According to The Athletic’s Kelly Iko, the Clippers have extended “an offer” to free agent center Moses Brown. It’s unclear what exactly the offer is, or if Brown is going to accept it.

Based on Brown’s status in the league, it appears likely that this will be a training camp invite. Last season, the Clippers opted to leave their 15th roster spot open and bring two young centers, Isaiah Hartenstein and Harry Giles, in to compete for the spot. That strategy was an unquestioned success, maybe even too successful–Hartenstein had a phenomenal season for the Clippers and played himself out of their price range. If Brown does accept this offer, I would guess that it’s for a similar arrangement: he comes into LAC training camp this fall to compete with a yet-to-be-determined big man for the final roster spot. Brown, currently 22, will turn 23 this fall and has one year of two-way contract eligibility remaining. However, the Clippers already have a two-way spot committed to rookie big man Moussa Diabate and have multiple undrafted free agents on exhibit 10 deals auditioning for their second two-way spot in Summer League. With a pressing need for a big man for the 15th roster spot, it feels more likely that Brown would compete for that job–although the door is open for him to join on a two-way instead.

Brown has always generated a bit of buzz on NBA Twitter due to his size and play above the rim. Two years ago, he was a consistently featured player on the Oklahoma City Thunder after the trade deadline–remember, the Oklahoma City Thunder have spent the last few years shutting down any capable performers at the deadline and trying to lose games on purpose to get better draft positioning–and put up some huge numbers, including a 21-point/23-rebound effort (in a blowout loss) and an infamous 24-point, 18-rebound, 7-block game against the Clippers… when LAC intentionally threw the final game of the season to manipulate playoff seeding and Ty Lue sabotaged the team down the stretch by running the offense through Daniel Oturu. Overall, his per-minute stats have been staggering, with 15 points and 15 rebounds per 36 throughout his career, including 18 points and 15 rebounds per 36 minutes for the Cleveland Cavaliers late last season when he was signed as frontcourt depth to cover for injuries. Like I opened with, his play above the rim has always generated a lot of hype, with putback dunks and emphatic blocks against hopeless smaller opponents in a fashion reminiscent of former Clipper Boban Marjanovic.

But if you get a layer deeper, things start to get really troubling. Despite his size and highlights, he’s actually not a great finisher around the rim, making just 62.8% of his shot attempts inside 3 feet in his 3-year NBA career (and 64.2% last season with Dallas and Cleveland). For reference, Clippers center Ivica Zubac, who is not exactly celebrated for his above-the-rim finishing, shot 71.5% at the rim last season. When it’s not a dunk, it gets even worse: Brown has only made around 40% of his layup attempts in the NBA, according to basketball-reference, and is a career 29-87 (33.3%) on shots from between 3 and 10 feet (again, for reference, Zubac was 100-194, 51.5% last season). There is really very little offensive skill to speak of aside from being very tall. While his size makes him a legitimately good rebounder and solid deterrent at the rim, Brown has also proven to be a negative defensively at the NBA level due to his inability to defend in space and poor positioning, though perhaps in a manner that is easier to get away with in regular season second-unit and garbage time minutes. At each of his 4 stops, Moses’ teams have been worse with him on the floor, sometimes in significant fashion:

The column on the left is his team’s +/- per 100 possessions when Brown plays, while the column on the right is the difference between the team’s +/- per 100 possessions when he is on the floor compared to when he is off the court. So while the numbers on the left aren’t necessarily his fault–he’s been on some bad teams, including playing most of his minutes on a blatantly taking Thunder squad–it’s notable that every team he’s been on has dropped a level when he’s stepped on the court. Where he does add value, courtesy of his size, is as a roll man and rebounder. He’s just simply too big to ignore diving to the rim on the screen-and-roll, and like former Clippers center DeAndre Jordan (though he has nowhere near the explosive leaping and finishing ability of prime DeAndre) he makes for a pretty big target to just throw the ball up for a dunk if the defense doesn’t stay home. That can open up space for a ballhandler to turn the corner and get dribble penetration, and it has created easy buckets at times–just never consistently enough to actually positively impact games for his teams.

It’s easy to compare Brown to Isaiah Hartenstein–both are younger players coming (if Brown comes) to the Clippers relatively unproven, both are vying to prove themselves in training camp (if that is indeed what Moses’ contract is), both played a half-season for the Cleveland Cavaliers before becoming free agents and coming to LAC. I would resist that urge for a few reasons, first because Hartenstein was a massive success and even imagining that the Clippers could win a buy-low move for Moses in similar fashion is a combination of unrealistic and unfair, but also because unlike Moses, Isaiah had proven his ability to help teams win NBA basketball games but had struggled to stay healthy and find a consistent role behind star bigs. Moses has actually played more NBA minutes than Hart had before joining the Clippers, he just hasn’t been nearly as good in his 1,300 pre-Clippers minutes as Hartenstein was. And we all love Isaiah’s passing ability, so it’s worth noting that Moses had 0 assists in 176 minutes for Cleveland last year.

