(Translator's Note: The author of this article is john hollinger, author of the athletic. The content in the article does not represent the views of the translator and this platform)
What is the antonym of "undervalued"? Not "overrated", exactly... at least for the purposes of this review.
Earlier this week, I wrote about five of the most under-the-radar positive moves of the NBA offseason and discussed their potential impact and the creativity displayed during the moves. Now it's time to look at the other side of the coin - there are operations that don't get a lot of bad rap despite having a lot of risk or a low floor. It’s not so much that they are “overrated” as they are “under-examined” – these operations raise some questions in my mind.
I would like to point out that not every questionable operation this summer met my standards. Chicago Bulls Traded Caruso for Josh Keady, but did not get any draft picks. The whole Internet is taking turns to criticize, so I won't go into details. Likewise, the Denver Nuggets' offseason operation falls somewhere between mediocre and frustrating, but I'm not the first to point that out.
I won't mention the "unactionable" operations here either, although it's not difficult to name a few. For example, I'm still thinking about the potential opener lineup for the New Orleans Pelicans - there's no way this could be their final lineup right now, right? I'm also assuming that the Cleveland Cavaliers will eventually sign 1-3 more players to round out their roster.
Finally, there is a category of contracts that may appear "worse" in theory relative to expected return analysis models, but these teams have no choice but to pay a large amount of money or lose the player. For example, new contracts for Siakam, OG Anunoby and Claxton definitely fall into this category. Monk's new contract with the Kings could also fall into this category, and even Paul George's signing with the Kings - the biggest bombshell of the summer - might also fall into this category, given his four-year contract. The end of the year, $212 million contract could be bad. But no matter what, the team will always give priority to buying big names.
After excluding the above situations, I still have questions about some operations. Here are the top five on my “under-scrutinized” list:
Pacers Nemhard re-signed early
Nemhard signed a three-year, $59 million deal with the Pacers in late July Renew your contract early. This extension was long overdue when everyone was focused on the Olympics, so a lot of people just shrugged and said, "Yeah, $59 million over three years? Sounds okay anyway."
But in any such early renewal contract, the key point is not the total number of years and the total amount of the contract, but the number of years and the amount of the new part. The Pacers and Nembhard originally had a two-year contract with an annual average of 2 million. Extending the contract early is equivalent to erasing the original second-year contract, and the Pacers have a team option in that second year.
Therefore, the real value of this early contract extension is actually 2 years and 57 million US dollars, which is too crazy for a player like him who was born in the second round. Yes, Nembhard performed well in the playoffs and has a high basketball IQ. He is a good team defender; his PER value of 10.6 is also a career high. But if you think he's a 48.6% three-point shooter like he was in 17 playoff games, you're crazy... His career three-point percentage is only 35.3%, The output is also relatively average.
Regardless of your opinion on Nembhard, judging from his current status in the league, an average salary of US$28 million in the market is definitely high. In fact, this is the biggest contract he can get.
Furthermore, this is not the last chance the Pacers will be able to negotiate this kind of contract. They still have two windows in which they can extend Nembhard in advance-one is after the end of the new season, and the second is before he officially enters the 2026 free agent market.Next summer, teams will get an extra year of information accumulation, which can help them figure out whether they are paying for a short-term playoff burst or investing in more sustained player performance. This extra year of waiting may really Very valuable.
However, let’s also take a look at the opposing view. There is a small-market logic that retaining players is crucial, and I experienced this when I was the vice president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies. But even so, this deal is still somewhat unreasonable: the contract the Pacers gave Nembhard is the highest annual salary the Pacers can give, but the contract period is one year less than the maximum renewable period. If a team option worth about $19 million is given in the final year, this contract extension may seem more reasonable.
In particular, the pain point of this deal is the 2025-26 season. In my opinion, the Pacers have sacrificed too much by raising his salary of $2.2 million to $18.1 million. For a team that has never paid the luxury tax, this amount of money may bring a lot of pressure.
