Who are the NBL’s million dollar men?

Who are the NBL’s million dollar men?

Saturday, August 16, 2025

Four stars have broken into the NBL’s million dollar salary bracket, according to ESPN's Olgun Uluc, with a fifth expected soon.

Four players have entered the million dollar bracket in the Hungry Jack’s NBL, according to ESPN’s Olgun Uluc, with another name expected to join them soon.

Speaking on The Marketplace, Uluc outlined the players he believes are the highest paid across the league, forming the $1 million club.

“From what I understand, now that Jack McVeigh is earning a million dollars a year, there are four guys,” Uluc revealed.

“Now Bryce Cotton is understandably and warrantably the highest paid player in the league. His contract is well over a million dollars.

“Next up is Jo Lual-Acuil Jr. He signed this deal with the Perth Wildcats. They knew that they had to pay up in order to convince him to come to Perth. He also knew that they needed him really badly, so he was able to leverage that and get a big contract in Perth.

“If there’s one person who reset the market over the past couple of seasons, it’s Xavier Cooks in the Sydney Kings. Because in order to stop Xavier Cooks from going to Japan or from continuing to chase that NBA dream, the Sydney Kings had to front up a certain amount of money. And a million dollars is the number that sounds really, really good. It’s what a lot of players want. And they did that for him.

“All of a sudden, a high-level local who could otherwise be in Japan or high-level Europe or chasing that NBA dream, a million dollars is almost the asking price now for that level of player.”


Uluc also expects the marquee four to expand to five within the next 12 months.

“So I’m under the impression that Parker Jackson-Cartwright will join the ‘million dollar club’ next season,” Uluc added.

“That’s an import that will join that. We’ll see if any locals return. But to further contextualise how much these guys are worth in the open market: I spoke to a Japanese team a couple of weeks ago who said that they would pay Xavier Cooks a million US net, which once you go through that, that pays for the taxes. Once you go through converting that to how much Australian dollars go in his pockets, that’s well over $2 million.

“So that is the market of these guys outside of this country. And so in order to keep them here, a lot of guys do take pay cuts, because Australia is a beautiful place to live, people like playing here, you get paid on time.

“There is something about how organised the NBL is that is palatable to these players. However, the money outside the NBL is so substantial that in order to keep them here, hitting that million dollar or more mark is really important.”

NBL champion Pete Hooley believes it’s a strong indication of the league’s growth.

“It’s awesome to see. We talk about all the talent getting poached from around the world, from Australia to go around the world. The best talent, our local talent, costs money. So teams are now not afraid after Xavier Cooks proved that you can go out there and do it,” he said.

“And this is also the beauty. I think it’s almost been 10 years since they reintroduced the three import rule and brought in the marquee player rule. This rule was put in there for this exact reason: where you can go out there, as long as you can do it and pay the best local talent, it’s gonna hit your cap on a very low amount. And you give them what they deserve in this market and could have stalled for them earning some very high money. And hopefully at some point Bryce Cotton can join the marquee level of that.”

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