One of the biggest factors that goes into every major high school basketball recruit’s decision is whether his college of choice will help prepare him to get to the next level – the NBA.
In the end, the goal is to reach the league, and the higher he is drafted, the better.
Fans also love to argue about which programs are the best “NBA factories”.
Of course, there are a number of methods you can use to derive your results. You can go by the number of draft picks over a certain time period, or the number of players currently in the NBA. We thought we’d try something a bit different. We took the salaries for each player (according to ESPN) in the NBA in 2012-2013 and totaled them up, by college.
Some of the results were surprising.
15. Michigan State: $27,504,014 – 5 players
Surprisingly, Michigan State is the lone program from the Big Ten in the top 15. Carrying the load is Zach Randolph, who made $16.5 million this past season.
Jason Richardson, Shannon Brown, Alan Anderson and Draymond Green round out the Spartans’ representation in the NBA. If Green keeps playing well for the Warriors, he’ll eventually get a much better payday ($850,000).
14. Marquette: $29,453,621 – 6 players
Marquette’s inclusion is another example of how one superstar, in this case Dwyane Wade, can land you on this list.
Wade’s ridiculous salary (over $17 million) combined with modest (I realize how absurd the word sounds given the context) contributions from Wesley Matthews ($6.5 million) and Steve Novak ($4 million) accounts for almost all of the Golden Eagles’ NBA paychecks. Jimmy Butler could be the next to get paid after emerging in the 2013 playoffs.
13. Syracuse: $30,419,156 – 6 players
Carmelo Anthony made over $19 million this season, which makes up more than half the total salary of former Orange stars.
Wesley Johnson and Dion Waiters, two players who were both drafted No. 4 overall in different years (2010 and 2012, respectively), both made around $4 million as well. Donte Greene, Fab Melo and Kris Joseph account for the remainder.
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