Don't Be Surprised by These Big-Money Deals During Wild NBA Offseason
In advance of an unprecedented salary-cap explosion this summer, the NBA has (unofficially) turned to Oprah as inspiration for its (totally unsanctioned) free-agent slogan.
You get a max contract! You get a max contract! You get a max contract! Everybody gets a max contract!
Or, um, maybe not. As Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban cautioned, per ESPN.com's Tim MacMahon:
"Every player thinks it's just going to be a money train this summer. There's a lot of money; there's not THAT much money...And I think there's going to be teams that save their money for next year, because it's a better free agent class. People just presume now that everybody's going to get paid a lot of money, and it'll be interesting to see if that happens.
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Cuban might be right in some cases, but the league's salary cap is jumping by more than $20 million. Insane contracts are bound to surface, even with a stronger class awaiting in 2017, when the cap takes another leap. That's why players such as Harrison Barnes and Chandler Parsons have entered the max-contract discussion. And it's also why other under-the-radar talents will emerge as max-deal candidates.
None of the following players blatantly deserve such lucrative pacts. Most of them, if not all, won't get max deals. But this enormous salary-cap spike does open the door for lavish signings, even if the contracts in question are short-term agreements that account for this uptick in spending.
These players are those most likely to capitalize on this brand of financial mayhem.
Kent Bazemore
1 of 5
Incumbent Team: Atlanta Hawks
Age at Start of 2016-17: 27
Free-Agency Type: Unrestricted
2015-16 Per-Game Stats: 11.6 points, 5.1 rebounds, 2.3 assists, 1.3 steals, 0.5 blocks, 44.1 percent shooting
2015-16 Salary: $2,000,000
Kent Bazemore? Max contract? Not happening.
Wait, we're talking about the Kent Bazemore, right? That dude who used to wave towels and sport goofy smiles on the Golden State Warriors' sideline? OK, yeah. Still not happening.
Except, what if it does?
"That sounds crazy," wrote ESPN.com's Zach Lowe in January, "but an informal poll of a dozen front-office executives on Bazemore's next average salary drew answers ranging from the mid-level exception, to $12 million, to 'who the hell even knows?'"
Welcome to 2016, folks.
Interested teams don't necessarily need to worry about pricing Bazemore out of the Atlanta Hawks' range, which may help drive down his market value. They only own his Early Bird rights, so Bazemore's next deal will eat into their actual cap space.
Atlanta has a little more than $6 million in spending power after accounting for holds and can easily carve out $13 million. It will take some extra salary dumps (Kyle Korver, Jeff Teague, etc.) or cutting ties with Al Horford to significantly eclipse that mark.
But the Hawks' limited flexibility doesn't ensure the absence of a bidding war. Bazemore will be only 27 when free agency begins in July and is the NBA's ideal wing—someone who can defend the 2 and 3, scores efficiently on low usage and doesn't kill ball movement. Food for thought: Two players averaged at least 15 points, six rebounds, three assists and 1.5 steals per 36 minutes in 2015-16 while shooting at least 35 percent from deep.
Paul George was one; Bazemore was the other.
Bismack Biyombo
2 of 5
Incumbent Team: Toronto Raptors
Age at Start of 2016-17: 24
Free-Agency Type: Unrestricted
2015-16 Per-Game Stats: 5.5 points, 8.0 rebounds, 0.4 assists, 0.2 steals, 1.6 blocks, 54.2 percent shooting
2015-16 Salary: $2,814,000
Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders warned us in May that Bismack Biyombo max-contract talk was coming. "I wouldn't be surprised if a team looked at Biyombo and offered near max for two years," he tweeted. "Contract length [is] the key—big [dollars] but short years."
Confirmation on this theory started rolling in almost immediately. As one Eastern Conference general manager told Sporting News' Sean Deveney:
"For someone like (Biyombo), I think when you look at a guy like Tyson Chandler and what he got from Phoenix last summer (four years, $52 million), that’s where you start for a contract. But you factor in the cap spike and it’s probably going to be high, I’d say, $16-17 million. It’ll be a heck of a $17 million-per-year gamble.
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Now, Biyombo did tell Sportsnet 590 The Fan's Andrew Walker Show he would consider accepting less to stick with the Toronto Raptors. And it's not unreasonable to think he would take the stability of a modestly priced long-term deal over the flash of a short-term windfall.
But up to $17 million per year is a lot of money. And if that's Biyombo's pre-market value, it may not signify all the coin he can command once free agency is underway.
Though he doesn't do much on his own offensively, he is an expert screen-setter and pick-and-roll diver. He ranked second in screen assists among all players to average more than 15 minutes per game in the playoffs. And he was seventh in points scored per possession (minimum 90 touches) as the slasher in pick-and-rolls during the regular season.
Biyombo is also a rebounding and shot-blocking machine. It almost doesn't matter how many minutes he plays. He is hustle personified on defense and can function as a DeAndre Jordan or Hassan Whiteside type on offense.
Speaking of which: Aside from Biyombo, only one player this season cleared 9.0 points, 13.0 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per 36 ticks in more than 1,000 total minutes. That was Whiteside—a borderline max-contract formality.
Allen Crabbe
3 of 5
Incumbent Team: Portland Trail Blazers
Age at Start of 2016-17: 24
Free-Agency Type: Restricted
2015-16 Per-Game Stats: 10.3 points, 2.7 rebounds, 1.2 assists, 0.8 steals, 0.2 blocks, 45.9 percent shooting
2015-16 Salary: $947,276
Allen Crabbe's big-contract candidacy feels flimsiest. He isn't a household name, has yet to display the defensive consistency synonymous with top three-and-D wings and only just became a rotation player in 2015-16.
