The thing is, property taxes are easily avoided by not owning property, which works for many professional athletes who rent where they play and may own where they actually live in the off season.

CA is still middle of the pack from a state perspective in property tax rates, but that is also a function of municipality in most places. The difference on a $179K home in CA (which buys you a shack) and in Texas (which buys you a nice home) is about $2K per year. However, the median home in Texas is only $131K vs. $371K in CA. So, the median property tax paid in Texas is about $500 less than in CA.

Texas also happens to be a worse case scenario than Florida. Florida's property taxes on average aren't much higher than CA's plus FL has no state income tax.