The Pacers will likely be under the luxury tax line next year and have enough room (I'm currently projecting $33 million, but that only includes nine guaranteed contracts) to extend Myles Turner and sign them through 2025 A first-round pick, but beyond that they won't be able to add any other reinforcement spending and may need to give up another mid-sized contract to avoid the tax.
Of course, there are still many variables between now and next offseason, but for now, it seems that the Pacers gave up their contract in order to offer a larger contract to Nembhard, who is still under contract. Full mid-level exception...and not much in return in the later years of the contract. Let's wait and see what happens next.
If I were the Pacers, I would consider giving Nembhard a contract extension of the same length and amount as now, but the new contract would not start until after the 2025-26 season - so the new contract length and amount would be It’s really $59 million over 3 years, not $57 million over 2 years.
Nembhard will not become a maximum-paying player, and role player-type guards will be difficult to obtain even in the mid-level exception this summer. Considering such market conditions, even the reported three-year, $59 million contract is a bit too high.
While I absolutely love everything the Pacers have done over the past few years, including recently acquiring my favorite rookie, Furfe, I'm not a fan of Nembhard's extension.
The renewal of the victory garland
Nembhard's early renewal is the most typical example of a larger-scale operation during this summer's offseason. I call it the "renewal of the victory garland."
In particular, there are four 2021 rookies. Although they are not among the top 20 players in the league, they have received early contract extensions with rookie maximum salary including super maximum salary clauses - Cunningham of the Detroit Pistons and Toronto Raptors. 's Scottie Barnes, Cleveland Cavaliers Mobley and Orlando Magic 's Wagner Jr. For a draft that only produced one All-Star—and the Eastern Conference made an All-Star due to injuries—the result is quite remarkable. What is particularly noteworthy is that in this draft, the player with the highest career per value (efficiency value) and bpm (plus-minus value per 48 minutes) is...Shen Jing.
To be fair, these teams did get something in return when they offered the max: a full five-year contract with no player options. (The above four max-salary contracts are all the same at this point.)
On the other hand, the above teams gave the super-max salary clause that included entering the best team when signing these contracts. Compared with 25% A salary-cap rookie max contract gives up some theoretical potential advantages. Again, if the player is good enough, everyone is happy, but compared to the rookie maximum salary that originally accounted for 25% of the salary cap, this type of super rookie maximum salary does weaken the value of the contract. At least the Cavaliers and Magic deserve some recognition for limiting supermax salary increases. If Mobley or Wagner Jr. can enter the NBA third team like Randle did, their supermax salary will only increase to 27.5% of the salary cap. (rather than the top 30%).
Overall, these four teams have made good or even excellent choices in the 2021 draft. But there is a huge gap between the rookie contract and the maximum salary, because the maximum-paid players on the team must become star players. But we haven’t reached that stage yet: Cunningham’s career BPM is negative, Wagner Jr. is only +0.1, and Wagner Jr., Mobley and Scotty Barnes also have big shooting problems. . Of course, we can expect them to continue to improve in the coming years. But having said that, if their performance does not improve significantly in the next 18 months, their contract value will shrink in the 2025-26 season, which is the first year when the early renewal contract takes effect.
What makes this quartet of max-extended players so strange is that other teams have already offered other paths to success in this situation. Teams can negotiate, and perhaps just as importantly, teams can choose to wait. A year ago, the Philadelphia 76ers held the bottom line on Maxey's contract extension and used his ridiculously low salary space to successfully sign George. Maxey still got a five-year cap with no options. Salary contract...even after Maxey was selected as an All-Star.
We have other examples. Even though Zion has been selected as an All-Star, the Pelicans still included a non-guaranteed clause in his contract extension; a year ago, the Grizzlies and Suns successfully insisted not to give Jaren Jackson Jr. and Mikal Brees respectively. Keith extended his contract with a maximum salary. (For that matter, the Rockets appear to be doing the same thing with Shen Jing and Jaylen Green this summer.)
Meanwhile, looking ahead to the 2025 offseason, only one other team is expected to have a max salary Cap space (even if they can use the space to offer a max contract, the original team will match the offer a week later, and during this period, the cap space will be frozen and the possibility of recruiting other free agents disappears )...So, what are these teams afraid of? Is it the fear of pissing them off by not immediately agreeing to a max salary for a player who has yet to prove he is a cornerstone?
