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The data emerging from the latest accounting figures for the 2025-26 season paints an astonishing picture. Excluding absences for personal reasons and counting only time spent recovering, rehabilitating and managing workloads, the salaries paid by NBA teams to players forced to watch games in street clothes have surpassed staggering figures. We can safely call it a genuine “tax on bad luck.”

Pacers, the biggest bill: $81.5 million for injured players

At the top of this painful ranking are the Indiana Pacersunwillingly turned into the league’s most striking case study. With a total bill approaching $81.5 million paid to unavailable players, the franchise saw its plans collapse before they could even get off the ground.

The biggest blow was the $44.5 million salary earned by Tyrese Haliburton: his Achilles tear kept him out for the entire season, turning the team’s star into America’s highest-paid spectator – and the Pacers from an NBA Finals team into one of the league’s worst. Fortunately for Indiana, Tyrese has returned to practice and is ready for the start of the new season after also dealing with some serious health issues during his recovery.

Add the $9.7 million spent on the 58 games Obi Toppin missed because of a stress fracture, and the overall picture starts to look like a full-blown organizational disaster.

Irving, Davis, Butler, Curry: the price of major absences

Things haven’t gone much better out West. The Dallas Mavericks and Golden State Warriors found themselves sharing an identical fate: rosters built to compete at the highest level fell apart on the injury report, with each team recording more than $72 million in “frozen” salary.

The Mavericks had to deal with Kyrie Irving’s entire recovery period – more than $35 million in salary lost to his ACL reconstruction, although he has now returned to 100% – along with Anthony Davis’ 55 missed games due to muscular issues, costing the team $17.1 million before he was eventually traded to the Wizards.

The Warriors saw their playoff hopes fade because of Jimmy Butler’s ligaments ($27.6 million for 44 games missed) and Steph Curry’s knee, with his forced absence for 40 games last season costing $24.3 million.

The record nobody wanted: the Grizzlies’ nightmare season

While for many teams the problem was a devastating injury to a single star, the Memphis Grizzlies suffered a full-scale injury epidemic: 22 separate injuries and an absurd 1,081 total days spent sidelinedresulting in a net financial loss approaching $72 million. That’s more than enough to avoid piling on to a disastrous season that was later compounded by the trade of Ja Morant to the Portland Trail Blazers.

Knicks and T’Wolves: the NBA’s happy island

The other side of the story tells a very different tale, where medical-staff efficiency and a healthy dose of good fortune worked in the teams’ favor. At the top of the league’s happy island are the Minnesota Timberwolveswho managed to limit their injury- losses to the relatively modest (by NBA standards, of course) figure of $16.1 million. Right behind them are the smiling New York Knicks ($18 million) and Brooklyn Nets ($22.3 million).

A gap of more than $65 million separates the league’s most injury-ravaged team from its healthiest. It’s definitive proof that in modern basketball, conditioning and workload management aren’t merely supporting details – they are the fundamental variables separating a season worth celebrating from a financial failure.