When I was out last night I ran into a friend, Pete Lisicky, who is a former Penn State basketball player and is now playing professionally in Europe. With Pete was another former PSU player Calvin Booth. Calvin has been playing in the NBA for six years, usually averaging about 10 minutes per game. Calvin and Pete are in town for the football game today.
Calvin is in a unique situation. The NBA and their players association recently renegotiated their collective bargaining agreement. A new provision of the agreement was the amnesty player. This was a one-time deal where an NBA team could cut one player from their team without the player’s salary counting against the team’s salary cap – that was the team’s benefit. The team still had to pay the player the remaining money on his contract and the player became an immediate free agent – that’s the player’s benefit.
Calvin was the Milwaukee Bucks amnesty player. He then went on to sign a contract with the Washington Wizards for this upcoming season. That means that Calvin will be getting two paychecks this year. Now I don’t know what his contract with the Wizards is but I do know that the Milwaukee Bucks owe him $13 million over the next two years – not bad for about 10 minutes work 50-70 times a year.
That’s nice work if you can get it.