I think the lower limit of this type of contract will be like Ayton or Michael Porter Jr., where the players are good but the contract is not ideal. The risks are greatly underestimated, and no team seems to have learned anything from the 76ers' operations.
Raptors Quickley's contract
If you talk to people around the league, the general sentiment is that the Raptors seem to have gone downhill a bit in the past five years - a team that worked perfectly in the last five years and finally in 2019 Championship winning team. Is it because they were distracted in the "hangover" after winning the championship? Are some mistakes inevitable after success? Or can we blame it all on the data system?
Regardless, I'm not sure the Raptors' 2024 offseason can turn things around. The rebuilding Raptors provided the 33-year-old Olynyk with a two-year, $25 million contract extension, but he immediately seemed unable to move forward in the Olympics; Scotty Barnes' advance The contract extension (see above), while reasonable, also feels a bit like a compromise.
However, the most frowned-upon operation is Quickley's five-year US$163 million contract, and if the incentive clauses are completed, the amount can reach up to US$175 million.
I think Quickley is an above-average player: he's a good shooter, an underrated defender, and nearly as good as Lowry in drawing offensive fouls. Advanced statistics are very promising for him, and at just 25 years old, he still has plenty of time to continue to improve.
Nonetheless, at the end of last season, he transitioned from playing mainly off-ball with the Knicks to playing mainly with the ball with the Raptors, and he still had some discomfort, and it was more obvious than it seemed on the surface. Quickley's salary for the new season is US$32.5 million, which is only slightly lower than the US$35.1 million for a four-year player with a maximum salary; if some incentive clauses can be completed, his income can actually be very close to this maximum salary.
For a player of Quickley's caliber, that's... wow.His salary for the new season is basically the same as James Harden!
Under such a contract, another question also emerged: Who are the Raptors competing with? Quickley is a restricted free agent, which gives the Raptors all the leverage; at the same time, I'm hard-pressed to find a competitor who would be willing to make a similar contract offer.
There may be a way to make the Raptors' big deal justifiable, but they haven't actually done it. The Raptors could have used the Sixers' strategy (see above), declining to exercise Bruce Brown's $23 million team option, not giving Olynyk a contract, and taking advantage of Quickley's low cap space in free agency. Sign high-paid players in the market. This is a situation where getting a deal with Quickley early — and then signing him after all the cap space is used up — could really help the team.
On the contrary, the Raptors will pay Scotty Barnes and Quickley more than $70 million per year for the four years after next season. Granted, there are some reasons to be somewhat optimistic about the Raptors -- Barrett, for example, has performed well, and the Raptors front office has had its fair share of flashes before. However, from the current perspective, the Raptors seem to have trapped themselves in a corner of salary space, but do not have a lineup worthy of such investment.
Bulls re-sign Patrick Williams
Tired of criticism: The Bulls did not receive a draft pick in the Caruso trade. I also want to criticize: The Bulls gave Patrick Williams a five-year, $90 million contract, which also included a player option for the final year.
I like the Bulls' overall approach to building a younger roster, even if it may be a year too late. But on the other hand, Patrick Williams only got this contract because he was the No. 4 pick in the 2020 class, and... I'm actually a little confused on other reasons.
He's the kind of player that makes people excited about his potential, but when you actually see him in action, it's much less so. A 6-foot-7, athletic forward who shot 41 percent from three in his career? Oh my god, sign him now!
However, Pawei's three-point shot frequency is not enough to pose a real threat to the defense. As a space point on the court, he only took 6.1 three-pointers per 100 possessions last season. This may be because he caught the ball in the corner for three points. Shooting will be more efficient than other positions or dribbling. (Paway’s career three-point shooting rate from the corner is 44.6%, while the shooting rate from other positions is 38.8%.) But it is also reasonable to think that the Bulls’ reimagining of the overall offensive concept may be able to stimulate Paway’s three-point shooting. potential.