So while Brown has struggled to be an effective NBA player up to this point in his career, he certainly has intrigue because of his above-average size for an NBA center and above-the-rim play. I’m a little low on him for a full NBA roster spot, especially considering that the Clippers seem likely to only carry two centers next season (they’ll play Nicolas Batum and Robert Covington as the backup “bigs,” but the spot Brown would slot into would be LAC’s only “true big” insurance for Ivica Zubac), but I certainly think the consensus is that he belongs in an NBA training camp and will continue to get cups of coffee in the league, even if he’s probably more of a G-League All-Star than an NBA backup C. At just 22 years old, he certainly has room for improvement, and it’s certainly worth noting that it’s incredibly rare to find this combination of youth and NBA experience in an unrestricted free agent for the minimum salary (the other side of that coin is he could have been a restricted free agent this year, but Cleveland chose to not extend a qualifying offer and replace him with Robin Lopez instead). The disappointing aspect of the upside of signing a 22-year-old is that if it is indeed a training camp deal (which is a one-year, non-guaranteed minimum-salary contract), he’ll be in the same boat next summer that Hartenstein was this year: an unrestricted free agent with no bird or early bird rights. That means LAC wouldn’t be able to retain him if he’s a completely different player next year and impresses them enough to be kept.

They could offer him a two-year contract instead, but that’s not typical for training camp invitees–basically, if a normal player on a non-guaranteed deal gets injured, his salary becomes guaranteed, and since teams don’t want to be stuck paying a random guy who they never intended to keep past camp anyway, they include a clause in camp contracts called Exhibit 9 that means the salary is not protected in case of injury (shitty, right?). Exhibit 9 can only be added to one-year, minimum-salary deals. Other than that, there’s no rule prohibiting the Clippers from giving him a two-year, non-guaranteed, minimum-salary deal that allows them to cut him in camp if he loses the camp battle or keep him for up to two seasons if they like him, at which point they’d at least have early bird rights. The only downside would be that if he gets hurt, they’re on the hook for paying him his salary this year (and the luxury tax penalty for it) even if they choose to cut him and keep whoever his competitor is.

NBA Free Agency: Clippers extend offer to Moses Brown
Lucas Hann

As was heavily rumored earlier this week, free agent point guard John Wall has officially signed with the LA Clippers, his agency Klutch Sports announced Friday morning. His contract is worth $13.2M over 2 years, the value of the Clippers’ non-taxpayer mid-level exception.

I wrote a bit about the decision-making process with the taxpayer MLE yesterday when the Clippers lost Isaiah Hartenstein, a valuable member of last year’s team who could have only been re-signed using this tool (although there’s no guarantee it would have been accepted, since Hartenstein got more money from the New York Knicks). Wall’s contract being finalized gives us a couple of data points: first, it confirms that he is indeed taking the tpMLE instead of the league minimum despite making over $40M from Houston this season; but it also gives us the key detail that Wall will sign a two-year deal at that number instead of just a one-year deal.

That makes a little more sense. Having a second season on the initial signing of a buy-low free agent is advantageous for the same reason that the Clippers just lost Hartenstein–it’s much easier to re-sign overachieving guys after 2 seasons with your team than it is after 1. Let’s say that John Wall has a good year for the Clippers. He doesn’t have to magically regain his All-Star form at 32 years old after major injuries, but let’s just say this gamble works and he is a significant contributor. If he had signed a one-year deal at the taxpayer mid-level, the Clippers would have only been able to offer him a new contract starting at $7.7M next year–less than the non-taxpayer mid-level exception and likely not enough to retain him. If he had signed a one-year deal for the minimum, that number would have been even less, below $4M. On his current 2-year taxpayer MLE deal, the Clippers will have the option to re-sign Wall with his early bird rights (the same contract Reggie Jackson and Nicolas Batum have gotten) for up to $11.7M in the 2024 off-season, which should be right around full MLE offers that he might get from elsewhere. Early bird status also comes with a built-in advantage with raises: after one year, a player can get 5% annual raises; after two, he can get 8%.

There’s also the immediate value gain, again in the scenario where the Wall gamble pays off and he plays well, of just having a second year of him at 6.7M before he hits free agency again and you have to worry about it at all. Between that and the aforementioned re-signing tools, the Clippers have put themselves in a position where they have insured their gamble/investment in Wall a bit more than they have been able/willing to with other signings in the past. And from Wall’s perspective, while the increase from a $2.9M vet’s min deal to the $6.4M tpMLE salary this season feels negligible for a player that has made $232M in salary (before endorsements) to date with another guaranteed $40.8M coming from Houston this year*, guaranteeing himself another $6.7M next year is a bit nicer of a perk. Not only does he get that marginal gain over the vet min again, but it guarantees another year of drawing an NBA paycheck, which isn’t always a given for injury-prone players in their 30s. He could suffer another major injury and still get that cash next year. There’s also something to be said, from Wall’s perspective, of signing with a front office that is clearly going out of its way to give themselves a path to keep you long-term and make you feel like a part of the organization moving forward and not just a rental.

