The NBA’s minimum salary increases with experience. To prevent teams from avoiding more-expensive veterans, the NBA reimburses teams that sign players with more than two years of experience to one-season minimum-salary contracts.
In Barea’s case, he’ll get the minimum salary for someone with at least 10 years experience ($2,564,753). The Mavericks will be on the hook for two-year-experience minimum ($1,620,564). The league will reimburse Dallas for the rest ($944,189). That $944,189 comes from a league-wide fund that each team contributes to equally. So, the other 29 teams are each covering $31,473 of Barea’s sendoff (likely into retirement).