The NBA's Most Expensive Benches Last Season Revealed - $284.2m Wasted

With the NBA offseason flying by, the new season is now just two months away. So, while teams look to set their rosters, they will be wanting to make the most of their salary cap and secure players who make an impact and not spend time sitting on the sidelines.

The team at Casino Guru thought it would be interesting to highlight which teams from last season had potentially lost salary sitting on the bench and who out of all 30 had the most.

The study ranked NBA teams by the salaries of players earning $5m+ who fell outside their regular rotation (playing under 12 minutes per game or under 25% of their team's available minutes). This is excluding players whose lack of playing time was primarily caused by injury.

Included in the data were players benched by coaches, held out while awaiting a trade, or whose time on the bench was due to a mix of shorter spell injury and coaching decisions.

Key Highlights:

• $284.2m in NBA salary was tied up in $5m+ players outside regular rotations for non-injury reasons.
• $130.2m of the money wasted was purely down to coaches' decisions to leave the players out.
• The New Orleans Pelicans had the NBA's most expensive bench: $39.85m, equal to 19.2% of their payroll.
• The Charlotte Hornets ($29.53m), Orlando Magic ($28.86m) and Golden State Warriors ($25.80m) followed.
• Golden State had the biggest pure coaching decision waste at $20.11m.
• Jordan Poole was the NBA's most expensive individual benched player (31.85m).
• The Denver Nuggets left $18.57m outside the rotation purely through coaching decisions despite winning 54 games.
• Nine teams recorded $0 qualifying non-injury bench salary, including Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, New York and Cleveland.

*Utah, Boston, Memphis, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Miami, Portland, New York, Cleveland all had $0 qualifying non-injury bench salary.

The League's Top 3 Most Expensive Benches

Last season NBA teams spent a combined $284.2m in salary to $5m+ players who were sitting on the bench for most of the season.

The most expensive bench belongs to the New Orleans Pelicans, who had $39.85m worth of salary sitting on the sidelines. The main culprit for this is Jordan Poole, who has subsequently been cut from the roster and is looking for a new team next season.

Poole was dropped from the rotation and became a healthy scratch, while the Pelicans explored trade options for the $31.85m guard ahead of the deadline, finding no suitors.

The Charlotte Hornets ($29.5m) have the second most expensive bench which was made up of three players who were all used sparingly, Josh Green, Tre Mann and Tidjane Salaun. Mann and Salaun were classified as coach decisions, while Green's reduced involvement was due to a mix of injury and limited rotation minutes.

Orlando Magic round out the podium at $28.9m with Jonathan Isaac making up $15m of their bench spending. Isaac managed to play 52 games last season but averaged bang on 10 minutes per game.

Most Expensive Benches Due To Coaches Decision

A solid chunk of the salary spent on benched players last season was purely down to coaching decisions ($130.2m) by choosing to not include the players in regular rotation.

The Golden State Warriors had the most money sat on the sidelines, due to these decisions, with $20.1m of $25.8m paid to players who did not make the regular rotation last season.

Jonathan Kuminga contributed a large portion, with $14.3 of his initial $22.5m salary attributed to his time outside the Warriors' rotation. He lost his starting role in November and subsequently fell out of Steve Kerr's rotation before being dealt to Atlanta at the trade deadline in February.

A notable team from the data is the Denver Nuggets, despite winning 54 games, they had $18.6m tied up in Jonas Valanciunas ($10.4M) and Zeke Nnaji ($8.2m), who both saw limited roles through the season, with Jonas eventually dropping out of the rotation altogether.

Methodology

We analyzed players earning $5m or more during the 2025/26 season and identified those who spent considerable time outside their team's regular rotation. A player qualified if they averaged less than 12 minutes per game or played less than 25% of their team's available minutes.

Each qualifying player was then individually researched using reporting from the 2025/26 season to understand why their playing time was limited. Players were classified as being out of the rotation due to a coach's decision, a combination of injury and reduced role, or because they were held out during a trade or buyout situation.

For players traded during the season, salaries were split between their teams based on the amount of time spent on each roster. Dead money and salaries belonging to players no longer on a team's roster were excluded, as were players earning under $5 million and two-way contracts.

The final bench salary for each team therefore represents the combined salary attributed to qualifying players who saw limited playing time for reasons other than predominantly injury or suspension.

Sources

Basketball-Reference (minutes)

ESPN and Spotrac (salaries, payrolls, dead cap)

2025-26 season news reporting for reasonings

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