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Overseas Basketball Salaries: How Much Do Rookies Make? [HONEST Answer and DATA from Player Survey]!
95K views
Feb 3, 2023
Overseas basketball salaries are the most commonly searched topic in professional basketball. And I get it, it makes sense. Every player wants to know what country and leagues pay the most in pro basketball and where they should be heading when it comes time to turn professional. But if you aren’t a high-profile and highly recruited player then the options can be few and far between. And the starting basketball salaries for those type of players? Even more humbling. In this video, I break down what I’ve learned from surveying, interviewing and speaking with hundreds of professional basketball players, coaches and agents over the years. We’ll learn what the starting salary is in overseas basketball for rookies and more importantly how players can increase and maintain a long-playing career with this NEW DATA. My mission is to help players achieve their dreams of overseas basketball. I've helped players get signed in all seven continents ranging from those with only high school experience to NCAA athletes. Here are some ways to work with me in your basketball career:
View Video Transcript
0:00
$700. That was the starting basketball salary that I had when I came out of college in 2016
0:06
Now, if you think that that's an outlier in overseas basketball and that's exceptionally low for a beginning salary in overseas basketball
0:13
then you're in for a harsh reality. I know it's a little confusing. You search overseas basketball salaries and you see six figures, half a million, a million dollar salaries
0:22
But for starters and for rookies coming from lower level, small colleges, gap years, whatever it is
0:30
You're in for a surprise. So first things first, what can you expect as an overseas basketball player
0:41
starting out as a rookie? Well, I did, to my knowledge, one of the largest undertakings of surveying, interviewing
0:48
and speaking with players, agents, coaches all across the world in all the different continents
0:54
And although all the data hasn't been calculated yet, because this literally is in years
0:59
in the making what I've been doing. From what I can gather right now
1:03
I'm looking at the average salary to be about $400,000. That is the average salary for an overseas basketball player
1:12
Now, that may burst your bubble for a lot of people. You may be thinking that, oh, that I'm not in that group
1:16
I'm not in that. I got to be making I'm worth at least 50K, 60K, 6 figures
1:24
This is the hardest part of overseas basketball, except when you start out is that the money
1:29
is bad. It is terrible to start out. There's no getting around it. Now, if you are a high level
1:36
player, I've mentioned this in other videos, if you are a high level player, an NCAA high major
1:41
an NCAA mid major, maybe a conference player a year, maybe someone who has former national team
1:46
experience in their country, if you have that and then you go into overseas basketball
1:51
then okay, it's much more likely that you will get in that top tier echelon of pay starting out
1:56
But for the vast majority of you, and I'm assuming that's going to be the vast majority of the audience who will be watching this
2:02
Because quite frankly if you are in that top tier you not going to be watching these videos because you already out there doing the damn thing Agents are contacting you You probably are getting people who are connecting with you wanting to sign you because they know that you the cash cow They know that you can make money
2:19
But for the rest of us who still want to realize our dream of playing overseas basketball
2:24
you have to take this knock and you have to understand that you will be starting out with these low
2:30
low salary ranges. So after all of that is said and done, what does that all mean? Well, the first thing
2:35
that it means is that you won't be making enough to live off of your basketball playing salary
2:40
when you start off in overseas basketball for the vast vast majority of you
2:45
So what I always tell players is when you're starting off, always, always
2:49
and you've got to have a side hustle no matter what. And this is something that players find out the hard way, whether they want to accept it or not
2:56
They need a side hustle to begin for about 99% of them
3:00
Now I've seen players do everything from, I've seen them code, players teach English classes
3:05
online. I've seen players teach English classes where they go and play. I've seen players run academies
3:10
I've seen players do coaching on the side. I've seen all types of different ways that they have
3:15
side hustle, but very rarely do these players actually just have one income stream in overseas
3:21
basketball? Because it's just not possible. It's not possible. If you are making like me $700 and that's not
3:28
that's right in the salary range of starting salaries, you obviously need another income. You can't just do that
3:35
you have to keep at it. This is one of the biggest things that just kills off these overseas basketball dreams
3:41
is that these guys don't have a side income. They don't have enough money
3:46
So they just have they just give up at the end of the day because it's taken too long
3:49
to increase their basketball playing salary. And they need to pay the bills
3:54
They need to do whatever they got to do. Maybe they got a girlfriend, a wife, kid
