DeMar DeRozan cracks Forbes top 100 highest-paid athletes

Athletes far and wide make a ton of money. Thanks to the staff at Forbes, we can rank them, because who doesn’t love a good set of rankings.

The NBA was widely recognized as the sport with the most athletes on the list, which has been typical over the years. The Pac-12 spotted 14 total athletes across multiple sports and your USC Trojans were even represented by former star basketball player DeMar DeRozan.

He checked in at No. 76 overall and 26th among all NBA players. DeRozan reportedly earned $24.8M over the past year including $20.8M in salary and bonuses and another $4M in endorsements.

DeRozan signed a massive five-year, $139M deal with the Toronto Raptors in 2016, the second-largest contract in NBA history. Since then, he has been traded to the San Antonio Spurs where he posted career-highs in rebounds and assists with the Spurs last season.

He’s signed to Nike and also has a large sponsorship deal with Spalding.

DeRozan has also been a catalyst for awareness of mental health struggles as he’s opened up about his own and has appeared in an NBA public service announcements encouraging people to seek help for their own mental health struggles.

He played for USC from 2008-2009, seeing his No. 10 jersey retired at the end of his brief career. He led the Trojans to the 2009 NCAA Tournament after earning First-Team All-Freshman honors and honors as the Pac-10 Tournament MVP. He stared all 35 games and scored in double figures during 28 contests. His 485 points scored over his first year still stand as third all-time.

The full list of top 100 highest-paid athletes is here.