Biggest Re-Signing Mistakes of NBA Free Agency
If you've cooked up enough fake NBA trades and sent them out into the world, you know fans overvalue their favorite team's assets and undervalue those belonging to others. It turns out franchises fall victim to the same kind of skewed analysis.
Just look at some of the prices teams paid to retain their own free agents this summer.
There's something to be said for keeping a player who understands a team's culture and fits into its schemes. The onboarding process for free agents from the outside adds a layer of complexity to training camp, and it sometimes takes several months into the season until things coalesce from a schematic and personality standpoint. Familiarity is just more comfortable—and easier.
In addition, one could forgive a team for wanting to reap the benefits of the investment it already made in a player. If you've drafted or developed someone, it'd sting to watch them go to another team and realize all the potential you spent years trying to cultivate.
Maybe sometimes it's worth paying a premium for the status quo. But in the cases we'll cover here, teams erred by spending too much to bring back their own free agents. Maybe some of these deals won't look disastrous at first, but they'll all be remembered as mistakes.
Bradley Beal, Washington Wizards
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If the topic is bad re-signings during 2022 free agency, there's just no other place to begin than with Bradley Beal's five-year, $251 million supermax contract.
Beal is a three-time All-Star and a dangerous three-level scorer who has averaged over 30.0 points per game in two seasons. His loyalty to the Washington Wizards, which we have to note has come in conjunction with the franchise's commitment to bump his career earnings over $400 million, is commendable. We can't lament the era of accelerated player movement and knock Beal for staying put.
This contract is still a colossal mistake for Washington.
Bidding against no one, the Wizards agreed to pay the most money allowed by the collective bargaining agreement to a 29-year-old who has made one All-NBA team and never advanced beyond the second round of the playoffs. Beal is entering the decline phase of a career that topped out at "second-best player on a non-contender" and will be compensated as if he were a franchise cornerstone. That Washington also ceded control by giving him a player option in the fifth year and a no-trade clause only made a bad deal worse.
Per The Athletic's John Hollinger: "Wizards owner Ted Leonsis describes the no-trade clause as a 'point of partnership.' In reality, it was a term of surrender. You can tell almost immediately that the no-trade clause was a bad idea based on the fact that nobody else does this, even for players who are far better than Beal. The last player to have a clause like this was Carmelo Anthony with the Knicks, and I'm not sure that's the franchise model to emulate."
The Wizards had a chance to move Beal for a haul of picks and/or young talent that would have kickstarted a rebuild, but they would have had to do that two years ago. Instead, they allowed Beal to hit free agency and forced themselves into a situation where the only options were bad. Then, they somehow managed to pick the worst of them all.
Washington may win a few more games next season, and it might even advance past the first round of the playoffs for the first time since 2017 with a few good breaks. But every year that passes, Beal will get older, and his salary will increase—until he's making $57.1 million in 2026-27, his age-33 season.
In the likely event the Wizards realize the mistake of paying an aging non-superstar like an in-prime MVP candidate, they will still be stuck. Beal essentially became a negative asset the moment he signed his contract, and the no-trade clause will assure Washington won't be able to use the full market to gin up multiple bidders. If Beal says he'll only accept a trade to one or two teams, there's no way the Wizards will get anyone's best offer.
If there's upside to any of this, it's that the Wizards are familiar with the mediocrity treadmill to which they've just strapped themselves for the next half-decade. Decisions like this one show why that's the case.
Marvin Bagley III, Detroit Pistons
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If all you knew about Marvin Bagley III was that he came off the board at No. 2 in the 2018 draft and had averaged 13.6 points and 7.4 rebounds with a 50.1 field-goal percentage in his career, maybe the three-year, $37.5 million contract the Detroit Pistons handed him wouldn't seem so bad.
But we know more about Bagley than his draft slot and cosmetic stats, and everything beyond that surface-level information screams that the Pistons goofed on this one.
Start with how Bagley got to Detroit in the first place, via a four-team trade from the woeful Sacramento Kings that returned Josh Jackson, Trey Lyles and Donte DiVincenzo, only one of whom, Lyles, is still with Sacramento.
It's not an exaggeration to state the Kings gave up Bagley for next to nothing, which felt about right considering the Duke product gave them nothing in his three-and-a-half seasons. Sacramento isn't some paragon of talent assessment, and it certainly has had more than its share of draft misses. But Bagley was a negatively impactful player throughout his tenure with the Kings, according to his estimated plus/minus figures, which "topped out" at minus-0.7 in 2020-21.
A player without a position, Bagley lacks the quickness to guard forwards and doesn't defend the rim well enough to play center. Note, too, that Detroit has two developmental pieces at that position in Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart.
Bagley has yet to show a reliable outside shot (career 29.1 percent from deep on 323 attempts) and might have the least interest in and worst instincts for passing of any player in the league. His 214 career turnovers and 151 career assists speak to that, but you could also watch any game in which Bagley plays and marvel at some of the narrowest tunnel vision you'll ever see.
