10. Norman Powell
Contract: 3 years + 1 (Player Option) — $9.3M (18/19), $10.1M (19/20), $10.8M (20/21), $11.6M (21/22)
Personally, Norman Powell was the hardest player to rank on this list. However, this spot also made the most sense for Powell.
This is because it’s really only partly his fault that he has the Toronto Raptors’ worst contract.
At the beginning of the season, Powell started 12 straight games and played 20 minutes or more in 8 of those contests.
Then, Powell lost his starting spot to OG Anunoby.
Admittedly, Powell did not play well in his 12 early season starts, scoring 8.2 points on 35.8% from the field, according to basketball-reference.com. However, given his performance in the 2016/17 playoffs, 11.7 points per game on 42.7% shooting averaging 25.2 minutes, 12 games seems like an oddly small window to give someone to prove themselves.
Throughout the rest of this regular season, Powell started a total of 6 other games and averaged 15.2 minutes on the year.
Why below Ibaka
Realistically, Powell has no role left on this team. This season, Powell only played 18.5 regular season minutes per game and 6.7 minutes in the playoffs. With Miles on the roster, and Anunoby’s emergence as the team’s starting SF, the fit for Powell gets very tight.
In addition, while he earned just $1.4 million dollars this season, Powell’s 2018/19 salary will be $9.3M.
Being someone who played less regular season minutes than 342 other NBA players (in a league of 540 people) but is set to earn approximately $3.6 million dollars more than this season’s average NBA salary ($5.7M, according to basketball-reference.com), the contract he has on this team is not a valuable one for the organization.
Next: Individual grades for each Raptor this season
Ultimately, Powell will earn over $9 million dollars for the next 3 or 4 seasons. Appropriately, that reality, justifies his spot the as worst contract on the Toronto Raptors.