-year deal worth $7.6 million. While it is not guaranteed beyond 2018, Jefferson has made a career of getting paid long after he peaked as young 20-year-old with the Nets.