*As a side note, some people have asked me about if Wall’s money from Houston will be reduced at all based on his new contract with LAC. The answer is really that we don’t know–the NBA does have a “set-off” rule where, when a player is waived, the amount his old team owes him is reduced by 50 cents for every dollar he gets above the one-year veteran’s minimum on his new deal (not the 10-year, $2.9M number he would have actually gotten had he signed for the minimum). So, for Wall to come in at $6.5M, set-off would reduce the money Houston owes him by about $2M… except that while set-off is the law of the land in straight-up waiving of guaranteed deals, in buyout situations like Wall’s, where a player negotiates his freedom by giving money back, the set-off provision is a negotiable part of the deal. As far as I know/have seen reported, there has been no indication as to whether or not Wall’s money will be subject to set-off or if Houston agreed to get rid of that right as part of the buyout agreement.

Beyond the contract analysis, Wall brings a serious amount of experience and pedigree to the Clippers’ roster, with a higher upside that anyone else available at this price point. It’s not every day that you get to add a player with All-NBA, All-Defense, and All-Star awards in his trophy cabinet for so cheap–although when players that decorated do become available for cheap, it normally is under these circumstances: in their 30s and/or after major injuries. After making the All-NBA 3rd Team in 2016-17, Wall played just 41 games in 2017-18, 32 in 2018-19, 0 in 2019-20, 40 in 2020-21, and 0 in 2021-22. Last season, he was not out due to injury but rather away from the team due to an understanding with the Houston Rockets that they were focusing on developing their younger talent but didn’t want to insult Wall by benching him or cut a $40M+ contract with multiple years remaining. However, not playing is still not playing–and while he didn’t have the chance last year, he still hasn’t proven that he’s physically capable of playing a full NBA season without significant injuries.

Known in his prime as perhaps the fastest player in the league, a blur with the ball in his hands who was elite at blowing past defenders and surging forward in transition to collapse defenses and either finish at the rim or find open teammates, Wall’s athleticism has inevitably declined as he’s dealt with injuries and aging, but he will still be able to get downhill with the ball in his hands to some extent, which is sorely needed on a Clippers roster that, while talented, does certainly lack a bit of on-ball juice. With Paul George hopefully playing a full season, Kawhi Leonard returning, and Norman Powell properly integrated, the Clippers should have an easier time creating advantages on offense than they did a year ago, when their attack built around Reggie Jackson and Marcus Morris was one of the worst offenses in the league. Wall is another piece of that puzzle, perhaps no longer a standout at creating dribble penetration but still capable, and immediately the best pick-and-roll playmaker on the team by default.

There is little question that Wall will be able to create offense with the ball in his hands, the question is moreso how efficient that offense will be, and what he does when he doesn’t have the ball. In the 40 games he played two years ago in Houston, Wall put up 20.6 points and 6.9 assists per game, but on very poor efficiency. He had the highest three point attempt rate (how many threes he takes vs twos) in his career, which is not a good thing for a poor shooter like Wall, because he struggled to create dribble penetration at the same prolific level as in his youth, and he had the worst assist to turnover ratio of his career. But he was on a truly dreadful Rockets team that went 12-28 in the games he played and a staggering 5-27 in the games he didn’t (which is why they asked him to sit out 2021-22 while they tanked) and playing his first games back from an Achilles injury. It’s perfectly fair to expect that he would both be better on a better team, where he isn’t forced to have the ball in his hands constantly and settle for many of the inefficient jumpers he took in Houston because he now has teammates to pass to, and it’s also reasonable to note that it can take a full year or so for a player to really round back into form after returning from an Achilles tear.

The Wall that the Rockets got in 2021 is fine at the taxpayer mid-level–he can run the second unit offense and carry reps on nights when other guys are out through the regular season, even if his efficiency and off-ball struggles keep him from being a major piece of the team’s rotation when fully healthy and in the playoffs. If he does in fact play better for the Clippers than he did for Houston in 2021, there is the potential for him to be a core piece of this team, but it becomes a matter of degrees and fit. First of all, how much better is he than he was two years ago? And perhaps more importantly, how does he fit around Paul George and Kawhi Leonard when those guys have the basketball? Wall is a historically poor three-point shooter, though his numbers are misleadingly low due to taking a high number of difficult, off-the-dribble threes as a ball dominant star. He’s been an adequate catch-and-shoot guy, but he’s not a shooter–he’s more at Terance Mann’s level as a floor spacer than Reggie Jackson’s or Norman Powell’s, let alone Luke Kennard’s. On the other end of the floor, will Wall’s athleticism return enough for him to be a high-impact defender? If so, he could solve a lot of LAC’s problems and be a major piece, relieving Terance Mann of some of the point of attack defensive load. But if he’s only mediocre as a floor spacer and point of attack defender, then in the biggest moments Ty Lue is almost certainly going to prefer going with a better shooter (Jackson, Powell, Kennard) or defender (Mann or bringing another of Batum/Covington onto the floor) over Wall’s self-creation.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

NBA Free Agency: Clippers sign John Wall to 2-year contract
Lucas Hann

Clippers free agent center Isaiah Hartenstein is headed to New York on a 2-year, $16.7M deal, reports Kelly Iko of The Athletic.

