Brandon Marshall thinks only 4 NBA players per team have guaranteed contracts. Is he right?
Nope.
On the latest episode of YouTube show I Am Athlete, co-host (and former NFL wide receiver) Brandon Marshall tried to tell his fellow hosts Channing Crowder and Chad Johnson that only a few players on each NBA team have guaranteed contracts. Here is Marshall’s quote:
“Not everybody that’s on an NBA roster has a guaranteed contract…There’s four guys on an NBA team that got guaranteed contracts and everybody else can be cut today and don’t got nothing.”
This is not true.
In practice, the base salary for most NBA players is fully guaranteed, a point verified by numerous sports lawyers and athletes. In other words, teams cannot cut players without penalty. Section 4 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NBA and the Player’s Association protects player compensation. There are several compensation guarantees that players routinely negotiate for: lack of skill, injury, or mental disability. So, if a player is injured or if the Monstars steal a player’s talent, and the team decides to cut the player from the team, that termination “shall in no way affect the player’s right to receive” their base compensation.
When Marshall suggested that teams can release players without penalty, he might have been thinking of players on 10-day contracts. These short-term contracts obligate neither the team nor player to any relationship beyond the week and a half stint. But, the NBA’s Collective Bargaining agreement only permits a team to have three players on a 10-day contract at any time.
In fact, of the three major American sports leagues, only in Marshall’s own league — the NFL — are contracts are not fully guaranteed by default. Several NFL players have negotiated fully (or partially) guaranteed contracts, but that is not the norm. Famously, MLB athletes have guaranteed contracts.
Several athletes and sports journalists have attempted to push for fully guaranteed NFL contracts. However, when NFL owners approved the 2020 Collective Bargaining Agreement, this change was not included. Given that the 2020 NFL Collective Bargaining Agreements runs through 2030, any momentum towards fully guaranteed contracts has certainly stalled.
