Breaking into the NBA is undoubtedly the dream of any basketball player, which is not only an affirmation of his own strength, but also means being able to have a high income, knowing that even those "water cooler management" at the end of the bench have an annual salary of at least hundreds of thousands of dollars, earning more than most wage earners. So, let's take a look at what the highest annual salary of Asian players in the NBA is.
Among the many Asian players, there are three with the highest annual salary of less than $1 million, namely Sun Yue 440,000, Hesheng Town 500,000 and Battle 640,000. Fans and friends who are familiar with these three people know that their NBA careers are very short, most of them in the role of team water cooler keepers, and even if they get a chance to play, it is garbage time for games. The luckiest among them is undoubtedly Sun Yue, who was teammates with Kobe Bryant in 2009 and won the championship with the Lakers that season.
The next players with an annual salary of less than $5 million are 5, namely Zhou Qi 1.44 million, Haddadi 1.5 million, Watanabe Yuta 1.78 million, Wang Zhizhi 2.09 million, Yi Jianlian 4.05 million. Compared with the above people, although several players in this gear have not been in the NBA for a long time and are also marginal figures of the team, they have had many highlight moments. It is worth mentioning that Yi Jianlian received an $8 million contract offer from the Lakers in 2016, but he eventually chose to refuse and stayed in the CBA.
Next is Hachimura's 6.26 million, as the main rotation player of the Lakers today, the 25-year-old Hachimura played a very bright performance in this year's playoffs, averaging 12.2 points and 3.6 rebounds per game, shooting 55.7 from the field and 48.7% from three-point range. Such excellent performance also made Hachimura win a big contract, and according to many media reports, the Lakers will offer him a contract with an annual salary of about $10 million this summer.
Of all the Asian players who have played in the NBA, the highest annual salary was Yao's $17.69 million in the 2010-11 season, which was ninth in the league at the time. If you translate it to today's salary cap, it is about $40 million. It is undeniable that Yao Ming at his peak is one of the best centers in the league, even compared with O'Neal and Howard, and if it were not for the early retirement due to injury, then his career would have been more brilliant.