BUCKS AREN’T ALL IN MILWAUKEE : NBA $ALARIE$ : It’s Really a Players’ Market: : 10 Earn at Least a Million; : the League Average Is $332,000

A recent news story reported that there would soon be a million millionaires in the United States. Not all of them will be professional basketball players, even if it seems that way.

This season, 10 players in the NBA earned salaries of at least $1 million, and next season, Cedric Maxwell of the Celtics will join the party. The price of Cornbread just went up in Boston.

There could be still another one. Patrick Ewing may become a millionaire in his first season, as Ralph Sampson did, when Ewing signs his rookie contract.

What we have here are more players making more money than ever before in the history of sports. The average NBA salary is $332,000, which is the highest of any professional sports league.

Money may not buy those players happiness, but at least they can afford a down payment.

You might think that millionaire players wouldn’t mind if people knew how much they make, but that’s not correct. This is regarded as serious business, a private matter grown out of a very public display.

Magic Johnson, for instance, figures that he had a pretty good year on the job, which he would like everyone to know about. But how much he got paid for it, he said, is nobody’s business but his own.

“I think we, as players, should have a sense of privacy,” Johnson said. “Everybody else in the world does, so why can’t we?”

Normally, NBA player salaries are privileged information, top-secret stuff. You can’t see them without security clearance.

But now, the NBA’s list of salary figures for every player in the league, which was supposed to be an eyes-only document for owners and general managers, has fallen into the hands of the press. Some reporters have obtained copies, and the secrets are out.

Nobody in basketball is real happy about that. General Manager Jerry Colangelo of the Phoenix Suns said he would ask the league to see what it could do to stop the leaks.

Stan Kasten, general manager of the Atlanta Hawks, said: “I think it’s unfortunate and bad, but not fatal. I think it hurts us in sports when the focus is on money instead of the games.”

Jerry West, Laker general manager, said he doesn’t like seeing player salaries in the newspaper.

“I think it’s wrong,” he said. “It would be like putting your salary in the paper. You probably wouldn’t want people to know how much you make either.”

The highest-paid players in the league, according to the NBA salary-cap list, which assigns a dollar value to each player contract, are probably just the ones you might expect them to be:

--Magic Johnson, $2.5 million.

--Moses Malone, $2.125 million.

--Larry Bird, $1.8 million.

--Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, $1.5 million.

--Jack Sikma, $1.2 million.

--Mitch Kupchak, $1.15 million.

--Otis Birdsong, $1.075 million.

--Ralph Sampson, $1.066 million.

--Julius Erving, $1 million.

--Kevin McHale, $1 million.

Abdul-Jabbar, who next season will make $2 million, doesn’t think it’s exactly fair for his salary to be public knowledge.

“This doesn’t happen to the Kennedys and Rockefellers,” he said.

Yeah, but they can’t make a sky hook, either.

Making a quick audit of the league’s salaries, you can see where all the money is going. Whether it’s money well spent is anybody’s guess. In any event, here are one writer’s observations on the matter:

--Most underpaid player: Utah’s Mark Eaton. He makes only $135,000, but he set an NBA record for blocked shots and made the all-defensive team.

--Most overpaid player: The Knicks’ Pat Cummings, who will make $612,500 next season. The 6-9 Cummings had 202 fewer rebounds than Eaton.

--Highest-paid Johnson: Magic at $2.5 million.

--Lowest-paid Johnson: Eddie of the soon-to-be Sacramento Kings, who makes $225,000, even though he averaged 22.5 points.

--Free agent Johnsons: Two of them are Georges. There are the shot-blocking George (Swat) of New Jersey, who makes $65,000, and the bench-warming George of Philadelphia, who makes $100,000, plus (Fast) Eddie of Atlanta, who knocks down $491,000.

--Highest-paid first-round draft choice: Akeem Olajuwon of Houston. He made $749,000 this season, the first year of a six-year contract worth $7.4 million.

--Lowest-paid first-round draft choice: Earl Jones of the Lakers. Jones made $75,000, but he would have gotten more if the Lakers hadn’t been over the salary cap.

--Lowest-paid first-round draft choice on a team unaffected by the salary cap: John Stockton of Utah at $125,000.

--Most boring contract: Magic Johnson’s. He will make $2.5 million through 1993.

--Second-most boring contract: Larry Bird’s. He will make $1.8 million every year through 1988.

--Biggest raise: Detroit’s Kelly Tripucka will get a $700,000 increase next season, from $271,000 to $971,000.

--Most cash on hand: Abdul-Jabbar, who makes $1.5 million this season and will get $2 million next season.

--Most deferred money: Magic Johnson again. Beginning this year and going through 2009, he will get a total of $15 million.

--Most expensive points: Moses Malone’s for Philadelphia. With his salary of $2.125 million, it cost the 76ers $1,094 every time Malone scored a point this season.

--Cheapest points: Dominique Wilkins’ for Atlanta. The NBA’s sixth-leading scorer, Wilkins makes $460,000. Each of his points cost the Hawks $207.

--Portland’s all-underpaid team: Clyde Drexler, $175,000; Darnell Valentine, $210,000; Steve Colter, $100,000; Audie Norris, $110,000, and Jerome Kersey, $75,000.

--Biggest pay cut: Portland’s Sam Bowie. This season, he is making $600,000, but his salary next season will drop to $400,000. Don’t worry about Bowie, though. He’ll get more than $1 million a season for the last three years of his contract.

--Most underpaid free agent: Golden State’s Larry Smith at $300,000 this season. Rebounding should pay better.

--Most underpaid starting center for a title contender: Milwaukee’s Alton Lister at $150,000.

--Most expensive playing time: The Lakers’ Mitch Kupchak played 716 minutes on a salary of $1.15 million, or about $1,606 a minute.

--All free-agent team guaranteed to get richer: Norm Nixon, $405,000; Micheal Ray Richardson, $427,000; Darrell Griffith, $363,000; Tom Chambers, $379,000, and Johnny Moore, $166,500.

--All-injured team: Jamaal Wilkes, 42 games, $860,000; Truck Robinson, two games, $540,000; Bill Cartwright, no games, $600,000; Otis Birdsong, 56 games, $1.075 million; Walter Davis, 23 games, $670,000.

--All-rookie salary team: Akeem Olajuwon, $7.4 million; Michael Jordan, $6.2 million; Sam Bowie, $4.8 million; Mel Turpin, $4.6 million; Sam Perkins, $3.2 million, and Charles Barkley, $2 million.

--Cheapest victories: It cost the Milwaukee Bucks $52,542 for 59 victories, based on a team payroll of $3.1 million.

--Most expensive victories: The Knicks spent $222,916 for their 21 wins, based on a payroll of $5.35 million.

--Most underpaid Laker: Michael Cooper at $336,000, a first-team All-Defensive team selection.

--Second most underpaid Laker: Mike McGee at $200,000.

--Most underpaid Celtic: Guard Dennis Johnson at $405,000, another all-defensive team choice, who is a free agent.

--Most overpaid Celtic: M. L. Carr at $175,000. This just goes to show that talk is not always cheap.