The highest annual salary in the NBA is Curry 55.7 million. Who is the CBA? You may not believe it if you say it

In the field of basketball, the NBA and the CBA are two highly-reviewed leagues, and the salary level of players has always been a hot topic among fans. In the 2024-25 season, Curry ranked first in the league with an annual salary of US$55.76 million, and his average annual salary in the next two years will exceed US$60 million. This number has once again refreshed people's perception of the salary of professional basketball players. So, who is the player with the highest annual salary in our domestic CBA league?

As we all know, in the CBA league, the contracts of local players and foreign players are different. According to the latest relevant regulations, the salary cap of foreign players is $3 million, and in the NBA it is almost the level of a basic salary contract. The annual salary cap of local players is 6 million yuan, which is about 830,000 US dollars.

Of course, there are some players in the CBA who have received annual salary of over 10 million yuan, and Zhou Qi is one of the best. Zhou Qi has played in the NBA for two seasons and then moved to the Australian League, which made him quickly become a hot commodity for various teams after returning to the CBA. In order to retain the inside superstar, the Xinjiang team offered an annual salary of up to 25 million yuan, which is undoubtedly the top-notch in the CBA league. As another outstanding representative of the Chinese men's basketball team, Yi Jianlian helped the team win the CBA championship many times during his time with Guangdong Hongyuan team, and was the absolute core and spiritual leader of the team. His annual salary is also quite considerable, and industry insiders estimate that the highest has reached about 20 million yuan.

In addition, the annual salary of local star players such as Wang Zhelin, Fang Shuo, and Sun Minghui has reached about 10 million yuan. However, with the CBA introducing a "salary limit order" system, the maximum salary players will generally be reduced to around 6 million yuan in the future. After years of commercial operation, the NBA league has become one of the most commercially valuable sports leagues in the world. Its broadcast contract, sponsor investment and team market value are far beyond the CBA. This allows NBA players to receive generous salary. You should know that after Xiao Hua took office, the NBA signed two sky-high broadcast contracts worth more than US$100 billion, which also brought the players' salaries to an unprecedented level.

Although the CBA League also has a certain market influence in China, it still has a big gap compared with the NBA in terms of commercial development and market value, resulting in a relatively low overall salary level for players.

To sum up, compared with the annual salary of NBA players that often cost tens of millions of dollars, there is indeed a big gap in the salary level of CBA players. Behind this is the result of the combined effect of various factors such as the degree of commercialization of the league, market value and policy. In the future, with the continuous development and reform of the CBA League, I believe that the salary and benefits of players will gradually increase, and the overall level of the league will also move to a new level.