What comes to mind when you think of Stephen Curry? The impossible half-court shots, the flair in his game, the silhouette of a killer, a millionaire, and still we only wrap about half the thing he is capable of. With his day job, Curry is one of the very best. One can argue that few players are better than him. Regardless of his rank, the stature of being even one of the best comes with its perks. Like last season, Curry was the highest-earning player in the NBA.

He earned $48 million for the 2022-23 campaign. The number, while seems large, can often be misleading. While NBA players do earn punitive amounts of money in salary, they have to pay equally high amounts of taxes. Most of them are either state or federal taxes levied upon their millions of dollars. Then there is a tax the NBA takes called the NBA Escrow.

What is this tax? We will get into detail about the formation ahead. But after the accounting for last season, just know Stephen Curry is about to profit for a steep amount.

Stephen Curry and others win after the NBA announces the Escrow update

Before the start of every season, the league calculates an estimate of the Basketball Related Income they will generate for the year. According to the figure, they set a salary cap for the teams to abide by. As per the Collective Bargaining Agreement, players are entitled to 51% of the total BRI while the league gets the remainder 49%. But because these are estimates, the NBA takes 10% of every player’s salary to account for any change in the revenue. The amount is put into a fund called the NBA Escrow.

It serves the purpose of maintaining the balance, as decided by the CBA. If business goes well, the Escrow amounts are returned to the players. In case there’s a slump, the league retains the money.

We last saw such a case during the 2019-20 season – the ‘Bubble’ season. The NBA raised the Escrow to 25% of the player salaries because of the fluctuations in the revenue on account of empty stands, no ticket sales, etc. The money is collected mainly to provide security to the owners in case player salaries exceed the stipulated proportion of the BRI.

USA Today via Reuters

Generally, this tax works in favor of the players. Luckily, last season was a sensational financial year for the NBA. After all the auditing for the 2022-23 season, the NBA announced that it only had to withhold 2.65% of the 15% it collected as Escrow tax from the players. What it means is that every player will be entitled to receive 97.35% of their total salaries according to Sportico.

The biggest gainer of the lot was none other than Stephen Curry. Set to earn $48 million last season, he had the most generous contribution to the Escrow fund in the first place. Now that the league is distributing almost 700 million to the teams, Curry will get a check for the 12.35% he is owed. The precise amount would be $7,009,200.

Unlike the NHL, NBA Escrow rewards the players at the end of the year. And it should be so. Stephen Curry and all other NBA players exhaust themselves throughout the season, which heavily contributes to the league’s $4.5 billion in revenue.