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What are the worst contracts in NBA history?
The answer depends on what “worst” means. A team might care most about paying a large sum for limited games, receiving little production for the salary, or losing room to build the rest of its roster. Retrospective lists use different criteria and do not establish a definitive order. The contracts below are best understood as notable examples, not a league-wide ranking.
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For comparison, the salary figures here are the reported headline contract values. They should not be read as verified annual salary schedules or as a claim that every dollar was guaranteed: the available accounts do not establish those details for every deal.
| Player and team | Reported contract | What made it costly |
|---|---|---|
| Gilbert Arenas, Washington Wizards (2008) | Six years, $111 million (Sports Illustrated) | Injury-limited availability, followed by a separate disciplinary episode and later decline |
| Allan Houston, New York Knicks (2001) | Six years, $100 million (Sports Illustrated) | Strong early contribution gave way to chronic knee trouble and retirement while the contract’s financial burden remained |
| Grant Hill, Orlando Magic (2000) | Seven years, $93 million (The Sporting News) | Severe early unavailability, though he later returned to All-Star level for a season |
| Chandler Parsons, Memphis Grizzlies (2016) | Four years, $94 million (The Sporting News) | Limited availability and production over his Memphis stint |
| Joakim Noah, New York Knicks (2016) | Four years, $72 million (The Sporting News) | Injury-related absences and limited play before he was waived |
Why did these contracts become difficult for their teams?
Gilbert Arenas: injury, suspension, and decline were distinct problems
The Wizards signed Arenas to a reported six-year, $111 million deal in 2008 after he had appeared in only 13 games in the 2007–08 season, according to Sports Illustrated. He played two games in the first season of the new contract. A later locker-room gun incident led to a league suspension; Arenas was subsequently traded to Orlando and waived under the league’s amnesty provision. Those events should not be collapsed into one explanation: the injury history, the suspension, and his subsequent decline each contributed to the deal’s poor outcome in different ways.
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Allan Houston: a plausible bet overtaken by knee trouble
Houston was 30 and a two-time All-Star when New York signed him to a reported six-year, $100 million contract in 2001, as Sports Illustrated recounts. He remained productive for roughly the first two years, but chronic knee problems curtailed his career. He retired in 2005 while the contract’s financial burden continued. His case illustrates how a deal that looked defensible when signed can become costly when a player’s availability changes.
Grant Hill: a difficult start, not a career without contribution
Orlando’s reported seven-year, $93 million contract in 2000 was followed by just four games for Hill in his first season and 47 across his first four seasons, according to The Sporting News. That record makes the early years a striking availability failure, but it does not mean Hill never contributed: he later returned to All-Star level for a season. The distinction matters when judging a contract across its full term rather than only its worst stretch.
Rank #2
Chandler Parsons and Joakim Noah: two costly 2016 signings
Memphis gave Parsons a reported four-year, $94 million contract in 2016. The Sporting News says he played 95 games over three seasons with the Grizzlies and averaged 7.2 points per game during that stint. The gap between a large commitment and his limited availability and production made the deal a prominent example of poor value.
That same summer, New York signed Noah to a reported four-year, $72 million contract. The Sporting News describes injury-related absences and limited play before the Knicks waived him. Both deals became costly outcomes, but their timing is relevant: a sharp increase in the salary cap helped make large contracts possible that summer.
Rank #3
How did the salary cap and NBA rules affect the deals?
The cap rose from $70 million in 2015–16 to $94 million in 2016–17, NBA.com reported in 2017. The article attributed the unprecedented one-year jump to the start of a new national television-rights deal and noted the wave of large free-agent contracts that followed. That context helps explain the scale of the Parsons and Noah commitments; it does not by itself prove that either signing was irrational when made.
Contract rules also changed over time. The NBA’s official summary of the 2011 collective bargaining agreement says the salary cap remained “soft,” while maximum contract length fell to five years for a team’s own player and four years for other free agents. Annual raises could reach 7.5% for a team’s own player and 4.5% for other free agents. Those limits are useful context for comparing eras, but do not erase the difference between the headline contract values listed above.
Rank #4
The 2011 agreement also created a one-time amnesty mechanism for eligible contracts already in effect before the 2011–12 season. Under the stated conditions, a team could remove an eligible player’s salary from team salary for cap and tax purposes. Amnesty did not erase the player’s compensation, and it did not apply to every bad contract.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Other deals that appear on retrospective lists
The Sporting News also includes these contracts among its examples. Its roundup supplies outcome summaries, but the exact guarantees and cap hits are not established here, so the headline values below should be treated as reported contract figures rather than verified guarantees.
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| Player and team | Reported contract | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Gordon Hayward, Charlotte | Four years, $120 million | The Sporting News |
| Rashard Lewis, Orlando | Six years, $118 million | The Sporting News |
| Luol Deng, Lakers | Four years, $72 million | The Sporting News |
| Josh Smith, Detroit | Four years, $56 million | The Sporting News |
| Timofey Mozgov, Lakers | Four years, $64 million | The Sporting News |
These candidates underline why the label “worst” is a judgment rather than a statistic: injuries, declining production, fit, and roster consequences can all weigh differently. Basketball-Reference’s contracts summary and salary-cap history are useful starting points for checking database figures, but the figures in this article are not a substitute for transaction or contract records.
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