Hollinger: The eight nerdiest things that happened in NBA free agency (2024)

LAS VEGAS – Summer league is here and, in a rarity, we’re actually talking mostly about summer league while it happens. Free agency is basically over for all the league’s significant players, unless they suited up for Charlotte last season, and the trade market hasn’t really started cooking yet.

So while we enjoy this peaceful intermezzo between the signing frenzy of the first 48 hours and the Damian Lillard–James Harden water torture of the next 48 weeks (give or take), I wanted to circle back to some of the greatest hits of the last two weeks.

Here’s the thing: While free agency didn’t generate much seismic activity in terms of earth-shaking moves, it gave us a veritable cornucopia of salary-cap shenanigans. In terms of little wrinkles and nerdy minutiae, this might be the most fun free agency period I’ve ever witnessed.

Amazingly, the new CBA that had everyone buzzing in May and June ended up playing only a minor role in most of these stories. A lot of the maneuvers you’ll read about below have been available — and a known part of smart cap teams’ playbooks — for years. This offseason just provided the opportunity to execute on them.

In total, eight different cap moves this July were unique enough to warrant further discussion. So let’s discuss! Here are the eight nerdiest things that happened in free agency.

1. Paul Reed’s offer sheet with Jazz

This is a clear winner for the nerdiest: The partially guaranteed offer sheet the Jazz signed Philadelphia center Paul Reed to as a restricted free agent.

The needle a team tries to thread in restricted free agency is signing a contract that is palatable for them, but somehow unpalatable for the team with matching rights. The Jazz had at least some hope that Reed might be such a situation, given the Sixers’ position above the luxury tax and their crowd of centers.

However, the Jazz weren’t content to just rely on that angle. Instead, they tried something entirely novel: A three-year deal that was only guaranteed for the first season … but whose second and third seasons would guarantee if the team made the second round of the playoffs in 2023-24.

The genius behind this, obviously, is that the Sixers are much more likely to win a playoff round this season than the Jazz are. Thus, Utah essentially signed Reed to two offer sheets — one that guaranteed him $7.3 million if he was with the Jazz, and another that cost three times as much if he stayed with the Sixers.

There are wrinkles here of some chicanery we’ve seen in previous offer sheets. Tyus Jones, for instance, signed an offer sheet with Memphis in 2019 that had incentives for team wins — incentives that seemed much more likely to trigger if Minnesota matched than if he went to the Grizzlies. However, incentives can only be for 15% of the total contract amount, so while there was some differential between what the Wolves could have expected and what the Grizzlies did, it was chump change compared to the potential spread in Reed’s deal.

(The other irony here is that the Grizzlies ended up winning nearly twice as many games as Minnesota in 2019-20 and finished with a better record in all three seasons of Jones’s contract. He ended up making more money off those incentives in Memphis than he would have if the Wolves had matched.)

Reed’s deal is my favorite nerd move of the summer because it’s a one-off that is unlikely to be copied much in future years. First, the differential between the Sixers’ ambitions and Utah’s won’t always be in play. (Spicy, stick-the-knife-in side note: Gotta love how Utah specified the second round and not the conference finals. Philly has lost in that round in five of the last six seasons.) Second, it’s incredibly rare for an offer sheet to contain non-guaranteed money of any kind, and realistically it would only happen to a player like Reed, who is projected to play a relatively minor role.

2. Patty Mills, TyTy Washington and Usman Garuba: Teammates, and opponents

Overnight on Friday, a funny thing happened: Patty Mills, TyTy Washington and Usman Garuba were traded with each other, from Houston, in a five-team trade. And then, immediately after, Mills, Washington and Garuba were traded for each other, with Mills landing in Atlanta and the other two in Oklahoma City.

Wait, what?!?!?

You read this correctly. Mills had only minutes earlier been traded from Brooklyn to Houston (try to keep up) as part of a wild cap-aggregation move by the Rockets (more on that below). Garuba and Washington were already on the Rockets’ roster, and they were included in the clubs’ subsequent sign-and-trade for Dillon Brooks, which included four other teams: Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Memphis and the Clippers. Mills went to Oklahoma City, while the other two went to Atlanta.

Here’s the thing: When that trade was completed, the Thunder and Hawks still weren’t done. So Atlanta then sent Garuba, Washington, Rudy Gay and a draft pick to the Thunder for Mills.

