Subscribe
Follow Us
The Toronto Raptors just made a boatload of money after winning their first ever championship on Thursday night. According to NBA.com's Steve Aschburner, this comes to the tune of a cool $5.6 million.
Certainly it’s not the playoff shares that motivate NBA players in pursuit of a championship. The Toronto Raptors will divvy up $5,621,005 from the postseason 💰 pool for their 24 games. That’s equivalent to a payroll of $19,205,000 for an 82-game season. Must be something else. pic.twitter.com/rgI3ZmBtOX
— Steve Aschburner (@AschNBA) June 14, 2019
For a bit of arithmetic, the Raptors were the second-best team coming out of the Eastern Conference behind the Milwaukee Bucks, so that starts off their pot with $437,677. By participating in the first round, conference semi-finals, and the conference finals, Toronto were able to pocket a combined $1,344,530. Finally, their success over the back-to-back defending champs, the Golden State Warriors, in the Finals is where the bulk of their winnings come from ($3,838,798), thereby bringing up their total sum to $5,621.005.
Article Continues Below
While this is indeed a lot of money, Aschburner put it in perspective here, stating that this only accounts for around a quarter of the team's annual payroll. This definitely brings the front office into a huge deficit, which points to the fact that playoffs winnings is not exactly considered as a very profitable source of income.
This becomes even more relevant once the Raptors bring out their checkbook this summer. Among other free agents on the squad, newly-crowned Finals MVP winner Kawhi Leonard will be at the very top of their priority list in the offseason. They will need to table a huge offer for the three-time All-Star — reportedly somewhere in the region of $190 million for a five-year deal — so Toronto will definitely need much more money than the $5.6 million they garnered during the playoffs.
