Mike Bibby, seen here in December 1997, tops the list of UA earners in the NBA. Photo by Jonathan Daniel, Getty Images Sport
We know that former Arizona Wildcats basketball players have made mountains of moolah playing in the NBA, but how much exactly?
The Wall Street Journal pegs UA alums as having earned the third-highest salary total in the NBA since 1985, raking in $738 million. Arizona trails North Carolina ($853 million) and Duke ($809 million).
The Cats rank ahead of Georgetown ($727 million) and Michigan ($715 million).
But I think they should have a bigger cushion.
I have kept a database of Arizona’s salaries in the NBA for several years, writing as recently as last summer that the salary total from Lute’s recruits will eventually approach a staggering $1 billion.
While dismissing a few stray hundreds of thousands of dollars here and there, my numbers differ from the Wall Street Journal’s by about $31 million.
That is mostly accounted for by the more than $29 million the Memphis Grizzlies still owed Michael Dickerson when he stopped playing after the 2003-04 season because of injuries.
The WSJ, which used Basketball-Reference.com as one of its research tools (as did I), credits Dickerson with career earnings of $17,113,162. The total value of his contracts, however, was about $46.5 million.
Jared Diamond, the author of the Wall Street Journal story, wrote in an e-mail that “we did not count money that was owed to a player after his playing career ended.” Fair enough.
But I will continue to say that NBA money earned by UA alums from 1985 through last season — the time frame fits perfectly with “Lute’s recruits” — is closer to $770 million than the figure reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Something to keep in mind as we continue to keep score.
Here is my individual salary breakdown of UA alums in the NBA:
| Mike Bibby | $106,224,440 |
| Gilbert Arenas | $100,634,824 |
| Damon Stoudamire | $100,535,041 |
| Richard Jefferson | $76,115,034 |
| Jason Terry | $74,589,461 |
| Michael Dickerson | $46,504,960 |
| Andre Iguodala | $44,824,259 |
| Sean Elliott | $40,626,666 |
| Chris Mills | $37,370,000 |
| Bison Dele | $22,159,500 |
| Luke Walton | $22,131,977 |
| Channing Frye | $17,338,889 |
| Sean Rooks | $17,173,000 |
| Steve Kerr | $16,119,000 |
| Jud Buechler | $11,365,000 |
| Khalid Reeves | $9,013,309 |
| Jerryd Bayless | $6,429,240 |
| Jordan Hill | $5,152,800 |
| Loren Woods | $3,468,931 |
| Tom Tolbert | $2,919,500 |
| Anthony Cook | $2,295,000 |
| Salim Stoudamire | $2,187,000 |
| Chase Budinger | $1,238,459 |
| Ben Davis | $715,847 |
| Hassan Adams | $709,881 |
| Miles Simon | $672,500 |
| Reggie Geary | $492,250 |
| Ed Stokes | $272,500 |
| Ray Owes | $220,000 |
| A.J. Bramlett | $118,974 |
| Mustafa Shakur | $89,670 |
| Pete Williams | $70,000 |
| Marcus Williams | $52,209 |
| Matt Othick | $13,000 |
| TOTAL | $769,843,121 |
Sources: The USA TODAY salary database, Basketball-Reference.com, a variety of news stories and Tucson Citizen archives. The USA Today database and basketball-reference.com do not agree in all cases, but the differences are usually minor.