Nominal vs present value
Local display: $3.1m · Rebased to 2024 USD via US CPI-U
How the total breaks down
76ers salary (contract average). Six-year, $3.5m contract signed after the Sixers bought Erving from the cash-strapped Nets for a further $3m.
Converse endorsement. Erving's first shoe deal paid a flat $20,000 — a fraction of what sneaker deals would later pay stars of his stature.
Impact 85
- Became the centerpiece of the ABA-NBA merger's most expensive transaction
- Made the 76ers' willingness to outspend rivals for one star a league talking point
- Helped normalise athlete equity stakes through his Converse and later Electronic Arts deals
The $6 million total price tag on the Erving trade — half to the Nets, half to Erving himself — taught NBA owners that a single transcendent talent could be worth paying for outright, not just drafting and hoping to keep. That logic underwrote every blockbuster star trade that followed, from the Lakers' pursuit of Magic Johnson's era-defining contract to the modern superteam trades built around buying, not developing, a top-five talent.
Erving's move from the Nets to the 76ers in 1976 doubled as a referendum on whether the newly merged NBA could support genuine star salaries. His six-year, $3.5 million contract was the largest in the sport at signing, and his early equity-style deal with a struggling shoe company, Converse, previewed the athlete-as-investor model far better known today. In 2024 dollars his season pay barely registers next to modern deals, but the mechanics — buy the star outright, pay him directly, let a sneaker company bet on his stake — are still how the league does business.