Damian Lillard’s record-breaking payday has a bizarre twist

Damian Lillard is about to make history in a way no NBA player ever has – by becoming the league’s highest-paid player for a season he won’t even play.

Who are the top paid NBA players?

Stephen Curry will officially have the top salary in the NBA for the 2025–26 season, with a paycheck of $59.6 million. That number will climb to $62.5 million the following year. Behind Curry come Anthony Davis and Giannis Antetokounmpo (each earning $57.6 million), followed by Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid (both on $55.2 million). These eye-watering sums are the result of record contract extensions in recent years. More recent deals will peak later in the decade, just as the NBA edges closer to a previously unthinkable threshold: $1 million per regular season game (there are 82).

In the summer of 2029, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is set to break into the $70 million bracket (at $70.5 million), potentially joined by Jayson Tatum, who holds a player option worth $71.4 million for that same season.

But none of them will take home as much as Damian Lillard next season.

The biggest paycheck in NBA history – for a sidelined player

The 34-year-old guard, who is returning to the Portland Trail Blazers, is set to bank around $70 million in 2025–26, rising to $141 million over the next two years. And he won’t play a single minute. Lillard suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon in April – his last moment with the Milwaukee Bucks – and is planning to spend the entire season in recovery. His target is a return for 2026–27, when he’ll be 36.

When Durant got paid on the sidelines

No player has ever collected $70 million in a season, much less while injured. The closest in recent memory was Kevin Durant, who made $38 million – or $39 million including playoff bonuses – in his debut season with the Brooklyn Nets in 2019–20. He had signed a four-year, $164 million deal just weeks after sustaining the same injury Lillard has now, in what turned out to be his final game with the Warriors: Game 5 of the 2019 Finals.

Lillard’s loyal years in Portland ended with a twist

Lillard was the No. 6 pick in the 2012 draft and won Rookie of the Year honors in a class that also featured Anthony Davis. A nine-time All-Star – seven times with the Blazers – he was traded in September 2023 after years of loyalty to a franchise that had stalled, unable to build a real title contender around him. Lillard had set his sights on the Miami Heat, but ended up with the Bucks, a team trying to reboot after their 2021 championship run and prove to Antetokounmpo they could still compete at the highest level. Lillard arrived in Milwaukee with four years and $216 million left on his deal, but without full conviction he belonged there.

Most expensive cut in NBA history

The partnership quickly unraveled. Injuries, poor on-court chemistry and early playoff exits – including two first-round eliminations – made it clear the gamble had failed. The second of those exits came after Lillard rushed back from blood clots, only to suffer the devastating Achilles injury. Unwilling to risk losing Giannis, the Bucks made a seismic move: they signed center Myles Turner to a four-year, $107 million contract after his Finals run with the Indiana Pacers – and cleared cap space by executing the most expensive waive-and-stretch in league history.

Lillard had nearly $113 million left on his deal. The Bucks waived him, agreeing to pay the full amount spread across five seasons – roughly $22.5 million per year on their books until 2030. The move stunned front office executives across the league.

Under NBA rules, a team’s stretch provision payments can’t exceed 15% of the salary cap. That figure will hit $23.1 million next season, so Milwaukee squeezed in Lillard’s dead money just under the wire. While the cap hit is spread out, Lillard will receive his payments as if his contract were still active – two full seasons’ worth of pay. Once released, he turned down several offers (the Celtics were among the rumored suitors) and made a bombshell decision: he returned to Portland, signing a new three-year, $42 million deal that includes a player option in the third year.

How Lillard’s $141 million payday breaks down

So here’s the breakdown: Lillard will receive $141 million over the next two seasons, made up of what the Bucks still owe him and his new Trail Blazers salary. Even factoring in the offset clause – a portion of his new salary that returns to Milwaukee, about $12 million over two years – he’ll still pocket roughly $64 million per season, despite not stepping on the court in 2025–26.

It’s a return home that no one expected, one of the strangest and most lucrative comebacks in NBA history.

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