Hartenstein had a stellar season for the Clippers as their backup center in 2021-22, but the team had very limited avenues to re-sign him and as his strong play continued throughout the season, it seemed increasingly likely that he would be able to leverage his success as a Clipper into more money elsewhere. The absolute most that the Clippers could have offered him was their taxpayer mid-level exception, worth a maximum of $20.1M over three years–or, to compare to the deal he took with the Knicks, $13.1M over two years. Frankly, I expected Hartenstein to be able to find a little more money, or at least more long-term security at this price point, and I’m a bit interested in him going to the Knicks basically the instant free agency opened instead of letting the market develop, with multiple teams rumored to be looking for backup centers with their non-taxpayer mid-level exception. However, NBA teams are often reluctant to invest long-term money into players who haven’t established themselves as consistent, year-in, year-out impact players, and Hartenstein is still establishing himself as a rotation guy. It’s possible that he accepted a 2-year deal instead of pushing for more specifically because he believes that after two more solid seasons building a name for himself, he will be able to secure a bigger/longer contract.

There were reports that Hartenstein was very happy with the Clippers and looking for a way to stay with the team, but it’s hard to know exactly what extent he would have been willing to leave dollars and opportunities on the table to do so. Even if the Clippers offered him that comparable 2-year, $13.1M deal, $3.6M could still have been enough to sway him away from taking the paycut, especially considering he has only made about $5.5M so far in his NBA career. It’s also possible that he found the potential opportunities in front of him with the Knicks more appealing–it’s no secret that the Clippers are committed to starting C Ivica Zubac (who they just gave a 3-year extension to) and are overstocked with big, veteran forwards who fit into head coach Ty Lue’s preferred smallball units. More minutes, more shots, a chance to earn a starting spot and maybe be a part of a core going forward–these are all things that could come in New York and were less likely to be found in Los Angeles, considering team contexts.

However, it’s also possible that Hartenstein never even got to choose between the two offers, as it is rumored that the Clippers will be giving that taxpayer mid-level exception to John Wall. We certainly don’t know the order of operations here–and we might never know–but we can’t rule out the possibility that LAC chose Wall over Hartenstein at that price point. It’s certainly a justifiable decision, but if that were true it would also change the rubric for evaluating the John Wall signing over the course of the next year due to an increased opportunity cost. For now, I’m going to operate under the tentative assumption that the taxpayer MLE was not going to be enough to keep Hartenstein and the Clippers knew that and pursued Wall after Isaiah’s departure was a foregone conclusion. Teams, players, and agents do exhaustive work in the weeks and months leading up to free agency to get a feel for how the market will develop, which teams will be interested in which players at what price points, what type of money/role players are looking for, etc. By the time Wall negotiated his buyout with Houston earlier this week, I feel like the Clippers likely already knew that Hart was a goner. I would certainly feel more confident in that analysis had his new contract been more lucrative–say, the full mid-level exception worth 4 years and $45M–but I still find it fully plausible that the smaller raise and bigger opportunity in New York was enough to lure him away regardless.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

NBA Free Agency: Isaiah Hartenstein signs with New York Knicks
Lucas Hann

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Clippers have res-gined Amir Coffey to a 3-year, $11 million contract. The 25-year-old versatile wing was a restricted free agent after playing the last three seasons with the Clippers.

In today’s wing-focused NBA, this is a fantastic below-market contract for the Clippers. It’s likely that Coffey’s status as a restricted free agent–meaning the Clippers had the right of first refusal to match any offer from another team and retain him–coupled with Clippers owner’s Steve Ballmer’s notorious willingness to spend limitless cash on the team left the market rather calm for his services. As such, he was left negotiating with the Clippers and the team was able to secure a bargain. Getting the third year on this deal is really fantastic for LA, though, as it keeps a quality rotation player on the team on a cost-controlled deal heading into a three-year stretch where the luxury tax cost of keeping the team competitive around Paul George and Kawhi Leonard will be enormous. I was concerned that the Clippers would have to match a much higher offer for Amir, or even that they wouldn’t (even Ballmer’s platinum card has a spending limit somewhere, we just haven’t found it yet). This is a home run deal and it’s great news to have a fan favorite and homegrown developed talent staying in the fold.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

NBA Free Agency: Clippers re-sign Amir Coffey to 3-year contract
Lucas Hann

According to Yahoo Sports’ Chris Haynes, the Clippers have re-signed veteran forward Nicolas Batum to a 2-year, $22 million contract.

It’s a perfect number for Batum, who took a paycut last season to give the team more flexibility and now is able to sign a more lucrative deal with the Clippers having his early bird rights. Those rights allow the team to pay him up to 105% of the league average salary, which is right around these estimated numbers. Early bird contracts must run for at least two seasons before any options, which is why this is a common deal for returning veterans who have been with teams for two seasons–and the same exact deal the Clippers signed Reggie Jackson to last summer. Batum was expected to be courted by numerous teams, but it never seemed likely that there would be a legitimate threat to lure him away from the Clippers. The veteran forward will turn 34 this December and the team will hope to keep him in the mix with a low minutes load throughout the year before turning to him more heavily in their small-ball postseason lineups.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

NBA Free Agency: Clippers re-sign Nicolas Batum to 2-year contract
Lucas Hann

According to Andrew Grief of the LA Times, the LA Clippers have extended a qualifying offer to Amir Coffey, making him a restricted free agent, while declining to do so for Jay Scrubb and Xavier Moon, who will both become unrestricted. Spotrac’s Kieth Smith was the first to report on Coffey’s qualifying offer.

