Todd Gurley just wants $80M, claims NFL players are 'mad' over NBA contracts
Todd Gurley is not an unreasonable man.
He takes a look at the $38.5 million LeBron James will make with the Los Angeles Lakers this coming season and the $37.5 million Stephen Curry’s making up north in Oakland, and naturally one of the best players in pro football asks himself a fair question.
Gurley, after all, is in the fourth year of his rookie contract, and along with that distinction come negotiations for a big-money extension.
It’s true in the NBA, where the “Derrick Rose Rule,” which allows young players who make an All-Star team or otherwise distinguish themselves — Rose, the rule namer, was the 2011 MVP — to make big-time bank as restricted free agents. Kyrie Irving will make $20 million this year in Boston after Cleveland initially signed him to a Rose Rule extension in 2014.
Gurley is making $2.3 million this year; his team option will pay him $9.6 million in 2019.
But nobody’s going to pay him Steph and LeBron money; indeed, he’s not even getting Kyrie money. Le’Veon Bell of the Steelers is the highest-paid running back in the league, and he’s making $14.5 million this year.
What’s more, all those basketball players? Their contracts are guaranteed. If LeBron never plays another NBA game because he gets in a freak accident and suffers a career-ending injury this summer, the Lakers still owe him over $150 million.
And that’s true from the highest-paid superstars to the guys who only come in during garbage time and make the league minimum of $815,000.
Gurley, for his part, wants to see football players, who play a much more dangerous game, given the same protections, and made very clear what will happen if the players don’t get that economic security.
“Lockout in a couple years,” he told TMZ Sports on July 5.
A few days later, Gurley told the Los Angeles Times, “Us NFL players, we’re just mad about NBA contracts right now, that’s all. I just want like $80 million. Those guys are getting like $150 [million]. It’s crazy. It’s insane.”
The union and the league were already headed over a cliff regarding the NFL’s dubious personal conduct rules and Commissioner Roger Goodell’s tendency to rule more like a mad king than a CEO.
Throw in the fact that a player can get hurt and have his team simply cut him, leaving him with a lifetime of medical bills and no income to pay them, and this becomes a matter of professional athletes earning their livelihood in the one sport that doesn’t guarantee their income.
Granted, football players are carving up their pie a lot more ways than are basketball players; part of the reason LeBron can eat up over a third of the Lakers’ cap and not have to play alongside 12 guys they hauled out of the G-League is because the rest of that money is, after all, carved up just 12 ways.
Gurley has to share with the quarterback, the receivers, the offensive line, the defense, the special teams guys — there are 53 players on an NFL gameday roster.
And therein lies the rub. The NFL pulled in $14 billion in 2017. That’s a shade under twice the $8 billion the NBA pulled in when all revenue sources are counted.
Plus, the NFL can much more easily replace value at most positions than basketball can. If Gurley gets hurt and the Rams have to bring in a replacement-level running back, they still have lots of weapons to win football games.
If the Lakers lose LeBron, they might be picking first in the 2019 NBA draft.
So football players can agitate all they want for big money. Todd Gurley can hold out for $80 million.
But at the end of the day, the law of supply and demand is as immutable as gravity, and when the lockout inevitably comes, the owners will be able to bring players to their knees even without an American flag in sight.
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