NFL players shocked at how much money the NBA is throwing around right now

[Fin Fan in Cali]

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/n...h-money-the-nba-is-throwing-around-right-now/

This is the slowest portion of the NFL calendar, and barring the latest Johnny Manziel update or the random player arrest, there's little to report until training camps open later this month.
The NBA is a different story, however. Less than two weeks after the Cavs overcame a 3-1 deficit to beat the Warriors (related: the Cavs broke the curse!), free agency began with a flurry.
To put things in perspective, two days after the Colts made Andrew Luck the NFL's highest-paid player, signing him to a six-year, $140 million deal, the Memphis Grizzlies reportedly agreed to pay Mike Conley $153 million over five years.
And there are plenty of other NBA players making bank today, much to the chagrin of their underpaid-by-comparison NFL counterparts.

Emmanuel Sanders ✔ @ESanders_10
Looks like I chose the wrong sport

#nbafreeagency
12:37 PM - 1 Jul 2016

 

[MP-Omnis]

Football players have always been second class citizens.

 

[tylerdolphin]

Baseball and basketball contracts are also guaranteed. And if I'm not mistaken, football player make a smaller percentage of league revenue than basketball and baseball despite being the most dangerous of the three both short and long term. They should be upset. Their union needs to do better.

 

[Fin Fan in Cali]

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/07/02/nba-free-agency-makes-waves-among-nfl-players/

Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com has collected tweets from various NFL players, with Steelers running back DeAngelo Williams saying that he had to Google the names of some of the players who were signed on Friday and Broncos safety T.J. Ward proclaiming that NFL players make “peanuts” in comparison to NBA and MLB players.

As it relates to Ward’s own deal, he’s right. Ward’s contract is worth $22.5 million over four years, and only $7 million of it was fully guaranteed at signing.

While many are questioning the sanity of the NBA owners who handed out these deals (I don’t know enough about the NBA to comment, but really rich people typically didn’t get that way by being stupid), the differences between basketball and football are obvious. As Chris Mannix of TheVertical.com and NBC Sports Radio summarized it for me by text on Friday night, NBA teams have a maximum number of 15 players on the roster, with a salary cap of $94 million and a salary floor of $84.6 million.

NFL rosters, in contrast, have 53 players. Even though the per-team cap is much higher (at $155.27 million for 2016), the average cap space available per player in the NFL is $2.92 million. For NBA players, it’s $6.26 million.

Players who make it to the NBA also possess a more specialized and unique set of skills, since only 15 per team get jobs and only five players get on the court at a time. Also, NBA teams play 82 regular season games (41 of them on the road), with a much more extensive postseason tournament. NFL teams play only 16 regular-season games and at most four playoff games.

Besides, Friday’s money could have been even bigger. Mannix points out that NBA players currently get half of the league’s revenue. Prior to 2011, the players were getting 57 percent of it.

NFL players currently get 50 percent of the league’s revenue. Even if NFL players get a bigger piece of the pie in the next labor deal, the best football players in the world have a long way to go in order to be paid like the best basketball players in the world.