With the $2.1M qualifying offer extended, Amir Coffey will now enter restricted free agency. Since the Clippers have Coffey’s bird rights, they are now able to match any offer sheet he signs with another team to retain him using their right of first refusal. Their willingness to do so will depend on the price point and what else the team is up to in the coming days. As it now stands, Coffey is far down an incredibly deep LAC depth chart on an incredibly expensive roster with a luxury tax bill for 2022-23 that will make even Steve Ballmer blush. If another team offered Coffey their non-taxpayer mid-level exception worth $10M+ next season, it’s possible that even the seemingly-infinite-spending Clippers would balk at paying several times that in tax penalties to keep around their 13th man. But other teams have no guarantee that they won’t just be wasting their time should Ballmer be willing to match. And if roster moves bump him up to 11th on the depth chart, and the offer sheet is $6M, it becomes both much more financially palatable to Ballmer to keep him and a bigger on-court loss to let him walk. Amir was a quality rotation player in over 1500 minutes last season, starting 30 games as the team went the entire season without Kawhi Leonard and much of it without Paul George. With those two star wings healthy again, Coffey will have to compete for second unit minutes with more established players likeNorman Powell, Luke Kennard, and Terance Mann, with few options for reprieve by sliding over to point guard (Reggie Jackson, John Wall) or power forward (Marcus Morris, Nicolas Batum, Robert Covington).

However, restricted free agency itself can serve to depress or entirely eliminate a player’s market, especially if teams feel as though pursuing a player is futile because their offer sheet will get matched at any price they are comfortable with. Restricted free agents do get lured away–it seems as though the Knicks will give Jalen Brunson a 4-year/$110M offer sheet this week that the Dallas Mavericks will decline to match–but they far more often stay home. Take, for example, Montrezl Harrell’s restricted free agency when he was a Clipper: Trez was coming off of a great season and surely plenty of teams would have been interested in signing him, but they were hesitant to go over the mid-level exception due to his limitations as a player and knew that the Clippers would match mid-level offers. In the end, Harrell never even signed an offer sheet, negotiating a 2-year, $12M deal directly with the Clippers. If teams feel that the Clippers will simply refuse to let a quality player walk away for nothing, luxury tax be damned, then they might be entirely unwilling to pursue Coffey (who, while a very solid and versatile player, isn’t going to be at the top of free agency boards the way Jalen Brunson is).

Lastly, interested teams could always buy off the Clippers’ right of first refusal by negotiating a sign-and-trade transaction. If they can agree to terms with Coffey but are worried that the Clippers will match their offer sheet, they could offer the Clippers an asset to sign-and-trade Amir to them instead. This can also scare teams off if they have similar players on their free agent target lists that they wouldn’t have to give up additional assets to acquire, but a team might surrender 1 or 2 second-round picks if it meant securing Coffey’s services without concern over the Clippers’ matching ability. Without getting too into the weeds, it’s worth noting that the base year compensation rule limits what Coffey can count for in trade salary matching in such a deal (it doesn’t limit what he can make, just what the Clippers can bring back), so it’s most likely that the team would either just get draft picks back (or perhaps a young prospect on a cheap deal). They could also make a deal work by absorbing a higher-paid player into one of their existing TPEs even though a one-for-one swap for Coffey would be illegal on its own.

As far as Scrubb and Moon go, the Clippers’ decision to pass on making them restricted isn’t wholly unexpected. Xavier Moon brought good vibes as a fill-in emergency point guard last year, both during COVID outbreaks and late in the year after Eric Bledsoe had been traded. But it always seemed likely that the team wouldn’t have a need for him this year, as Jason Preston will be available after missing all of last season due to injury and the team will look to invest as many depth guard minutes as they can into the 33rd pick from the 2021 NBA Draft. If the writing was already on the wall for those reasons, the rumored signing of veteran point guard John Wall cemented Moon’s departure by making point guard minutes even harder to come by.

I think that the Clippers would have likely taken Scrubb back on a two-way deal again for a third season next year, but Law Murray of The Athletic reported that Scrubb wasn’t on board with the arrangement and wanted to try to make the 15-man roster instead. Such is his right: after two years on two-way deals, players are eligible for restricted free agency but only with a qualifying offer for a full NBA deal. If his team doesn’t extend that QO–and the Clippers didn’t–the player enters unrestricted free agency. It’s unclear where Scrubb will end up next year, whether it’s with the Clippers or another NBA team, in training camp or on a two-way, or somewhere in the G-League or Europe, but he will get to choose. The first step: showcasing himself in Summer League with the Clippers in Las Vegas, but with the flexibility to join any team on a two-way deal or in training camp afterwards instead of being locked in to the Clippers.

