Detroit Pistons coach gets paid like Connor McDavid

I don’t know if you saw the news, but in the NBA, the Detroit Pistons have hired a new head coach by the name of Monty Williams. The club, which won 17 games last year, is starting afresh.

Williams has a good reputation and this is a good move on the part of the Detroit franchise.

To convince the former Suns pilot, who lost his job after his team’s playoff defeat, to come to Michigan, he was offered a golden bridge. We’re talking about a six-year contract at $12 million a year, for a total of $72 million.

Options and bonuses could bring his total salary to $100 million.

12M per year… $100M in total… these figures are awfully similar to those of Connor McDavid (eight years, $100M) and Nathan MacKinnon (eight years, $100.8M), aren’t they?

The bottom line: a star coach in the NBA makes as much money as a superstar in the NHL.

The point is, Williams was supposed to take the year off , since the Suns still owed him $21 million. He was fired with three years left on his contract.

He was due $7 million a year on his old contract… and now he’s got a six- to eight-year contract that, if you stretch it, will pay him almost double that annually.

I understand why he said yes. And that’s despite the big challenge awaiting him in Detroit.

It’s important to note that he’s not the only coach to be paid in this way. Gregg Popovich (San Antonio) earns $11.5m a year and Steve Kerr (Golden State) $9.5m a campaign.

Of course, it’s easy to draw comparisons with the NHL, where coaches don’t earn exactly the same amount as their NBA counterparts.

Gary Bettman, who once worked in the NBA, must want to widen the gap.

We know that revenues are not the same in the NBA as in the NHL. The television contract is not as lucrative in field hockey as it is in basketball, for example.

Even MLS is overtaking the NHL as the fourth major sport down under.

This explains why coaches aren’t as well paid in the NHL. Yes, there’s been a small uptick since Mike Babcock signed his contract with the Maple Leafs, but it’s nothing to challenge the NBA.

Let’s not forget that the former Leafs player earned just over six million dollars per season. That said, what really stood out was that his contract was for eight years. And it’s coming to an end in the next few weeks.

Before losing his job almost two years ago, Joel Quenneville (Florida) was the highest paid per year at $5.25M. Right now, as far as we know, Todd McLellan (Kings) is the highest paid at $5M per year.

He’ll be out of contract in a year.

We don’t know everyone’s contract (maybe Mike Sullivan and Jon Cooper make more money), but no one seems to have a valid contract past the 2026-2027 season, four years from now.

Martin St-Louis, on the other hand, earns $3 million a season. The Hall of Famer has two years left on his contract with the Canadiens.

In bursts

– Indeed.

– Who will stay in Toronto?

– It was expected.

– Wow.

– Milan Lucic back home?