For a low-usage player, Pavey took too many shots in a lot of less-than-ideal spots. Despite his athleticism, less than half of his two-point attempts were at the basket. And his dribbling ability is not enough for him to hit the basket by himself, and it is difficult for him to make correct judgments quickly when holding the ball during the game; the result is that he rarely draws fouls and often chooses to dribble once A two-point shot from behind the ball.
The end result of all this is that his important statistics are extremely mediocre: 11.0 PER last season, 55.3 true shooting percentage, and -2.3 bpm, which are similar to his previous three seasons. Although he looks athletic, he is only a marginal defender, and his rebounding performance is almost embarrassing (rebound rate of 7.9% last season, only slightly higher than Irving and Lillard).
Re-signing Paway was more than just a paper expense; if the Bulls had not re-signed Paway, they would have received Harrison Barnes and the Kings' draft rights swap in the DeRozan trade. (Since Pavey's contract is on the books, if Harrison Barnes' salary is added, it far exceeds the luxury tax line; even though the Bulls sit in the third-largest market in the league, the luxury tax line is no different to the Bulls owner. On the electric fence.)
Some people may argue that Pawei is only 23 years old this summer and still has potential to be tapped. However, this contract extension provides a salary that is assumed to be significantly improved. It feels like the team has a huge amount of trust in him when he has been with the Bulls for four years and has shown little significant improvement.
There can certainly be a reasonable price to re-sign Pavey, but it is obviously not the five-year, $90 million plus player option. If any other team is willing to pay that much for him... then the Bulls should let him go. After all, this is not a big threat to the Bulls.
Lakers Re-signed Max Christie
Last season, Max Christie was somewhat of a mascot to Lakers fans, just like a backup quarterback. He was always the player that fans wanted to see play, not the mediocre veteran who happened to ruin the Lakers' second unit one night.
But the problem is: 1. The Lakers actually tried to use him many times (67 games, a total of 944 minutes); 2. His performance was not good (per value 8.4, bpm-3.6); 3. He was in the Lakers This set may be the worst substitute in the league, and it can't even be squeezed into the normal rotation. So it was a bit of a shock to see the Lakers re-sign him to a four-year, $32 million free-agent contract with a player option. After talking to some people within the league, I feel like I'm not the only one who feels this way.
Christie is only 21 years old. He performed well in the 2023 Summer League and has good athletic ability. He has the basic prototype of a 3D player. However, considering that it is difficult for true 3D players to get a salary higher than this kind of contract this summer, coupled with the player option in the final year, it feels like giving him a space exception is still a bit of a premium. However, if you're on a rebuilding team like the Wizards, you might be more inclined to ignore these issues and take a long-term view.
But that's not... the Lakers' situation. What's particularly noteworthy about this move is that it cost the Lakers other opportunities in free agency. Any team with James and thick eyebrows needs to seize the moment, and the Lakers seem to have given up on some other opportunities and instead chose this direction. (We didn’t tap their phones, so it’s not clear what exactly they might accomplish, but they still have three first-rounders and a salary to match in June. Who knows, maybe they’ll do it within minutes of this article being published) , what actions will be taken. )
From this perspective, Christie has become an opportunity cost, because Christie’s salary of $7.1 million basically prevents the Lakers from remaining below the second rich line after using the mini-middle class. . (Below the second-rich line is necessary to maintain in-season trade flexibility, which is why James chose to take a small salary cut on his new contract.)
’s $5.2 million mini-midlevel exception could have been used to upgrade much-needed compensation Strong position, rather than returning the team with almost exactly the same lineup as last season. Of course, the Lakers will encounter limitations if they want to be special, but historically, mini-exceptions like this are often more valuable to the Lakers than other teams, because this is the Lakers, and the players have to partner with James. Even at the risk of Chris walking away for nothing, this (the mini-exception) seems like a better bet in the current life cycle.
If the Lakers end up finding other ways to make a significant roster upgrade, especially if they don't have to wait until next February to complete the upgrade, then I'll hold back on that. As it stands, though, this remains the fifth and final in my list of “negative plays that don’t get enough scrutiny” of the offseason.
Original text: john hollinger
Compiler: Ouch
