The first rule of contract extensions is that you are not required to do contract extensions. Somewhere along the way, it seems like teams may have forgotten about this fact, especially when we tipped off our summer with four capitulations on max contracts for players at the top of the 2021 draft who are ..
. good ..
. but have yet to make a convincing case that they’re franchise players. Advertisement Fortunately, it seems at least a few teams discovered their spines over the summer and stuck to their guns at Monday’s deadline for rookie contract extensions.
With virtually every starting-caliber player seeking “The Quickley” (more than $30 million a year guaranteed, matching the deal Toronto ’s Immanuel Quickley signed this summer), teams mostly either took a harder line or passed entirely on doing a deal now in order to wait until next summer. That feels like the right play, for the most part, because of the one golden rule that underlies any transaction in any market : Who are you bidding against? In the case of a potential 2025 free agency for the players who were extended, it’s a small list. While teams can make deals in-season to generate more cap space, currently the Brooklyn Nets are the only team in position to drop a whopper-sized offer sheet next summer.
And given that the Nets control their own draft pick in 2026 and might have the league’s worst roster at the moment, it’s not exactly a given that they’ll be jumping into bidding wars for talent jus.