Could they have done this as part of the original trade? Yes, but there was no real advantage. Doing it this way allowed the Hawks to create two small trade exceptions for Washington and Garuba. Additionally, Oklahoma City would have had to do some roster gymnastics to generate enough cap room to take in all three players they ended up receiving. But the Thunder had just enough spare cap room to take Mills, and then could trade him for the Gay-Garuba-Washington package as an over-the-cap team (more on this below).

3. Clippers trading for Balsa Koprivica

One of the most baffling trades of free agency week came when the LA Clippers, in the waning minutes before the new CBA took effect on July 1, sent $2.1 million to Detroit for the rights to 7-foot-1 Serbian center Balsa Koprivica, the 57thpick in the 2021 draft who has played the last two seasons for Partizan Belgrade.

Huh?

Here’s how to make some sense of it: The new CBA prevents teams above the second tax apron from using cash in trades. The Clippers are waaaay over that apron and figure to remain so for as long as they have Paul George and Kawhi Leonard on their roster.

So, what to do? Take the cash they could use before midnight on June 30 and try to convert it into a player or asset that would have some down-the-line trade value. One presumes they tried to buy a future second-round pick and were rebuffed and landed on this option instead. (The price of second-round picks has been on a meteoric rise over the last seven years or so; the Lakers paid $4 million to move up a mere seven spots in the second round this June.)

While we’re here, the Clippers also did the other, slightly less nerdy thing of taking Kenyon Martin Jr. into a trade exception worth just $2.1 million that was left over from the Reggie Jackson-Mason Plumlee trade. It’s one of the smallest trade exceptions you’ll ever see put to actual use in a meaningful future transition; it’s also the last year that teams above the second apron can use a trade exception generated in a previous season.

4. Rockets’ aggregation sign-and-trade for Dillon Brooks

Perhaps the wildest tale of free agency is the entire construction of Houston’s free agency blitz. The Rockets ended up trading five second-round picks and cash just to build up a five-team sign-and-trade for Dillon Brooks, even though Houston had more than enough cap space to sign him without engineering such a monstrosity.

So … what happened here? The tell is in the way Houston built this deal and the contract Brook Lopez signed with Milwaukee. The Rockets were rumored to be very close to a deal with Lopez, and the one he signed in Milwaukee was oddly front-loaded on money, which would have made sense for the Rockets but much less so for the Bucks … it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the Bucks likely matched whatever Houston was offering at the last minute. (Perhaps with, “We’ll sign your barely playable twin brother” as the cherry on top.)

If the Rockets had signed Lopez for $25 million and Fred VanVleet for $40 million, then they needed to put together a complex sign-and-trade to acquire Brooks because otherwise they weren’t going to have enough cap room.

It appears Houston was well on its way to doing so via the rarely used tactic of under-the-cap salary aggregation. Veterans of the 2014 Ömer Aşık sign-and-trade to New Orleans, when the Pelicans spent several days scraping together the league’s assorted barrels for minimum guys to throw into the deal, may recognize what happened here.

The nitty gritty: Normally you can’t trade for a player (such as Patty Mills), and then immediately aggregate him with other contracts (such as TyTy Washington, Usman Garuba, Patrick Christopher and Kenyon Martin Jr.) to trade for a higher-salaried player. League rules require teams to wait at least 90 days before that can happen.

However, the fine print contains one exception: if a player is acquired with cap space. In that scenario, teams are free to aggregate immediately. So once the Rockets had a deal in place to acquire Mills, they could use him and the four players already on their roster, take advantage of the new CBA’s liberalized salary-matching bands, and be able to take Brooks back in a sign-and-trade even with a frontloaded contract.

It cost the Rockets five second-round picks and cash to put this all together, however, (they got two back for Martin from the Clippers, but still), not to mention drop-kicking three recent first-round picks, and in the end that they didn’t even need the extra wiggle room once Lopez spurned them.

Houston pivoted to using that space by inking Jeff Green and Jock Landale to be walking trade exceptions, with fairly large first-year salaries followed by non-guaranteed second seasons. (Landale’s runs four years and is only guaranteed for the first.) Green, in particular, was originally slated to go into the Rockets’ $7.3 million room exception but now will have a larger $9.6 million cap hit (including the maximum allowable 20 percent in incentives), enabling him to be used in a trade for up to $17 million in returning salary come January.

