LeBron James, Stephen Curry will owe teams money due to coronavirus hiatus

The players who already received their salary for the current season will take a pay cut in their next advance.

The NBA suspended all games since March due to the coronavirus pandemic. It follows that league revenue from ticket sales and broadcasting rights dropped to zero. After a long negotiation between NBA teams and the Players Union, the NBA brokered a deal that would reduce all players' salaries by 25% starting May 15. However, LeBron James, Stephen Curry and four others will end up owing their teams money because of the deal.

According to Silver Screen & Roll, the two superstars as well as John Wall, Blake Griffin, Kevin Durant, and Paul George already received their full salary for the season.

Curry will owe the Golden State Warriors $420,000 (GBP 347,000). Meanwhile, James will owe the Lakers $390,000 (GBP 322,183) due to the newly calculated salary based on the pay-cut agreement. Since the two superstars and four others have already received their pay for the season, the deal means they got paid their full contract amount without the newly agreed-upon pay cut.

The amount to be deducted to players' salaries is expected to increase up to 40% if the season is eventually cancelled. In total, all NBA players are projected to lose 1 billion US dollars in salary.

The players don't need to return the money to their teams. It will just be deducted from their next "full-year advance" before the start of the 2020-2021 season scheduled on October 1st.

While the amount may seem high to most people, it is a small deduction compared to their contract value. In the case of James, he is expected to be paid $41 million (GBP 33.8 million) for the entirety of the 2020-2021 season. That does not include other earnings from endorsements and other commercial contracts.

While players like Curry and James will not be taking a pay cut for this season, it will balance out when they get their next season's advance.

While there is no definite news from the league if the 2019-2020 season will continue, the longer there's no news, the less likely the league will resume in its current format.