Free Agency Day 1. FAQs about Klay Thompson, Paul George, Nico Mannion, etc etc.
League news will be announced starting Sunday 3pm Pacific
The index for all DNHQ Free Agency Coverage is here.
Are you tracking Free Agent announcements again?
Yes, indeed. I’ll try to keep this Google Doc up to date. The status of every free agent in the Perks Free Agency guide is listed.
What are the odds that Klay leaves the Warriors?
I have heard nothing more than you all have: catastrophizing on ESPN and Twitter. Remember, they make money when you get outraged or doom-scroll.
I don’t personally spend any time guessing at Klay’s decision process. If he wants to go for a better role, or more perceived respect, or a new start, or to get out from Steph’s shadow, or whatever, he’s earned the right.
No official announcement has been made. It is possible that it’s settled quickly. I think it’s more likely that it will not be settled for a while between Klay possibly waiting for offers and GSW possibly negotiating a sign and trade.
Who else can bid for Klay Thompson?
#1. The cap teams: PHI, DET, ORL, UTA, OKC, SAS
The only teams that have cap space (so they can sign Klay outright for more than NTPMLE), according to Spotrac are PHI, DET, ORL, UTA, OKC, SAS. Only PHI, ORL and OKC ought to have interest in a win-now signing like Klay.
Klay will also be competing with Paul George, James Harden, Hartenstein, DeRozan, and Caldwell-Pope for above-MLE $. It is possible that the Klay saga will drag on for quite a few days more. If I were him, if I am not the first choice of one of those teams, I would certainly want to wait to see if they miss out on their higher priorities.
I am not sure how many teams will be in position to offer NTPMLE… it might be a few after it all shakes out. But I know KCP and I-Hart are expecting more than that.
These are the only teams that can spend more than $12.9m to sign Klay outright as a free agent.
#2. The above-cap teams: reportedly LAL, DEN, DAL
I’m hearing LAL, DEN and DAL are rumored to be offering big bucks for Klay. This is impossible unless they dump a whole bunch of contracts. DEN is around $44m over cap, DAL is around $40m over, LAL are $22m over.
They are all way over the cap line so they can only use part of the Non-Taxpayer MidLevel Exception (NTPMLE), so they can offer Klay $12.9m if they clear enough payroll. So there is no way they are outbidding GSW for Klay.
IF Klay is determined to never re-sign with GSW, as has been breathlessly reported by all the local reporters and ESPN, GSW would do best to negotiate a sign and trade with one of the teams so GSW can get something back. The silver lining is that Klay himself has a strong incentive to get a sign-and-trade done if he wants to go to a capped team, so he can earn more than $12.9m.
What would a sign and trade for Klay Thompson look like?
It has to be negotiated. In theory, Klay could be re-signed for anywhere up to the max using Bird exception, then traded for any collection of players whose salary summed to close to his salary within some margin of error. Because the new collective bargaining agreement has been phased in, I’m not 100% about the parameters.
In 2023-24, teams can take in salary that is 125% of the outgoing for teams below the first apron level, 110% for teams above the first and below the second apron level, and 100% or less for teams above the second apron level.
HOWEVER, from HoopsRumors (which is a way better site than its scammy name suggests),
Beginning in the 2024 offseason, the salary-matching rules for teams above either tax apron will become far more restrictive. A team whose salary is above the first apron and below the second apron won’t be able to take back more salary than it sends out in a trade. For instance, a team trading a player with a $10MM salary wouldn’t be able to take back a player earning $10.1MM.
Teams above the second tax apron in 2024/25 and beyond, meanwhile, will face the same restriction when trading a single player, unable to take back more salary than they send out. They’ll also be prohibited from aggregating two or more players in a trade, even if those two players have a higher total outgoing salary than the player(s) the team would be acquiring.
So if this is literally true, I *believe* that Klay will need to be re-signed for exactly the salary of the traded players. You can see why I’m not certain.
What players could GSW get for Klay Thompson?
Super hard to predict. For one thing, we don’t know what teams Klay wants to go to, we don’t know what players they would be willing to give up, so… we know nothing.
Very generally speaking, in theory Klay could be re-signed at any price up to the max. The receiving team would have to want to pay Klay that salary and Klay would have to accept that salary.
One data point is KD’s sign-and-trade when he left GSW in 2019. From Basketball Reference:
Traded by the Golden State Warriors with a 2020 1st round draft pick to the Brooklyn Nets for Treveon Graham, Shabazz Napier and D'Angelo Russell. Conditional 2020 1st-rd pick did not convey
Graham and Napier were waived, and D-Lo turned into Andrew Wiggins and the pick that became Kuminga.
To try to translate this to Klay’s context, these factors have unknown influence:
Of course, Klay isn’t as valuable as prime KD, so the package would be a lot less. This is even factoring in that KD was to miss a year rehabbing his Achilles injury.
On the other hand, KD could have left for BRK without GSW’s help, so GSW had little leverage then. And in contrast, LAL/DEN/DAL can only offer Klay $12.9m without a sign-and-trade, so GSW could always threaten to let Klay walk for nothing if the return wasn’t good enough, and that would leave Klay with a huge pay cut, so he has incentive to go to a team that will do a sign and trade.
(You could even imagine a scenario where the teams all bid on how high Klay’s eventual salary would be, and Klay would choose among them.)