Clippers extend qualifying offer to Amir Coffey, not Jay Scrubb or Xavier Moon
Lucas Hann

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Clippers have declined Ivica Zubac’s $7.5M team option for the 2022-23 season and instead signed him to a 3-year, $33 million extension that will run through the 2024-25 season.

By declining Zubac’s less lucrative team option for next year, the Clippers were able to offer him an immediate raise, which in turn allowed them to get a good deal on the overall contract. As the salary cap continues to rise, $11M/year is a very team-friendly number for a starting center who rarely misses games and has maintained good spirits through matchup-dependent role changes in the postseason. This extension makes Zubac ineligible to be included in any trades for the next 6 months, taking him off the table for moves in what could be an active couple of weeks for the NBA trade market.

Clippers, Zubac agree to 3-year, $33M extension
Lucas Hann

With the NBA Finals officially in the books, it’s already time to look ahead and wonder what we’ll see from this year’s finalists, the Lakers and Heat, next season. For teams across the league–including the LA Clippers, who will hope to improve on their disappointing 2020 finish next season–knowing how the competition will shape up is an important step in assessing your needs and priorities.

An NBA season always carries a bit of unpredictability, but I’m not going to indulge in hot takes or risky predictions just yet. For now, I just want to look at the rosters of the two teams who just wrapped up in the Finals and ask whether it’s feasible that they will return to more or less the same level next season. So, while LeBron could (finally) start to seriously slow down due to age, or Bam Adebayo could take the “leap” from All-Star to superstar, we’re gonna leave that speculation to the talk shows and look at the decisions that will shape each team’s off-season.

Los Angeles Lakers

The big one

The absolute biggest variable for the Los Angeles Lakers to address this offseason is a $28.8M player option for Anthony Davis, their second star and a truly irreplaceable part of their nightly excellence on both ends of the floor.

Davis will almost certainly decline that player option, as he’s eligible for a higher salary and can lock in security via his bird rights. I seriously, seriously doubt that there’s any chance he even considers offers from other teams, instead just signing a new max to return to the Lakers (the Dallas Mavericks poaching Davis and pairing him with Luka Doncic would be the right combination of hilarious and terrifying, but I just don’t see it).

As long as nothing goes wrong, Davis will take a monster deal to stay a Laker this summer–possibly a 2+1 deal where he can opt out in the summer of 2022 and sign a new, larger maximum contract as a 10-year veteran. Either way, it would be a major surprise if he’s doing anything other than making $33M to play for the Lakers next season.

Getting the band back together

Other than the AD variable, a number of the Lakers’ role players are either going to be free agents or have player options. The team doesn’t really have a reasonable pathway to significant cap room and they won’t have a ton of tradeable contracts on the books, so look for them to try to re-sign their guys and use the mid-level exception to plug any gaps that emerge. Let’s take a look at each player’s situation:

• Danny Green, Alex Caruso, Kyle Kuzma, and Talen Horton-Tucker are all under contract for next season. Green’s $15M expiring could be a trade piece, but the Lakers don’t have much in the way of value to attach to that contract to pull off a deal. Is Green’s expiring and Kuzma bringing back anything that great? Probably not.
• Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has a player option worth $8.5 million. He should decline that, as he’ll be able to get a good multi-year deal after a strong showing for the champs, but in a rather dry market the Lakers should be able to use his bird rights to retain him on a reasonable deal, maybe in the 3 years, $30-36 million range.

• Avery Bradley has a player option worth $5 million. Bradley is a tricky question for the Lakers, as his (understandable) absence from the bubble left the team learning that they can win a title without him. He should decline his option, as he had a strong enough bounce-back year to get a solid multi-year deal, but the Lakers have just his non-bird rights–meaning they can pay him just under $6M next season. That might not be enough, and the Lakers might even shy away from making a commitment to Avery after winning without him.
• JaVale McGee has a player option worth $4.2 million. While McGee wasn’t a big part of the Lakers’ success in the playoffs, it’s hard to ignore that he greatly exceeded expectations this season as the team’s starter and proved that he can still be a strong positive as a rotation piece. Strong enough to turn down $4.2M for next year? It’s unclear, but even if he does the Lakers should be able to use his early bird rights (which would allow them to pay him up to $9.5M next season, far more than he’ll demand) to keep him.

• Quinn Cook has a partially-guaranteed deal worth $3,000,000 next season with a trigger date of October 17th. If waived before then, he’ll only be due $1,000,000. Cook had a pretty small role this season and doesn’t feel worth an above-minimum deal, especially since that wiggle room could help the Lakers navigate the hard cap next season if they use the full MLE. Waiving a guy the same week you won a title is harsh, but it wouldn’t surprise me here.
• Rajon Rondo has a player option for $2.7 million. Rondo was extremely mediocre for much of the season, but he was a leader for this Lakers team and he was huge for them throughout the playoffs when the pressure was highest. He can absolutely get more than $2.7 million from any number of teams (even the Clippers could use a backup point guard like him), but he’s unpredictable at this point in his career. He’ll turn 35 in February, he’s won two rings and made over $100 million. He could re-up with the Lakers, who have his early bird rights, or even decide to retire. We’ll likely get an indication about his future in the coming days.

