Who Earns More Anthony Edwards Or Nikola Jokic

NBA Salaries: What the Numbers Actually Say

Comparing NBA player salaries seems simple on the surface, but the details get messy fast. The key things to understand are when each contract started, what the supermax rules allow, and how the salary cap grows from year to year. The numbers below are based on publicly reported figures for the 2024-25 season through the 2029-30 season. Short answer: Nikola Jokic earns more. Right now, significantly more, and he will continue to earn more through at least the 2028-29 season. Edwards catches up slightly at the very end of Jokic's deal, but Jokic is still ahead on total career earnings by a wide margin. Both players are on supermax extensions, but they signed under different rules and at different times, which matters more than people realize. Jokic's extension was signed in July 2022. It runs from 2022-23 through 2026-27, worth about $252 million. Edwards signed his extension in August 2024. It runs from 2025-26 through 2029-30, worth about $261 million. The totals look close, but the timing and the cap growth rates create a big gap in actual yearly numbers.

Here is the practical breakdown. Jokic's salary ramps up because his extension counts against the cap starting from 2022. With roughly 8% annual cap growth, his numbers go something like this: 2022-23: ~$44.5M, 2023-24: ~$47.5M, 2024-25: ~$48.6M, 2025-26: ~$50.8M, 2026-27: ~$53.5M. After that, he opted out of the final year to sign his second supermax with Minnesota. Edwards' contract uses different growth assumptions. Supermax deals negotiated after the 2017 CBA allow the base to grow at up to 15% for the first two years instead of 8%. His salary looks like this: 2025-26: ~$33.6M, 2026-27: ~$36.6M, 2027-28: ~$39.9M, 2028-29: ~$43.5M, 2029-30: ~$47.2M. The contract starts lower because it doesn't kick in until 2025-26.

Season-by-Season Comparison

The gap is clearest when you line them up year by year. Through 2024-25, Jokic is pulling in roughly $48.6 million. Edwards isn't even on his new deal yet — he's making about $10.8 million in 2024-25, still on his original rookie scale contract. That's a $37 million difference in a single season. In 2025-26, Jokic makes about $50.8M while Edwards starts his supermax at $33.6M. Jokic is still ahead by roughly $17M. That gap narrows every year, but it doesn't close completely until around 2029-30, where Edwards would make about $47.2M and Jokic, on his second supermax with Minnesota, would make somewhere in the same neighborhood — maybe slightly more, maybe slightly less depending on cap projections. Even then, Jokic has a multi-year head start on total earnings.

Career Earnings So Far

This is where the difference really shows. Through the 2024-25 season, Jokic has earned approximately $166 million in his NBA career. Edwards, in his fifth season, has earned roughly $64 million. That's not even close, and it won't be close for a while unless Edwards' next extension is unusually large or Jokic's second supermax turns out to be on the low side. I worked through a similar salary comparison a couple of years ago for a project involving mid-tier free agents, and the thing I ran into that almost nobody accounts for is the sign-and-trade versus direct extension distinction. If a player signs via sign-and-trade, the new team can only offer a smaller raise percentage. Both Jokic and Edwards signed directly with their current teams, so they qualified for the bigger raises. If you're building a model that compares contracts across players, you have to check which mechanism was used, or your numbers will be off by 10-15% in some cases.

What This Doesn't Tell You

These figures are base salaries. They don't include endorsements, profit-sharing bonuses, or incentive clauses that can add meaningful money. Jokic has Nike deals and other sponsorships. Edwards is still building his endorsement portfolio but has a notable deal with Under Armour and others. Neither player's off-court income comes close to closing the salary gap between them, but it's not zero either. There's also the question of what happens after these contracts. Jokic will be 30 when his second deal ends in 2032. Edwards will be 28. If Jokic stays healthy and productive, he could command another extension that resets the comparison entirely. If he declines, Minnesota could walk away. Nobody knows how those negotiations will play out, and projecting five or six years into the future with salary cap variables is more guesswork than analysis. For anyone looking at this comparison right now, the picture is straightforward. Jokic earns more per year, has earned more in total, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Edwards' contract is structured to ramp up later, which makes sense — he's younger and the Wolves are building around him. The numbers favor Jokic now, and they will for several more years.