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The NBA and Weight Clauses: Derrick Caracter joins Glen "Big Baby" Davis as Weighted Players

By Rick Karcher, Michael McCann, Geoffrey Rapp, Greg Skidmore, and Howard Wasserman

Last year I wrote about Glen "Big Baby" Davis's weight clause with the Boston Celtics. Davis, who is in the middle of a 2-year, guaranteed $5 million contract, can earn an additional $500,000 each year if he avoids exceeding a certain weight (he earned it in his first season).

The Lakers are now using the same device with rookie Derrick Caracter, a power forward/center who was the Lakers second round pick (#58 overall) in the 2010 Draft and whose commitment to conditioning has been questioned in the past:

3 things about Caracter's weight clause stand out to me:

1) The high value of Caracter's weight clause relative to the guaranteed portion of his contract: Caracter can nearly double his salary if he avoids weighing too much. Talk about an incentive to stay in shape! Think about your income and the opportunity to nearly double it if you merely stay in shape. I doubt our country would have the obesity epidemic it currently suffers from if weight had such a direct impact on our earnings.

2) Unlike with Davis, whose contract is worth between $5 and $6 million depending on his weight, Caracter will not become a millionaire through his deal. To be sure, $250,000 is great money for 98% or 99% of the U.S. population--according to the 2005 census, only 1.5% of American households earn $250,000 or more per year--but he's far from being considered a "rich" pro athlete. I think it's also safe to assume that as a player who will have to fight to keep an NBA roster spot, his future income as a professional basketball player is uncertain and his endorsement potential is pretty low, if not 0, at this point. So the difference in Caracter earning $250,000 and $473,000 this year may be more meaningful for his life than the life difference for Davis--who is poised to have a fairly long NBA career--in earning $5 million, $5.5 million, or $6 million in 2009-10 and 2010-11.

3) Is weight an accurate measure for determining whether an NBA player is in good shape, when pro athletes with a lot of muscle may technically be "overweight"? As I note in my Wisconsin Law Review article on nutritional labeling, 43 out of the 50 baseball Red Sox and Cardinals players who played in the 2004 World Series were technically overweight. Some advocate using Body Mass Index (BMI) instead of weight, as it considers body fat. But NBA teams apparently view weight as an adequate measure.

Full post as published by Sports Law Blog on September 08, 2010 (boomark / email).