I know we all love to talk about that baseball money, especially when comparing it to playing in the NFL. The low long term health impact, coupled with the guaranteed contracts and the ability to find a long life as a specialist are some huge advantages to pursuing a baseball career over football.
But the NBA versus the MLB is where our paths diverge on the topic.
The only pluses that playing baseball have over playing basketball professionally are the deep farm systems that allow you a longer opportunity to develop and make money, and the available jobs (450 in the NBA compared to 750 in the MLB). Baseball is actually the only major league sport with a > 2% chance of making it to the big leagues.
Otherwise, NBA players have similar career lengths to baseball (4.8 years compared to 5.6 for baseball), with the highest average annual salary in all of sports, and has just as low long term health impacts as baseball, potentially even lower. They also enjoy guaranteed contracts.
The average salary of an NBA player is up to $5.15 MILLION per season. The MLB is second at $3.2 Million. The average career earnings of a NBA player are $24.7 Million. The MLB is second at $17.9 Million.
In short it will be harder to find a job in basketball than in baseball, but if you are good enough to play either, basketball is the smartest sport to play professionally in the USA.