NBA’s offseason sprint continues with free agency starting
NBA free agency is usually a weeklong frenzy. Deals get struck, then teams and players must wait a few days before they can sign those contracts. And from there, a few more months often pass before the player goes to work with his new club.
Not this year.
What promises to be a chaotic free-agent window opens in the NBA at 6 p.m. Eastern on Friday, just a couple days after the NBA draft, a mere 42 hours before signings can begin and about a week and a half before training camps around the league open. Asked what the player- movement landscape might look like in such a compressed timeframe, Philadelphia 76ers President Daryl Morey — looking exhausted early Thursday as the draft was winding down — offered a blunt prediction.
“Completely insane,” Morey said.
It’s hard to find anyone who’ll argue that.
Anthony Davis of the NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers is the biggest name on the free agency board; he turned down his option for this season with the Lakers but isn’t expected to go anyplace else. The most likely sce-
nario for Davis is a threeyear deal worth as much as $105 million, the last year at his option. That way, when he completes his 10th year of service in 2021-22, he can cash in again for an even higher percentage of the salary cap than he can command now.
More than 100 other NBA players are unrestricted free agents; another 75 or so can be restricted free agents. That’s a lot of players, who might be doing a lot of moving, with a season coming up very quickly— and only a few teams have plenty of available salary-cap space to sign players easily.
Plus, teams are still figuring out coronavirus protocols for training camp. Nobody has seen the NBA schedule for a regular season that starts Dec. 22. Preseason games start Dec. 11; those haven’t even been announced yet.
It’s already hectic, and now free agency will ramp up the frenzy several more levels.
Really, things have already started. Plenty of names are already on themove, and the trade market is always an option for the teams that can’t just go sign a player into nonexistent cap space.
The Lakers already have a new point guard in Dennis Schroder, acquired in a trade with Oklahoma City. The Thunder sent point guard Chris Paul in a trade to Phoenix, and with a brief stop over on-paper-only in Oklahoma City, Ricky Rubio wound up leaving the Suns and ending up where his NBA career began in Minnesota. Jrue Holiday is heading from New Orleans to Milwaukee, where he’ll play with two-time reigning MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo— and the Bucks still may wind up with restricted free agent Bogdan Bogdanovic as well.