On the other other hand, all of those teams LAL/DEN/DAL would only do the sign and trade if their team collectively got better. Also, receiving a sign-and-trade player would cap them at the first apron.
So in the end it’s hard to predict. But I imagine GSW would get a useful player or two out of a sign and trade.
How did GSW not get Paul George? Fire Dunleavy!
I have thought the chances of getting Paul George were <1% so I sure wasn’t counting on that. In short, the only way to get PG13 was to have LAC agree to a sign and trade, and why should they do that? Only if PG13 somehow forced them. Once LAC said they were willing to let PG walk for nothing, then it was over. PG13 opted out, so now GSW can only sign him with a Mid-Level Exception, which is way too low for him to accept. (This is the reason PG13 could only be acquired through a sign and trade.)
Can you believe GSW tendered an offer to Nico Mannion? Fire Dunleavy!
Yeah, let’s get snarky at MDJ for doing a completely automatic part of his job.
This is an expected perfunctory move. GSW has to do this to keep Mannion’s rights. It is almost surely a two-way qualifying offer (guaranteed for $75k). NM will almost certainly decline in order to play for a team in a non-NBA league for more money and playing time.
He’s been playing in the Italian League and according to commenter Freddie, has not looked good at all.
He is playing in Varese, a team that does not [make the] Italian playoff. He was at Bologna and did not play, at Baskonia (Spain) and did not play. These two are Euroleague teams. His defense is horrible. He has some skills on offense, but Italian League is physically not even close to NBA. He can't play at all in NBA (and in 2024 not even in Euroleague).
If for some reason Mannion accepted, GSW would very likely waive him and just eat the $75k guarantee as the cost of doing business.
Why would they keep Mannion’s rights if he is bad? I guess because it costs them nothing (since NM will refuse so it will literally cost zero; and if he doesn’t go along with it, it costs $75k, which is a lot to me, but to GSW it is nothing and it has no salary cap impact), and sometimes you trade player rights to make a trade work, and also sometimes players get better.
Doom cometh. There is no agony worse than a mediocre team. Fire Dunleavy.
That’s not a question.
There has been some doom and gloom at DNHQ for sure, but a lower % than Tw*tt*r.
Declaring doom is a normal part of fandom, but I’d prefer it if we doomed after actual facts about transactions come out and not just when reporters predict doom.
For context, the top reporter Adrian Wojnarowski just completely blew the recent story about the Lakers coaching search (Hurley pursuit), so reporters are not infallible. And sometimes players change their minds.
Where can I educate myself on various free agents that GSW should pursue?
Check out
What are the key dates in the 2024 NBA Free Agency season?
The Free Agency Moratorium starts June 30. This is supposed to be quiet time, but in fact all the free agent signings get announced then. Then we go straight into Summer League and the Olympics. HECTIC.
Day After Last Game of NBA Finals: Each NBA team may begin negotiating with upcoming free agents who finished the just-completed season on its roster.
June 30: Each NBA team may begin negotiating with all other upcoming free agents (beginning at 6 p.m. ET).
July 6: Each NBA team may begin signing free agents to contracts (12:01 p.m. ET).
When will we hear news?
Free agency signings will be announced starting Day 1 of the Moratorium period.
For context, in 2023:
Early on Day 1, Draymond’s re-signing news broke.
Around Day 3, Cory Joseph’s signing news broke.
Around Day 8, Dario Saric’s signing news broke.
In 2021:
Within the first few hours of Day 1, half the Warriors’ free agent targets had already been signed by the Lakers. (Excuse me while I smile and smile about this from the comfort of post 2022 Championship.)
Otto Porter Jr’s signing news came at 9pm of Day 1 (Aug 2 2021)
Nemanja Bjelica’s signing news came around 9:30am of Day 2
Andre Iguodala signing news came Aug 6, after the moratorium.
In THEORY and by rule, the key dates are :
Official start of league year and free agency moratorium when no agreements can be made. Teams can NOT start negotiating with players before. The moratorium gives all teams a chance to meet with any free agent, so it’s not a race.
Free agency moratorium ends. Teams officially can begin signing players and complete trades.
In reality, free agency negotiations are happening at all times, through intermediaries. The league turned a blind eye to this because of the difficulty of enforcement, but teams flouted the rules to ridiculous extents. Regularly, reports would come out on free agency agreements in the first minutes of the moratorium. The league finally had to crack down on MIL for announcing a sign-and-trade within minutes, and MIA and CHI for a complex three person sign-and-trade.
The practical result of this is to expect most free agency signings to be announced starting Day 1 of the moratorium.
These moratorium agreements are not binding of course, but it’s major news if someone backs out of the agreement (for instance the absurdly funny DeAndre Jordan situation in 2015, still my favorite NBA Twitter real-time saga).
In 22 I promised God that if we won the title, I wouldn't ask for anything else and would live with the consequences.
I've been paying the piper ever since.
No regrets.
Not condoning it, but if we really wanted to go all in on the rebuild, Steph for Maxey would be kind of interesting for all parties involved. Klay could bolt to Philly for the MLE…
Sixers: Steph, Klay, Oubre, PG, Embiid
Warriors: Maxey (23), Podz (21), Moody (22), Kuminga (21), TJD (24), Santos (22).
Maybe let Dray get with LeBron (for Knecht, Hachimura, and future assets?), send Wiggs somewhere for nothing, and let’s goooooo…
😃 😞