Pending NBA Free Agents Who've Cost Themselves the Most Money
The 2015-16 NBA season has been kind to many pocketbooks. Players such as Evan Turner, Marvin Williams and Ian Mahinmi, who are bound for free agency at the conclusion of this campaign, have fared well enough to set themselves up for rather large paydays.
But that's not true for everyone.
Even though the cap is set to explode, some of the year's disappointing performances will prevent a few players from cashing in. In particular, these three guys will pay the price for failing to live up to their preseason expectations.
Harrison Barnes
Age: 23
Current Team: Golden State Warriors
Position: SF
2015-16 Per-Game Stats: 11.3 points, 4.7 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 0.7 steals, 0.2 blocks, 12.0 PER
There's still a chance some team, truly desperate for upside on the wings, offers Harrison Barnes a max deal this summer, forcing the Golden State Warriors to decide whether they want to exercise their rights of first refusal. If the Kevin Durant pursuit isn't going well, they could empty their pockets in order to keep the incumbent small forward around.
But giving Barnes a max deal would be an overpay of massive proportions, as he's done nothing this season to justify such a lucrative contract. Sure, he's found some modicum of success operating as the spot-up shooter who balances out lineups with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, but he's failed to improve any major aspect of his game.
Even in such a limited role, shooting 45.4 percent from the field and 37.7 percent from beyond the arc looks respectable. But in 2014-15, those numbers stood at 48.2 and 40.5, respectively. His true shooting percentage has plummeted, his player efficiency rating has fallen even further below the league average and his box plus/minus figures indicate he's taken a step back both offensively and defensively.
At this point, he doesn't have a true calling card on the scoring side outside of his spot-up shooting and occasional post-up plays. Per NBA.com's statistical databases:
The spot-up shooting is impressive, as is his back-to-the-basket work when faced with a promising matchup. Golden State hasn't been afraid to call Barnes' number when a wing defender is switched onto Curry, leaving an opposing guard working at a serious size disadvantage.
But don't be fooled into thinking he's dominating when running the show in a pick-and-roll setting; those plays have accounted for just 4.4 percent of his possessions.
Despite the preponderance of minutes he spends alongside the Splash Brothers—979 of his 1,735 minutes this season have featured each of the starting guards—Golden State still scores 1.3 fewer points per 100 possessions when he's playing.
And it's not like he's acquitting himself on the other end, as the Dubs' defensive rating rises by 1.1 points when he's on the floor. Last year, his matchups shot better against him than in typical outings, per NBA.com, and that unfortunate trend has grown even worse during the quest for 73 wins:
Three-point marksmen have thrived against Barnes, shooting a stunning 40.8 percent from beyond the arc when he's guarding them despite knocking down 34.6 percent of those looks in typical outings. And Barnes' defensive woes haven't just been limited to individual assignments.
He's on track to post a minus-0.6 defensive box plus/minus (DBPM)—the worst mark of his career and just the 10th-best score on the Golden State roster. ESPN.com's defensive real plus/minus (DRPM), which had him at No. 10 among small forwards in 2014-15, has now dropped him all the way to No. 64 at his position this year.
Does any of this sound like the type of improvement you want to see from a once-promising—and maybe still-promising—wing who won't turn 24 until the end of May? More importantly, does it sound like a player who deserves anything close to a max contract?
When you turn down a four-year extension worth $64 million, you're betting on yourself. But unless teams are getting too wanton with their spending as a response to the craziness of the salary-cap increase, that gamble should backfire.
Meyers Leonard
Age: 24
Current Team: Portland Trail Blazers
Position: PF/C
2015-16 Per-Game Stats: 8.4 points, 5.1 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 0.1 steals, 0.3 blocks, 11.4 PER
"I think it looks bright," Leonard recently said about his future, per the Oregonian's Joe Freeman. "I believe that I can be a key piece of the future. Obviously, [I was] drafted with Damian Lillard. Been here with Terry [Stotts]. And I think that Neil [Olshey], the guys, coaches, understand what I bring."
But what if that's less than we previously thought?
Before the 2015-16 campaign began, the hype train for Meyers Leonard was out of control. Some dummy named Adam Fromal called him one of this season's hidden gems, citing his membership in the 50/40/90 club, his double-digit rebounds per 36 minutes and his impressive rim-protecting numbers.
The breakout hasn't happened.
Instead, the trajectory of Leonard's career has reversed dramatically, plagued by poor shooting and stark regression on both ends of the court. He's been a less effective rebounder, he's turned the ball over more frequently, his defense has been porous at times and his three-point stroke has trended in the wrong direction.
