Brandon Clarke’s estate will receive the full $12.5 million salary he was owed for the 2025-26 season, after the Memphis Grizzlies’ life insurance policy on his contract was activated. Agent Mark Bartelstein said Friday that the deal was fully protected for death and that the payout will go to Clarke’s estate tax-free.
The clarification matters because it settles, at least for next season, whether Clarke’s remaining salary would survive his death in full. His contract was set to run through the 2026-27 season, but the immediate question was the $12.5 million due for 2025-26, and Bartelstein said that amount is being paid out through October 2026.
Clarke was 29 years old and had just finished his seventh NBA season, all of it with the Memphis Grizzlies. He was the No. 21 overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft out of Gonzaga, earned all-rookie honors and later signed a four-year, $50 million contract extension with Memphis in 2022. The team’s decision to buy a policy that covered death turned what could have been a disputed contract obligation into a guaranteed estate payout.
That guarantee became more important after conflicting reports on Thursday said Clarke’s estate would not receive the full amount owed next season. Bartelstein’s comments left little room for ambiguity: the full $12.5 million is going to the estate, and because NBA contracts are paid in installments, the money will continue to be disbursed over time rather than in one lump sum. The remaining salary is scheduled to run through October 2026.
Clarke’s death had already set off a separate chain of public updates. On May 12, the Grizzlies and his representatives at Priority Sports each issued statements announcing his death, and on Friday, Aug. 7, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office said he died from the effects of heroin and cocaine and ruled the death an accident. Authorities had pronounced him dead on May 11 after he was found unresponsive in his bedroom, and a deputy medical examiner later examined him at the DME’s Forensic Science Center on May 12.
The estate’s full payout closes one part of the story, but the larger one remains stark: a player who missed most of the past two seasons because of injury, then died weeks after an arrest in Arkansas, left behind a contract that was unusually protected. The insurance clause did exactly what the Grizzlies intended, and for Clarke’s family, it means the next check should arrive on the same schedule the league had already set in motion.
