NBA players employ agents whose jobs are, basically, to make contract negotiations difficult for the teams on the other side of the table.
The contract decisions we’ll cover here start with those competing interests and inherent conflicts and then layer more complicating factors on top.
But as the Dallas Mavericks navigate a thorny roster-building bramble this offseason that includes Irving’s free agency, they’ll have to wonder whether Irving is the right kind of talent to put alongside Luka Dončić.
They were linked to Irving when he initially made his trade request, but both of them made other acquisitions at this year’s deadline that they should probably prefer over Irving.
It gave up Dorian Finney-Smith, Spencer Dinwiddie and a future first-rounder for Irving and may have no choice but to meet his contract demands.
With a potential new deal topping out at five years and $272 million, a win for the Mavericks might be shaving off a few years or dollars from that contract.
That contract, which required Harden to decline a whopping $47.4 million player option, triggered a tampering investigation by the NBA.
According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Harden is considering a return to the Houston Rockets.
Even if he’s more of a facilitator now, and even if his defensive shortcomings and mileage suggest the downside risk is substantial, Harden is going to command a sizable free-agent contract.
Much will depend on the length of the Sixers’ 2023 playoff run and how much Harden has to do with whatever success they enjoy.
If the Rockets drive up the price, the Sixers may be similarly stuck spending more or offering a deal that spans longer than they’d prefer.
Fred VanVleet has quite the track record.
It can only clear significant cap space by renouncing free-agent rights on several key players, and it isn’t like the market is brimming with quality replacements at point guard.
While VanVleet bumped up their half-court scoring rate by 6.7 points per 100 possessions while on the floor this season, he isn’t elevating it to great heights.
VanVleet is objectively valuable, but he’s also a small guard who may be at risk for the steep decline we tend to see from that player type, and he hasn’t showed the ability to solve his team’s biggest problem: half-court scoring.
Negotiations could get tense as FVV and his camp emphasize the Raptors’ lack of alternatives and his own considerable history with the franchise.
Of course no such assurances are available, as Porziņģis’ stellar season—65 games played, 23.2 points per contest and a 49.8/38.5/85.1 shooting split—was an outlier in both production and availability when measured against his career trends.
Might that irk Porziņģis after a borderline All-NBA effort? Perhaps, but if his response to that annoyance involves threatening to sign with the bottom-feeding Houston Rockets or San Antonio Spurs, the Wizards might consider calling his bluff.
It’s just that the Wizards have a habit of overpaying in situations like this, and the only thing worse than having one cap-crippling contract on the books is having two.
The timing might be right for Draymond Green to decline his $27.6 million player option for 2023-24 and enter unrestricted free agency.
While $27.6 million is a lot of money to turn down for a 33-year-old whose fit on other rosters has long been a point of uncertainty, it’s hard to imagine his odds of a hefty three- or four-year pact will be any better a year from now.
Green’s statue will one day share outdoor space at Chase Center alongside Stephen Curry’s and Klay Thompson’s, and his indispensability to the Golden State Warriors’ dynastic run will make it impossible to keep sentiment out of negotiations.
That makes these hypothetical negotiations of the most fraught in the league, with layers of unknowns spanning from whether Green will even opt out in the first place to the clash of emotion and cold, financial calculus that’ll follow if he does.
The only thing we know about Jerami Grant’s next contract is that it’ll likely be for at least four years and $112 million.
If Grant doesn’t agree to those terms and hits free agency on July 1, he can sign with another team for up to four years and $174 million or come back to the Blazers for a max of five years and $233 million.
Portland is purportedly operating in service of Damian Lillard’s title chase, even if the results have fallen far short of giving him the championship-caliber supporting cast he deserves.
Maybe that’s unfair to Grant, and it’s true that his 40.1 percent three-point shooting and versatile defense are exactly what the Blazers would target in outside free agents if he walks.
Portland can add talent by using or trading this year’s lottery pick and by shopping Anfernee Simons and/or Shaedon Sharpe.
