A max contract is the largest starting salary an NBA player is allowed to sign for. It isn't a single fixed number for every player, it's set as a percentage of the salary cap that climbs based on how many years of NBA service a player has.
The longer a player has been in the league, the higher percentage of the cap they're eligible to make, up to a point.
2025-26 figures, based on a $154.6M salary cap. A young star can qualify for the 30% tier early through the Designated Rookie / “Rose Rule” exception, see below.
Real 2025-26 salaries, not a calculator. Notice several of these cluster right around $54M, almost exactly 35% of this year's cap, while others sit well above it. That gap is explained below.
The three tiers above are based on service time, but a player doesn't always have to wait for the next tier to unlock. Two accolade-based exceptions let a player jump ahead of schedule:
The Designated Rookie Exception(the “Rose Rule”) lets a player with 6 or fewer years of service jump straight to the 30% tier, well before the normal 7-year mark, if they've won MVP, made an All-NBA team at least twice, or won Defensive Player of the Year at least twice.
The Designated Veteran Extension(commonly called the “Supermax”) works the same way one tier up: it lets a player with 7-9 years of service reach the 35% tier early, ahead of the normal 10-year mark, if they meet similar star-level criteria and re-sign with the team that drafted them (or acquired them via rookie-scale trade).
The max percentage only sets a contract's starting salary, in the year it's signed. Every later year of that same deal grows through built-in annual raises instead of being recalculated against the cap each season. Stephen Curry's actual 2025-26 salary is $59.6M, well above a fresh 35% max this season ($54.1M), because his current contract was signed years ago and has been climbing on its own built-in raise schedule ever since. The cap grows every year too, but a signed contract's raises and the cap's growth aren't the same number, so a long-tenured star's salary can end up above, at, or below a “fresh” max by the later years of their deal.
No. "Max contract" isn't one number, it's a percentage of the salary cap that depends mainly on a player's years of NBA service, with a couple of accolade-based exceptions that let a player reach a higher tier early. A young star on their first max deal and a 12-year veteran can both be "max players" while earning very different salaries, and even two players on the same tier can end up at different dollar amounts depending on when their contract was signed and how its raises have compounded since.
No, the max is a hard ceiling on a player's starting salary in a given contract year, regardless of how good that player is or how much a team wants to pay them. Teams can still make a deal bigger overall through extra contract years and larger built-in raises, but not a higher starting salary.
Because the max is capped as a percentage of the cap, not tied to individual performance. A genuine top-5 player earning a 25% or 30% max is still paid the same rate as any other player at that service tier, even if their actual on-court value is far higher, which is exactly the gap Contract Scores is built to measure.