Forget the Dream Team. This is the $500 million team.
PARIS—LeBron James on the fast break. Kevin Durant in the mid-range. Stephen Curry swishing threes from the South of France.
When the U.S. men’s basketball team takes the court at the Olympics, it would be hard to blame other teams if they looked across the floor and decided to jump into the Seine. Team USA is so loaded that coach Steve Kerr could bench his starters, play only his backups and still have the best roster anywhere on the planet.
The last time there was this much talent in the same locker room was in 1992, when Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were on the Dream Team. But there’s a difference between the two best Team USA rosters ever assembled—and it’s a big one. In fact, it’s close to a half-billion dollars.
When the players moonlighting on this year’s Team USA return to their day jobs in the NBA, they will make a combined $504 million in salary, making this team not just the glitziest or scariest squad in Paris, but something else altogether: the highest-paid team in basketball history. The total salary of players on the Dream Team was $35 million—or less than the individual salaries of most players on the 2024 team. Ever since NBA stars began spending their summer vacations in red, white and blue, they have been the richest athletes at the Olympics.
But these days, the sums of money are so ginormous they look fake. In 2016, the average salary on Team USA was $20 million. In 2021, it was $25 million.
Now it’s $42 million. All of which makes what they’re doing this summer even more surprising. When they suit up to play for their country, it’s the one time the NBA’s biggest names are playing for free.
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