In a league with a salary cap, contracts are of paramount importance. Though the NBA's salary cap isn't a hard one, meaning teams can spend very different amounts on players, ultimately every dollar spent on one player is one that isn't spent on another. That makes good contracts the lifeblood of a contending team.
To determine the most beneficial contracts in the league, I started with the three-year projections of player performance using ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM) and my wins above replacement (WARP) metric that I used in calculating future team power rankings. To turn those values into dollar figures, I estimated based on past contracts that teams pay an average of 3.2 percent of the salary cap (about $2 million this year) above and beyond the minimum salary for two-year veterans ($915,243) for each win above replacement. So a player projected for 10 wins would be worth approximately $20 million, and the value of his contract is the difference between that amount and his salary.
Based on that formula, here are the NBA's 10 best contracts over the next three seasons.
1. Stephen Curry | PG | Golden State Warriors
Salary rank: 56 | Projection rank: 4 | Net value: $66.8 million