• Markieff Morris is a free agent with non-bird rights. The most the Lakers can pay Morris is just under $3M, and unless he wants to stay badly enough to take a paycut that shouldn’t be enough after really strong, versatile performances throughout the playoffs.
• Jared Dudley is a free agent with non-bird rights. A non-factor on the court but a (seemingly) good presence in the Lakers’ locker room and organization, Dudley could be a candidate to retire at 35 or could return on another minimum deal.

• Dwight Howard is a free agent with non-bird rights. Like with Morris, the Lakers (at just over $3M) won’t be able to compete with what Dwight will be able to earn on the open market. But like Rondo, it might not matter. Howard will turn 35 soon and has had a bizarre career as an embattled journeyman superstar-turned-role player. Nearing $250 million in career earnings (plus tons of off-court money), is a slightly larger deal or role really going to tempt him? We’ll have to see if other contenders in need of another interior presence, like the Clippers or the Boston Celtics, come calling.
• Dion Waiters and JR Smith are non-factors. Smith could return on a minimum deal (though the Lakers may not be interested) or retire, while Waiters probably needs to pursue more opportunity on a worse team to rehabilitate his career.

Getting better

Beyond keeping their own guys, the Lakers will have three potential avenues to add free agents: the mid-level exception (MLE), the bi-annual exception (BAE), and the minimum exception. The minimum exception is the most obvious here–Lebron James has proven that this Lakers squad is championship-caliber, and veteran players could take cheap deals to chase a ring of their own.

The MLE and BAE are a little trickier. Both exceptions trigger the NBA’s hard cap, which should be roughly $139 million again next season (assuming the cap/tax/apron remain flat after a bad revenue year due to COVID). The MLE will be worth about $9.2M, and the BAE $3.6M. For those of you keeping score at home, the Lakers have $68,415,578 committed to 5 players next season, plus a likely $33M salary for Anthony Davis.

That means they’d have something like 38 million to fit the rest of their roster under the hard cap, depending on where some final figures end up. If they want to use both exceptions, that means they’d be limited to just $25 million to negotiate new deals for a combination of Caldwell-Pope, Bradley, McGee, Rondo, Morris, and Howard. And there’s no getting around the hard cap with minimum-salary deals, so any end-of-bench deals for guys like Jared Dudley or a new rookie would have to fit in that $20 million range as well.

Is it possible? Maybe. It gets a lot easier if guys like Rondo and Howard take cheap deals, and the Lakers might be willing to part with one or both of Bradley and McGee if it means accessing those exceptions to sign new talent. Hell, if Caldwell-Pope is going to be too expensive, the Lakers could decide to let him walk, keep everyone else, and use the full MLE. The team can also turn their exceptions inward and use them to offer new deals to players like Morris and Howard who they don’t have much flexibility to re-sign using free agent rights. Accepting the hard cap would be an imposition on the entire season–will the Lakers do that if it might limit their potential to take on salary in a mid-season trade?

If the Lakers aren’t able to make everything work within the constraints of the hard cap, they’ll forfeit their BAE entirely and have to accept the smaller taxpayer mid-level exception, which is worth around $5.7M and can only run for three seasons instead of four. It could be used to add a solid outside player or retain one of Rondo, Howard, or Morris if they’re tempted by larger offers elsewhere.

The draft

The Lakers have their own 28th overall pick this year, but keeping it might not be the best idea if they’re planning on navigating the hard cap, as first-round rookies carry above-minimum deals that cut into the team’s alright-tight margins. Trading back into the 30s could be an option.

The team doesn’t have a 2nd round pick, but between the potential that they trade back from 28th and their $4.6M in cash available to trade on draft night, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Lakers were competing with the Clippers to buy picks in the 2nd round. When it comes to the hard cap, second-round rookies are huge assets as their rookie minimum contracts fill a roster spot with the lowest salary available in the league (this hard cap benefit only applies to players you drafted, so signing undrafted free agents isn’t a loophole).

Miami Heat

Phenomenal youth

The Heat have one of the best cap sheets in the league, in no small part due to a wonderful collection of young players on cheap deals. All-Star big man Bam Adebayo will make just $5.1M next year, while explosive guard Tyler Herro is due just $3.8M. Sharpshooter Duncan Robinson, who was a full-time starter this season, will make just under $1.7M, along with Kendrick Nunn, who Erik Spoelstra featured heavily all year.

Those cheap deals, along with a wide-open cap sheet (Jimmy Butler is on a max deal through 2023, but nobody else has guaranteed money in the 2021-22 season), give Miami a ton of flexibility to make all kinds of moves now or in the future. The team could add a max free agent this year with a little cap clearing, and they wouldn’t need to clear cap at all to chase a max free agent next summer when Giannis Antetokounmpo headlines a stellar free agent class.

Priorities

The lack of money on the books and temptation of star-chasing in the 2021 off-season leave the Heat with an impossible set of decisions this summer: will they sacrifice future flexibility to keep together a roster that was good but not great this year before making a surprising Finals run from the 5-seed?

