NBA 2018-19 Season: Average player salary for every NBA team

#9-7

Boston Celtics Media Day

Portland Trail Blazers - $129.50 million

Highest-paid player - Damian Lillard

Average player salary - $8.09 million

The Trail Blazers are one of those teams right now that will fade into history as an afterthought of the era, even though they've been a pretty successful team through the past 7-8 seasons or so.

The presence of Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum makes them a playoff team by default, but the rest of their contracts have handicapped them from a true run at championship contention, and they've been victims of first-round sweeps in the past couple of summers.

Boston Celtics - $125.05 million

Highest-paid player: Gordon Hayward ($31.21 million)

Average player salary: $8.33 million

The Celtics are currently over the cap by around $3.5 million, about exactly the same cap figure as they're offset by Terry Rozier's contract in 2018-19.

This has been the basis of trade rumours for the third-string point guard, whose role has been considerably reduced since Kyrie's return to competitive basketball.

Though there are other players (read: Anthony Davis) who could be traded for using Rozier as a bargaining chip, the thinking around the Danny Ainge camp is that he's a current asset whose use/lack of it can be determined over the summer.

Charlotte Hornets - $119.91 million

Highest-paid player - Nicolas Batum ($24 million)

Average player salary - $8.57 million

The Hornets have teetered on the edge of a .500 record the past 2 seasons, but despite owning a positive net rating per 100 possessions, they have failed to make the playoffs due to their temerity in close games, which they've almost always lost.

The lack of a true shot creator at an above-average level other than Kemba, who was playing MVP-level basketball to start the season off, hurts them a lot in their playoff hunt. As do the contracts of Marvin Williams, Nicolas Batum and now Bismack Biyombo, who've all hamstrung their cap space flexibility for the next 2 summers.