3:57
They have to take care of whatever it is. So this is something that you have to be conscious of
4:02
I'm trying to give you guys this game so that before you get in, into it, you don't become frustrated
4:07
And it's not limited that small college guys. I've seen D1 guys flame out in a year or two
4:13
High major D1 guys. You know not all of them are gonna get looks obviously It impossible Not all of them can It a reality check for a lot of these guys So that why I wanted to make this video just so that you guys are hip to the game You know what you going into because a lot of these guys out there
4:29
they're going to try and paint it like overseas basketball. You know, they're making half a million, a million, six figures, 80,000 in five months
4:39
Yeah, some guys do. Some guys. That is a select, select company. Very few people actually do that
4:44
But for the vast majority of you, you can see. still make a living off of overseas basketball. You can be like me, start a note with your
4:52
normal salary or whatever it is that you're doing as a work and then having basketball a supplement
4:57
and then eventually work your way up and flip it where you're living primarily off of basketball
5:01
and you just have these other side businesses, side incomes to help you supplement your lifestyle
5:07
And the second thing that you really have to pay attention to is obviously we want to increase
5:12
our playing salary as much as possible and as quickly as possible. There's a number. There's a
5:16
number of ways that you can do this. I wrote a blog post about this where I call it the league hop strategy. This is one of the best strategies that I've seen overseas players do where they select
5:25
basically one region to stay in and then they just hop from league to league to league to league
5:30
This works really well in Latin America and the Americas in general. In Europe it's a little
5:35
harder obviously because as I've mentioned in other videos, the season there is running for
5:40
eight to nine months and when you're done with that you really just want to rest. but if you're in Latin America and some of the Asian leagues as well, some of the Middle Eastern
5:48
leagues this could work and some of the African leagues this could work in. This is a great strategy where you can just literally hop from league to leak and the money
5:56
just keeps on going and you keep on building your profile. Now obviously that's assuming that you can actually get multiple jobs which is going to be
6:03
you know, no easy task. So take that as you will. But another thing that you have to consider is the season lengths
6:09
I actually did a video on this. So you should really check that out and not just
6:13
just brush it aside if you're interested in overseas basketball because think of it like this
6:17
everyone a lot of players for some reason get strung up on europe well really i get it europe is the top
6:24
level outside the NBA it has the best basketball outside the NBA okay but that is the top league the very top leagues in spain germany greece france italy those turkey those types of leagues in these lower divisions no matter what division you at
6:39
you're always going to play eight to nine months so just think about it if you want to increase
6:45
your salary as quickly as possible and you only make let's say four hundred dollars in spain iba
6:51
the fourth division which is a very very possible uh salary the next
6:57
next season, if you move up to another team in Iba, you're probably only going to get an increase
7:03
in a few hundred dollars. Even if you move up to Silver, Lebs Silver, which is the third division in Spain, you'll probably
7:10
the maximum you'll get an increase of is maybe $500, $600. It's obviously going to depend
7:16
But the point is it's not going to be some crazy increase where it's way out of your salary range
7:21
You can't live all of that at the end of the day. So that's something you have to consider is that in Europe
7:27
if you're going to want to level up every year, it's going to take longer
7:32
If you love the European system, if you love how they play basketball there
7:35
if you love the lifestyle there, then by all means. But you have to understand that it's probably going to be a little slower because
7:44
literally each season in Europe is one year. More or less, eight or nine months have passed
7:50
Whereas in the Americas and the Middle East, you have a season that's about three or four months
7:56
and then you could go to another season right away or maybe a month or two in between
8:01
And then you can ask for more money because obviously when you perform better
8:06
then your value is going to increase with that too. You know, it's tough
8:09
It's tough playing overseas basketball. But if you love it, I mean, if you really love basketball, then you're going to do it
8:16
You're going to make the sacrifices. You're going to do whatever it takes to make it happen
8:20
And I'll be making another overseas video on basically all of the salaries
8:25
what you can expect in general based on region breakdown country so if you guys are interested in that
8:31
like comment and subscribe i'm really looking forward to that video because that is literally years
8:36
of research in the making stay on the lookout for that in the meanwhile take care god bless
8:40
wherever you are take care okay guys peace
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