The Heat have Goran Dragic, Solomon Hill, Jae Crowder, Meyers Leonard, Derrick Jones Jr., and Udonis Haslem entering free agency this summer. Haslem is a Heat lifer; he’ll either be back on a minimum deal or retire and take a job in the organization. Miami has bird rights on Jones Jr. and will likely try to keep him on a team-friendly deal for depth, but it wouldn’t compromise this team to lose him.

Leonard and Hill are both easy enough to let walk. Hill was salary filler at the trade deadline and didn’t factor into Miami’s rotation, and will probably get an above-minimum contract and rotation role elsewhere. Leonard ended up with the Heat by coincidence as they used Portland as a dumping ground for Hassan Whiteside’s salary last summer to facilitate the signing of Butler, and while Meyers did start and get solid minutes for the Heat this year, he barely played after an ankle injury coincided with Miami adding Andre Iguodala and Jae Crowder at the trade deadline. Especially with Kelly Olynyk likely picking up his $13.2M player option to return (he would take a serious paycut on the open market), Leonard’s skillset is replaceable.

Dragic and Crowder, though, are backbreaking. Two of the most important pieces of Miami’s run, it’s hard to imagine this team reaching their same level next season if either were to depart.

Both are interesting cases. Goran, at 34 years old but coming off of some of the best basketball of his career in the playoffs, might view this as one last chance to get a multi-year contract in the NBA. But as he recovers from a plantar fascia injury that could cost him the start of next season, interest around the league could wane. The Heat would presumably love to get Dragic back on an expensive one-year deal that keeps him on board without compromising their 2021 cap space. Paying him a lot next season shouldn’t be an issue, but if he wants a second or third year I expect the Heat would prioritize flexibility and trust in their two rookie guards next season. At the end of the day, I’m not sure where an offer is coming from for Dragic that will beat something like a one-year, $20 million deal to stay with the Heat.

Crowder is more likely to force the Heat to make a real choice. At 30 years old and coming off of a stellar run, Jae will certainly be sought after in free agency and might even solicit multi-year offers above the MLE. I don’t think a slightly larger one-year deal will be enough for the Heat here. With such wide-open books, the Heat could choose to calculate a salary for Crowder that will still leave them with max space in 2021, but doing so is an inherent risk as long as the COVID sports economy threatens basketball revenue going forward. Is Crowder the guy they want to take that risk in? A career 34% shooter, he greatly exceeded his average in a small sample size with the Heat, and ultimately shot 40% in the first two rounds of the playoffs before dropping off to 29.6% in the final two rounds.

Getting better

The Heat could open up cap space this summer, but if we assume they follow the path for Dragic outlined above they’ll be an above-cap team. That means the same tools we talked about for the Lakers, namely the MLE and the BAE. Like we’ve talked about, the Heat aren’t going to want to make multi-year investments in role players, but they could use the MLE to add a Crowder replacement in free agency. A one-year MLE contract isn’t super attractive, but it could get them a player like Moe Harkless.

Miami’s other option to look at how close they came this year, say screw it, and make a bigger play to find talent upgrades now instead of waiting around to chase Giannis in a year. If the Bucks fear losing Giannis and decide to trade him, a Heat package built around Bam Adebayo would be at the top of the list. Did Tyler Herro do enough in the bubble to be the centerpiece of a deal for Bradley Beal or Jrue Holiday? Would Miami be willing to let their free agents walk if it opened up the money for them to bring in Chris Paul’s contract from Oklahoma City? After falling short of bringing in Danilo Gallinari at the trade deadline, will Miami try to use some of their cap room to pursue him in free agency?

As a bit of an afterthought, the Heat have their own 20th overall pick in this year’s draft. You wouldn’t expect their selection there to be a major contributor next season, but this Miami front office has done pretty well in identifying prospects in recent years.

Overview

The Lakers, all things considered, should look really similar next season to how they looked this season. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising if their rotation next season featured almost entirely guys who were a part of this title run, or even if the roster returned 12 or more players. If they do make moves, they’ll likely be on the edges, like adding minimum-salary veterans (we saw how effective this was with Rondo, Morris, and Howard this year) or using the taxpayer MLE to add one rotation piece. If teams chase the Lakers’ role players with money this summer, they could have to scramble to fill their rotation, but that’s unlikely in the current market. If things break LAL’s way, they could end up with the more lucrative full MLE to potentially add an impact player to their championship core.

The Heat are a little bit more of a wildcard. They are fully capable of paying their important free agents and running it back, but this year’s roster was supposed to be a competitive transition until they pursued another star next summer. It’s hard to believe they’ll cast aside those hopes and give up their flexibility to keep this team together, but also hard to see them letting key players walk and giving up on a group that just lost in 6 games in the Finals while dealing with serious injuries. Miami could try to thread the needle, keeping the important guys without sacrificing next summer’s max slot and filling in the gaps with new, bargain deals. But they could also go the other way, and decide that this core has proven that they’re good enough to cash in on their flexibility now and pursue a big-time acquisition.

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Will the Lakers and Heat be back next season?
Lucas Hann