It Pays to Be a Basketball Player Like Never Before

Imagine being about the fiftieth-best employee in an organization of 400 people and making $24 million a year.

That’s the good life in the National Basketball Association, whose free agency period began Friday. Thanks to a nine-year, $24 billion television contract the league signed in 2014, salary caps for the NBA’s 30 teams will explode from $70 million to $94 million next year, with further growth well above $100 million expected in 2017 and beyond.