Maurice Harkless earned himself an extra $500,000 on Wednesday and didn’t even have to shoot to get it.
Playoff seeding and awards predictions generally dominate the talk as the NBA season enters its home stretch. Another topic often brought up are performance-based bonuses in player contracts.
Harkless had a bonus for this season worth $500,000 which the Blazers forward would trigger if he shot 35 percent or higher from behind the three-point line. As The Vertical’s Bobby Marks points out, Harkless went into Portland’s final game of the regular season at 35.1 percent.
Bonus watch heading into the last game:
$500k for the Trail Blazers Mo Harkless for 35.0% or above from 3.
Harkless is at 35.1%.
— Bobby Marks (@BobbyMarks42) April 12, 2017
Harkless was obviously very close to the threshold needed to activate the bonus, so he decided to play it safe. The box score for the Blazers’ 103-100 loss to the Pelicans shows Harkless took six shots. Not one of them was from behind the three-point line.
With his bonus secured, Harkless posted this photo of himself after the game along with the caption “I guess dinners on me tonight ahaha”
If I had just secured $500k, I would be cheesing too.