According to NBA.com's SportVU data, Leonard allowed opponents to shoot just 42.3 percent at the rim during the 2014-15 season—the lowest mark on the Portland Trail Blazers by a wide margin. And that came while he was facing 8.2 close-range attempts per 36 minutes. This year, he faced only 6.4 attempts during the same average stretch and let his foes connect at a 52.5 percent clip.
If you analyzed only his per-game numbers, it would seem like Leonard was improving on the glass. After all, he averaged an additional 0.6 rebounds per contest in 2015-16. But that's solely the result of extra playing time. Per 36 minutes, Leonard's numbers declined significantly, and the percentages are even more striking.
And unfortunately, his shooting has followed a similar trend:
When looking at his career numbers, 2014-15 seems like an aberration. So too does the 2015 postseason, when he drained 66.7 percent of his field-goal attempts and knocked down a league-best 76.9 percent of his three-point tries.
Throughout NBA history, four players have slashed 51.0/42.0/93.8 while playing at least 25 games, as Leonard did in 2014-15. But 774 have matched his trio of shooting percentages from 2015-16, posted before he suffered a season-ending torn labrum on March 14.
Now, Leonard is entering free agency after forcing us to reconfigure our expectations. Instead of looking like a rising star fresh off a stellar postseason showing, he's a big man with a history of shoulder problems who's going in the wrong direction and may have a shot that's too slow to get off consistently at the NBA level.
That's not what a player who reportedly declined a four-year, $60 million deal last offseason, according to CSN's Jason Quick, wants to be hearing.
Timofey Mozgov
Age: 29
Current Team: Cleveland Cavaliers
Position: C
2015-16 Per-Game Stats: 6.4 points, 4.4 rebounds, 0.4 assists, 0.3 steals, 0.7 blocks, 14.7 PER
Timofey Mozgov has always been a solid interior defender, but his game has become far too limited for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Even though he's shooting 56.3 percent from the field, his presence has often been detrimental to the offensive flow.
When the Russian center is on the bench, the Cavs are scoring 113.3 points per 100 possessions, which would displace the Oklahoma City Thunder among the NBA's top offensive ratings. But when he's playing, that number declines all the way to 106.8—only slightly better than the league-average mark of 106.3.
The problem isn't his ability to finish plays around the basket; rather, it's how if he's not standing along the baseline on the left side of the half-court set, he's not a threat:
Unfortunately, this is a significant departure from the end of his days with the Denver Nuggets and the beginning of his Cleveland tenure, when he was showing off an improving range and hints of a three-point stroke. It's not difficult to see how much more varied his shooting locations were in 2014-15:
Rewind less than a year, and the big man was in the process of completing a breakout season, offering the Cavs the ability to play bully ball with an oversized lineup. He was thriving on both ends of the court, en route to justifying the trade that saw Cleveland send a pair of first-round picks to the Mile High City.
The sky was the limit. Financially, even a max contract was within the realm of possibilities. Per Lloyd:
Now, Mozgov is struggling to gain any semblance of confidence or continuity in a Cleveland rotation that seems eager to solve its problems without him. His future with the franchise is in serious jeopardy, and his stark drop-off in production may scare away plenty of other teams during the upcoming free-agency period.
The limited nature of his game has forced the Cavaliers to cut his minutes significantly. We've seen him receive DNP-CD designations after the All-Star break and struggle to play more than a dozen minutes in far too many outings.
As Chris Manning wrote for Fear the Sword, this may not change at any point in the near future:
"You do have to feel for Mozgov too. If he had been a free agent last summer, he was probably going to get paid a lot of money. This year, he’s been a shell of himself and it’s hard to see why any team would pony up for him over the summer. Maybe it’s the knee injury he had coming into the season, maybe it’s confidence, maybe it’s both. But, to me, it seems as if Mozgov’s days as a rotation player with the Cavs, and maybe with the team after the year, are numbered.
"
"I've got a lot of [stuff] in my head," Mozgov told the Akron Beacon Journal's Jason Lloyd in the middle of March. "I'm not going to share it to nobody. You ask me what's going on in my head, you're not going to find out. Only Sasha [Kaun] knows. You don't want to be there, trust me."
If only he'd signed an extension before this season began...
Adam Fromal covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @fromal09.
All stats, unless otherwise indicated, are from Basketball-Reference.com, NBA.com or Adam's own databases and accurate through games played on March 28.
