Welcome to Around The Realm, where we look at the news from around the NBA.
Today was the extension deadline for players entering the final year of their rookie contracts, and we saw some big contracts handed out.
Toronto keeps OG Anunoby
OG Anunoby would have been one of the top available free agents next summer, restricted or otherwise.
Toronto Raptors forward O.G. Anunoby has agreed to a four-year, $72 million extension, including a player-option for the 2024-2025 season, @KlutchSports Head of Basketball Omar Wilkes tells ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 21, 2020
Instead Toronto locked him up to a reasonable deal, and OG got a player option on the back end. A nice deal for both sides.
Kyle Kuzma signs a very tradeable contract
Kuzma will stay in LA on a three year deal that actually seems pretty fair for both sides, and will be easy to trade if the Lakers want to down the road.
Los Angeles Lakers forward Kyle Kuzma has agreed to a three-year, $40M contract extension, including a player option on 2023-2024 season, sources tell ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 20, 2020
Orlando handed out some money
The Magic extended both Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz for big money.
Jonathan Isaac has agreed to a four-year, $80M extension with the Orlando Magic, his agent Jeff Wechsler tells ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 21, 2020
Markelle Fultz has agreed to a three-year, $50 million extension with Orlando, his agent Raymond Brothers of @RocNationSports tells ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 21, 2020
Isaac in particular is a big risk. He got one of the largest contracts of the day, but has struggled to stay healthy. If he can be healthy for the majority of the contract, it will be a solid value.
Speaking of guys who can’t stay healthy
The Clippers extended Luke Kennard, who they traded for this summer.
Los Angeles Clippers guard Luke Kennard has agreed to a four-year, $64 million contract extension, his agents Aaron Mintz and Dave Spahn of @caa_sports tell ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 21, 2020
The deal reportedly has about $8 million in incentives, likely tied to games played.
The Spurs keep Derrick White
White is a success story from the San Antonio development system, and earned a nice payday.
San Antonio Spurs guard Derrick White has agreed to a four-year, $73M extension, his agent Mike Lindeman of @excelsm_bball tells ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 21, 2020
And now for those who did not get extended
Lonzo Ball, Jarrett Allen, John Collins, and Lauri Markkanen will all hit restricted free agency next summer.
There will be no agreement on a rookie extension for Pelicans guard Lonzo Ball, @KlutchSports CEO Rich Paul tells ESPN. Ball will become a restricted free agent next summer. Both sides remain positive about the ability to move forward together, Paul tells ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 21, 2020
Brooklyn Nets and center Jarrett Allen will not agree to a contract extension and he will be a restricted free agent at the end of the season, league sources tell Yahoo Sports.
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) December 21, 2020
The Atlanta Hawks and forward John Collins will not have a contract extension agreement, sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium. Collins will become a coveted restricted free agent in 2021.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) December 21, 2020
There will not be extension agreement between the Bulls and forward Lauri Markkanen, sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium. Markkanen will be among the more intriguing free agents in 2021.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) December 21, 2020
For the Kings I think Markkanen is an interesting target.
Restricted free agency will be interesting next year as plenty of teams will have money and there won’t be a lot of big names available.
Very interesting RFA market in 2021. It will be interesting to see how this season unfolds and how it impacts Kings free agency next summer. Ball and Markkanen are names I like.
Good contract for OG. He seems like a good candidate to out perform that contract amount.
Liked Ball a lot more before the emergence of Haliburton (which is a good thing). Now it seems redundant but still worth a look at. Nice to have more ball handling, defense, and passing. Maybe replace CoJo’s minutes.
I wouldn’t mind Markkanen to replace Bjelica’s minutes or Allen to replace Whiteside’s minutes. Both younger and higher upside that matches our timeline.
Time to use poison pill deals that other teams have used on us. Trade Barnes and let’s get frisky.
The Kings don’t have enough playmaking for Ball to be redundant.
Ball’s not signing with the Kings. Trust that.
Because he’s afraid of Fox
Markannen and Allen for the Kings is awesome if Monte can pull it off.
If they can offload cojo and barnes, they can put some serious offers out there for markannen/Allen/Collins
Markannen and Collins interest me the most of the RFAs and more Collins than Markkanen.
That said, it’ll be interesting to see what happens here.
I know LM’s offense showed real promise before the Bulls managed to effectively ruin him. Does he play any defense at all? Because if not, you may as well try to hang on to Bjelica.
Collins seems like he’d be an upgrade to what Holmes does, but I’d imagine the salary would also be a significant upgrade.
Haven’t watched Markannen or Collins a ton over their 3 years. It was more a knee jerk reaction and one if you took with more than a grain of salt the fool is you type of thing.
That said, my comment was based more on profile type than which direction either player is trending. I doubt the Kings get either especially if Collins rep’s believe he’s a max player. I don’t think the Kings can pay that kind of money to Collins unless they completely whiff out on the draft and end up 11th or something. Then that might make sense.
The Isaac extension bummed me out because he was probably the best fit alongside Bagley of all the potential RFAs. I have a hard time imagining a frontcourt pairing of Bagley/Markkanen being all that effective. At least one of your bigs has to be a not-bad defender right? To be honest, I have a hard time imagining Bagley playing alongside any of the bigs that didn’t receive an extension.
Is it weird for me to think that the folks who got extensions maybe shouldn’t have while those who didn’t get an extension maybe should have?
I mean, I’m sure they just didn’t accept the offers. Collins was probably asking for a max extension. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ball was too. It isn’t really about, say, Collins deserving an extension more or less than Anonoby.
OT: The NBA’s considering expansion.
I’d love it if they expanded. It would be a shot of cash into the league, respark interest, spread out some talent, and would just be entertaining,
The leftovers in this article are Blah. Kings best hope for the playoffs is simple. Get 2 Top 6 picks in the next couple drafts. Kings need at least one game changer to get them back to the playoffs. That player is not on the team currently. Big Free Agents are not coming here. Young upcoming talent are getting locked up by their respective teams. But, They’re are a few players I really like: John Collins, Kelly Oubre, Duncan Robinson, Devonte Graham, and Kendrick Nunn. I am sure most of them will get locked up by their respective teams. But, maybe one or 2 will hit the market next summer.
100% – the only path to competitive relevancy for this franchise is to win a draft (or two) and hope they are like Giannis and stay in town.
but John Collins is one of those leftovers you say are blah?
I would call him blah. But I wouldn’t be a fan of signing him for the max-ish deal it’s likely to take to convince him to choose the Kings.
No. John Collins would be a very nice pick up. He wasn’t mentioned in the article.
Markkanen ALL DAY
RFA is generally a terrible way for the Kings to acquire impact talent.
Collectively these are pretty close to what I thought would be agreed upon. OG is great business, Isaac is close to whatI expected. The one I find interesting is the Collins lack of deal. A very controversial player, whose value is very much in the eye of the beholder. That said Atlanta will be close to the tax, Trae’s extension is approaching. They justified expenditures for marginal gains. I would agree Collins is likely overvaluing himself, and pointing to good offensive precedent for his production. But they have now put themselves in a tricky spot with big expectations to improve, a costly payroll that might dictate their willingness to invest in the supposed core. This is the potential casualties forcing improvement when your priorities are on the rookie scale.
I’d love it if we were able to land Collins on a contract similar to Bobo’s, it would effectively become a delayed sign-and-trade. I suspect that Collins will be offered something along the lines of $25 mil/year or more, though.
Frank K. was picked up again by Phoenix off of waivers .. Cool!
The Kuzma contract is damned near ideal, not an overpay, but still a nice chunk of dough.
Mainly excited that the contract isn’t to play for Sacramento.
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