The Pistons knew all this, watched Bagley put up an on-off differential of minus-8.8 points per 100 possessions after joining them at the deadline and then decided, "Yep, we should definitely guarantee him eight figures per year through 2024-25."
The mind reels, especially considering the dearth of cap space this summer meant Bagley couldn't have realistically signed anywhere else for more than the mid-level exception, which would have started about $2 million per year less than what the Pistons gave him. It speaks to the extent of Detroit's overpay that even if Bagley had signed for the MLE elsewhere, it would have still ranked among the most head-scratching contracts of the offseason.
Bagley has a chance to prove everyone wrong. Doing so will require an almost complete overhaul of his approach, on-court awareness and habits. Today, he's nowhere close to a winning player. If you believe that will change, as the Pistons seem to, you're trusting entirely on hope. Nothing Bagley has shown on the floor or in the stat sheet suggests he should have gotten more than the minimum.
Jusuf Nurkic, Portland Trail Blazers
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Jusuf Nurkic shut it down after the All-Star break last season, missing the final 23 games with plantar fasciitis.
He looked good right up until he hit the shelf, averaging 17.6 points, 13.3 rebounds and 3.8 assists in eight February contests. One would think a free agent-to-be would have every incentive to stay on the floor and demonstrate his value, particularly when said player was performing that well and, given his injury history, needed to prove he could stay healthy.
Bleacher Report's Sean Highkin reported there were factors beyond the injury at play.
Whether Nurkic and the team had arrangements, Portland paid 2022-23's 13th-highest salary among centers to the player who ranked 37th in EPM at the position last year.
Nurkic's four-year, $70 million agreement was the seventh-largest total awarded during the offseason, and Deandre Ayton was the only center who got more guaranteed cash.
Unlike Bagley, Nurkic has been a quality starter in the past. Though never a reliable stretch weapon, Nurkic is an above-average passer on the short roll, and that specific skill should play well for a team that can put four shooters around him. Injuries have cost him a step defensively, and Portland will struggle to survive against opposing pick-and-rolls. If the Blazers finish above the bottom five on defense, it'll be unexpected.
Though Nurkic has his strong points, the fact remains that he's a non-switch, non-stretch, non-superstar center in a league that simply doesn't pay that type of player anymore. Or, at least, the league doesn't pay those players under normal circumstances. Perhaps the urgency to build a short-term winner around Damian Lillard was a factor in the Blazers' lavishing so much money on the 27-year-old, who happens to be the best 5 with whom Lillard has played.
Kevon Looney is younger, can switch and just proved he could stay on the floor in high-stress Finals games, and he'll make $10 million less than Nurkic's average annual salary. Nic Claxton and Isaiah Hartenstein both outperformed Nurkic in EPM last season, and their combined 2022-23 salaries will still fall short of his yearly average of $17.5 million.
The Blazers' cap situation meant they couldn't sign someone for what they paid to keep Nurkic, so some of those comparisons are unfair. But there's no denying Portland shelled out much more than the market rate for a player whose skills are falling out of favor. With the way the NBA is trending, Nurkic might not even be able to stay on the floor at the end of playoff games when opponents downsize and put switchable shooters all over the court.
Presumably, the Blazers brought back Nurkic because they hope to be involved in exactly those situations. That's a lot of money for someone who may not be able to help when it matters most.
Mitchell Robinson, New York Knicks
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The New York Knicks have plenty of defenses to criticism that four years and $60 million was too much for Mitchell Robinson.
The deal declines in annual value every year, dipping to just $13 million in 2025-26. And it also helps that New York made one of the best value signings of the summer at the same position, securing Isaiah Hartenstein for $16 million over two years.
Unfortunately for the Knicks, like the Blazers, they spent significant resources on a player type that is becoming increasingly insignificant. Robinson blocks shots like few others, and he can do damage on the offensive glass. But neither of those skills is in enough demand to coax big offers on the market (without more), and we can't give New York credit for mitigating a bad decision in its free-agent center spending by also making a good one. Last season, Hartenstein was objectively better than Robinson. The wisdom of signing the former doesn't absolve the thought process behind signing the latter.
It might actually be the biggest condemnation of the move.
Intra-team comparisons aside, Robinson's profile isn't that of someone who should make $15 million per year.
The 24-year-old's range is "dunk," he has never averaged double-figure points or rebounds, and, despite gaudy block rates, his presence on the court has coincided with negative on-off differentials since he became a regular starter in 2020-21. Last season, the Knicks' defensive rating was 3.1 points per 100 possessions worse with Robinson in the game.
If Robinson made the defensive difference of similarly limited offensive centers such as Jarrett Allen, Robert Williams III and Rudy Gobert, it'd be easier to justify the cost. But the Knicks won't get value on either end.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Salary info via Spotrac.
