No, LeBron James won’t be the first professional athlete to sign a $200 million dollar contract, but he could become the first to sign one that isn’t an absurdly long term deal.
That’s the word from Business Insider who says that in 2017, LeBron James could sign upwards of a five-year, $200 million dollar deal.
We’ve seen guys like Alex Rodriguez sign deals worth that kind of money, but they’ve usually taken at least a decade to pay out. That time will be cut in half for King James, assuming he continues to sign one-year deals over the next few seasons until the NBA’s salary cap sky rockets.
The smartest thing that LeBron can due financially is sign two more one-year contracts, and then get that $200+ million deal in 2017. It’d certainly be a risk to pass up guaranteed money now in favor of chasing that mega-contract, but LeBron has never had injury problems, and if there’s one 32-year-old who’d be worth a $200 million deal, you think it’d be LeBron.
The crazy thing here? At 32-years-old, James would play through until he’s 37. Granted, he probably won’t be the same player he was but even at that age he’ll still probably be really effective.
Of course, for all we know, LeBron James might never sign a mutli-year contract again and really rake in the dough.
