Originally Posted by Pioneer10

I don't think these guys realize when they got there contract how much they'll actually take back.
The Feds will take close to 37%
The state will come in and then get anything from 0-9% on top of that.
There are special athlete taxes in certain juridictions so they're goes another percentage
Then you got to pay your agent what 5%???? and I'm sure that not based on net income after taxes but gross income

So out of that 5 million dollar contract, the amount you get back is probably close to or less then 50% - 2.5 million to take home. Now an easy estimate on how much once your career is OVER you probably will get back in terms of income from your assets is about 5%. So to bring in $200k to live off when you retire you'd need about 4 million in the bank.

So let's run the numbers on a guy who makes ten million in his NBA career and wants to know that he will financially secure based just on his NBA career (i.e. he doesn't have to work a day the rest of his life).
10 million
- 5million (taxes/agents/etc)
- 4 million (for the rest of his life he'll be able to spend 200k)
= 1 million to spend extra (that's not a lot of money when you throw a benz or two and a gargantaun house in the picture)

Now I'm not crying crocodile tears: in the scenario above the player is really set for life (i.e. 200k a year) but just imagine you throw in a divorce, child custody, a big house for mom in there and bam your financial securit of 200k/year goes away pretty quickly