COMMENTARY
In 1946, a man named Joe Fulks was the highest-paid player in the Basketball Association of America – a sharp-shooting scorer who once dropped 63 points in a game. In terms of spending power, Fulks’ $8,000-per-year salary amounted to roughly $90k in modern money.
Fulks died 30 years later in 1976, killed in an argument with a family member over a handgun. By that time, NBA salaries had spiked. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the highest-paid professional basketball player at $650k, which equates to roughly $3.5 million by today’s standards. Abdul-Jabbar, of course, is now remembered as the greatest player of his generation — a man with an unstoppable skyhook that set a scoring record so lofty, it stood for nearly 60 years.