When Victor Wembanyama’s pen glided across the page in front of him at his home in France, he became an incredibly rich man. Just not quite as wealthy as he could’ve been.
On Friday, as relics of his past, nods to his future and the key figures of his professional life surrounded him, Wembanyama signed his next Spurs contract. It’s a five-year extension for 25 percent of the salary cap, projected to come in at $252 million, according to league sources who were not authorized to discuss the financial terms of the deal.
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Wembanyama was also entitled to receive the supermax clause, which could have raised his salary to 30 percent of the cap (a projected $301 million over those five years) if he wins MVP, Defensive Player of the Year or makes an All-NBA team next season. Considering he had just become the NBA’s first unanimous defensive player of the year, all he’d effectively need to do to earn that extra salary is play at least 65 games next season.
He passed up that chance because he had something bigger in mind: helping the Spurs keep this young team together.
“Accumulating money has never really been a goal,” Wembanyama said last season.
Putting pen to paper 🖊️🔒 pic.twitter.com/bWu2sudRRt
— San Antonio Spurs (@spurs) July 10, 2026
In San Antonio, this is a lovely story of Wembanyama proving everything he has said about prioritizing winning above all else. But to the NBA Players Association, this is another example of the second apron applying pressure on star players to choose between getting paid what they’re worth and keeping their teams together.
“Our position would be that the system should not require a player to carry all that burden,” incoming NBPA executive director David Kelly said at his introductory press conference Friday, just before the details of Wembanyama’s extension became public. “It should not put a player in a position where he has to carry the burden in order to keep a team together. A system that does that, we have a problem.”
Wembanyama’s decision comes amid the backdrop of teams increasingly using the second-apron threshold, set at just under $222 million next season, as a de facto hard cap. Days ago, Jaylen Brown, who had teamed with Jayson Tatum to lead the Boston Celtics to an NBA title in 2024 and consistent success over the last decade, was traded to the rival Philadelphia 76ers for a disappointing return that stunned many within the sport. When asked to explain the move, Celtics president Brad Stevens said the penalties for exceeding the second apron were too punitive to have “70 percent of our cap and such a high percent of our usage tied into two players.”
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Wembanyama is not the first star of this era to make a financial sacrifice. In 2024, Jalen Brunson signed an extension with the Knicks a year earlier than he could have, foregoing around $37 million in the first three years of his new deal in the process. That opened the door for the Knicks to acquire and retain OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges, both of whom helped push the Knicks to a title over Wembanyama’s Spurs last month.
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Now, Wembanyama has done something similar, giving up the chance to earn a $50 million bonus over five years to help his already deep team remain together.
But in light of teams like the Celtics citing the second apron as a reason to jettison stars in their prime, NBPA leadership is concerned the CBA has created undue pressure on its members.
“If you get drafted to a team and you make these benchmarks, All-NBA, whatever the case may be, and that takes you to a certain percentage of the cap, it ends up being a perception of a negative,” Houston Rockets guard and NBPA president Fred VanVleet said Friday. “Whether it actually is or not, there’s systems in place now for the teams to use all of these buffers against a reason to keep the team together.”
In San Antonio, taking less for the good of the team is an ethos that preceded this financial climate. Tim Duncan notably signed below-market contracts in his mid-30s so the Spurs could afford to pay for a deeper roster than their peers. His financial sacrifices led to his fifth championship in 2014.
“That’s all it was about. I don’t really care who was making what,” Duncan said almost 10 years ago to the day in a 2016 interview with ViVid Streaming, per ESPN. “Honest truth is I didn’t really know from year to year what people were making. I think that was the best perspective to have.”
The current Spurs, meanwhile, face the prospect of young building blocks Steph Castle and Dylan Harper seeking their own maximum contract extensions in the next two offseasons that will balloon the Spurs’ payroll. Wembanyama knows that keeping that trio together could make them the best team in the league for years to come and, perhaps, allow them to maintain enough talent to end the NBA’s record streak of eight straight champions without a repeat.
Kelly and other NBPA leaders believe the system should change so Wembanyama wouldn’t have to make that choice. During a 40-minute news conference Friday, Kelly advocated for the league to start exploring ways to soften the second apron well before the Oct. 15, 2028, deadline for the NBA or its players to opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement. He supported an idea Stevens brought up in that same news conference that would allow teams to pay players a full maximum contract with supermax eligibility, but only have those deals count as 25 percent of the salary cap.
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“We actually think that makes sense around certain issues around the second apron, whether it’s drafted players, whether it’s a Bird exception for certain players,” Kelly said. “The ability to keep teams together, I think, will help fan interest and will still allow for player movement, but allow players to have the decision of staying where they want to stay.”
Unless that happens, though, Wembanyama’s best hope of matching or even exceeding Duncan’s five championships may be to spread his own wealth.
“Spurs family, I’m here to stay,” Wembanyama posted to X Friday. “Whatever it takes.”