On the flip side, Crabbe only just became a rotation player in 2015-16. At 24, having played a super-specific role with the Portland Trail Blazers, he still has so much room to grow. Plus, the current version is pretty darn good, too.
He is already among the best closeout defenders in the league. He sags off screens and ball-handlers to police passing lanes and prevent dribble drives but explodes forward to contest quick pull-up and spot-up jumpers. Of the 130-plus players to defend at least 150 catch-and-shoot sets during the regular season, he finished inside the top 20 of points allowed per possession.
Crabbe is similarly effective on the offensive end. Almost half his scoring opportunities came as spot-up triples. He shot 45.5 percent in those situations. And of every player to use as many standstill possessions as Crabbe (255), only Kawhi Leonard collected more points per possession.
That's not the only thing these two have in common, either. Leonard is the sole player to surpass all of Crabbe's assist (7.2), steal (1.5), turnover (8.1) and three-point (39.3) percentages.
Add in that Crabbe is a restricted free agent, and his value should skyrocket this summer. He wants to stay in Portland, per Sean Meagher of the Oregonian, but outside teams usually overpay just to have a slim chance at poaching restricted free agents. Some ambitious suitor might be willing to throw Crabbe a surprisingly huge offer sheet that forces the Blazers into a tough decision.
Either way, Crabbe's bank account wins—perhaps more than anyone, including Portland's brass, could have imagined.
Evan Fournier
4 of 5
Incumbent Team: Orlando Magic
Age at Start of 2016-17: 24
Free-Agency Type: Restricted
2015-16 Per-Game Stats: 15.4 points, 2.8 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 1.2 steals 46.2 percent shooting
2015-16 Salary: $2,288,204
Evan Fournier's value, much like Allen Crabbe's, gets a boost from his restricted free-agent status.
Hopeful admirers need to rent armored trucks just to maybe, quite possibly, if they're lucky, coax the Orlando Magic into not matching an offer. This process becomes expensive if the Magic are particularly attached to him. And they are.
"One of our biggest, if not our biggest, priorit[ies] is to make sure Evan stays with us," general manager Rob Hennigan said in April, per the Orlando Sentinel's Josh Robbins, "and we're confident we'll be able to do that."
The Magic's position hasn't changed now that Frank Vogel is their head coach. They still intend to re-sign Fournier, according to Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders. They are already down a wing after trading Tobias Harris, and Fournier has emerged as a formidable shooter and scorer whose defensive warts seem solvable.
And Fournier's offensive progression alone might be enough for a talent-starved squad (sup, Philadelphia?) to mime what the Blazers did last summer when they maxed out Enes Kanter to see if the Oklahoma City Thunder would match.
There still aren't too many NBA players who can thrive as both a featured and complementary scorer. Fournier shot 48.8 percent on drives in the regular season but also found the net on 41.3 percent of his catch-and-shoot treys. And his assist percentage (12.8) is high enough that he won't muck up incumbent systems.
Fournier is one of four players who wrapped up 2015-16 averaging at least 17 points, three assists and three free-throw attempts per 36 minutes with an effective field-goal percentage—combined two- and three-point efficiency—north of 54.
His company? Just some dudes named Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and LeBron James.
Evan Turner
5 of 5
Incumbent Team: Boston Celtics
Age at Start of 2016-17: 28
Free-Agency Type: Unrestricted
2015-16 Per-Game Stats: 10.5 points, 4.9 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 1.0 steals, 0.3 blocks, 45.6 percent shooting
2015-16 Salary: $3,425,510
If Evan Turner could shoot threes with slight consistency, he wouldn't be featured on this list. He would be a max-contract lock.
Alas, Turner has only found twine on less than 30 percent of his three-pointers since 2013-14. He also is converting well under 27 percent of his looks between 10 feet of the basket and just inside the three-point line for his career. It also doesn't help that he has seldom lived up to his No. 2-pick status from 2010. His tenures with the Philadelphia 76ers and Indiana Pacers yielded mixed results, and he has never posted an above-average player efficiency rating.
Still, Turner's time with the Boston Celtics has upped his desirability factor, per CSNNE.com's A. Sherrod Blakely:
"But Turner has been the one Celtic that league sources have told CSNNE.com would be the best fit for any team.
'You hear players talk all the time about doing whatever it takes to win, but he’s doing it,' one executive told CSNNE.com. 'Start, come off the bench, play a few minutes, play a lot of minutes. He’s done everything they’ve asked him to do and from what I hear, hasn’t grumbled a day about it. Every team needs a guy like that in their locker room.'
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Every team could also use a guy who defends four of five positions and plays like a point guard on the offensive end. It's worked for Cleveland and Golden State, anyway.
Two players matched or exceeded Turner's 2015-16 rebound (9.3), assist (23.9), steal (1.7) and block (1.0) percentages: Draymond Green and LeBron James.
No, Turner is neither Green nor James. And yes, this statistical relationship has been shoved down your throats (by me) in previous free-agent confabs. But that doesn't make Turner's performance any less impressive.
Certain teams—particularly those thin on playmaking—may not flinch at the idea of overpaying him for a short (or even long) time. And while Turner, having endured hardwood hardships in Philly and Indy, is a candidate to prioritize chemistry over cash, that stands to change if he's juggling one or more unexpected max offers.
Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com unless otherwise cited. Salary information via Basketball Insiders.
Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @danfavale.