5. Grizzlies playing draft pick poker

Memphis’s fascinating trade with Phoenix saw the Grizzlies swap two fairly big swings on possibly moving up in the 2024 and 2030 first rounds (via pick swap from the lesser of Washington’s or Phoenix’s picks) in return for the certainty of giving up three future second-round picks. (Memphis also had to swallow Isaiah Todd’s salary into its Dillon Brooks trade exception generated by the madness outlined above.)

This amounts to the Grizzlies playing odds here, even without certainty that they’ll come out ahead. They’ve basically purchased a put option that could expire valueless. However, with the price of moving up even a few spots in the first round becoming increasingly expensive, the potential ROI on this transaction can end up in the black even if Memphis doesn’t land some crazy lottery jackpot. Merely moving up from, say, 25th to 20th in one of the two seasons would probably be a break-even result on this move.

Nonetheless, it’s an unusual trade because so many teams want relative certainty in traded pick outcomes. This one is uncertain with a capital U.

The other nerdy part of this, from Phoenix’s end, is that the Suns traded the swap rights to two picks that they had already traded. It’s unlikely to matter much in 2024, when the Suns should be good, but Phoenix notably increased the chance of turning a good pick into an awful one in 2030.

Perhaps more notable is that the Suns acquired trade capital on this deal. Remember the prohibition on cash in trades noted above for teams above the second apron? Phoenix is also blocked by that. The Suns used this deal to finesse three second-round picks instead, which is important because they had zero of them to use in trades after giving all of them to Washington in the Bradley Beal trade.

Now, Phoenix can go into the trade deadline armed with at least a few assets to use in. minor deals to keep building the back end of the roster.

6. D’Angelo Russell’s no-trade waiver

One subtle, nerdy change in the new CBA affects players signing one-year deals, or two-year deals with a second-year player option, to rejoin their previous team. In the past, such players would automatically have the ability to reject a trade, because it would strip them of Bird Rights in the process.

Under the new CBA, however, teams can negotiate this deal with the player at the time the contract is signed. Probably the most significant example is Russell’s deal with the Lakers, a two-year, $36 million pact with a second-year player option. In the past, Russell would automatically have been able to block a trade, which would have been a problem for the Lakers because A) he is by far their most tradeable contract in any realistic trade for a starting-caliber player, and B) 20-something millionaires only leave L.A. reluctantly.

The Lakers did, in fact, negotiate this ability in Russell’s deal, according to Spotrac’s intrepid salary cap sleuth Keith Smith,and thus preserved the ability to put his contract in a deal once his trade restriction lifts in mid-December. Russell’s $17.3 million in base salary can be used in a salary match to bring back up to $25 million in returning salary.

7. Thunder acquire a jillion players and 800 second-round picks

Oklahoma City had cap space this summer, and like a lot of teams with room, they struggled to use all of it optimally (see Houston above and Sacramento below). As I noted earlier this month, cap space ain’t what it used to be.

The Thunder have used their room to take in unwanted contracts, first by absorbing Davis Bertans in return for moving up two spots in the draft, and then by swallowing Mills and Victor Oladipo in two separate trades that accumulated second-round picks.

The real fun, however, is that the Thunder realized they didn’t’ need to stop there. Oklahoma City was out of cap room after briefly acquiring Mills, but still had about $20 million beneath the tax line to potentially absorb other contracts. Given the widened salary-matching bands in the new CBA, Oklahoma City could use its extra float beneath the tax line to generate picks by swapping small salaries for large ones. That’s exactly the deal the Thunder made with the Hawks, earning yet another second-round pick and a possible free shot at a point guard prospect in Washington.

The Thunder are taking this strategy to the absolute limit; the offseason roster limit is 21 players (up from 20 in the old CBA), and Oklahoma City has 22 if you count the agreed-to but still unsigned deals for Jack White and Vasa Micic. That’s with only one of their three two-way spots filled. Oklahoma City also has to get its roster down to 15 players by opening day; while some of the cuts are easy (Oladipo and Gay), the Thunder face some hard choices.

They still have some time, though, to engineer yet another deal that takes on more money (they have $15.7 million left below the tax line) in return for yet another second-round pick. The Thunder could trade Gay, for instance, and take back a contract worth up to $13 million, or trade Oladipo for a contract worth up to $17 million. Oladipo and Bertans can also be aggregated with existing Thunder contracts since they were acquired with cap space (but not with Gay, Washington or Garuba). Eventually Oklahoma City will need to cull the roster, but keep an eye on the Thunder on money deals between now and September.

8. Kings’ unused cap space

I mentioned how hard it was to effectively use all of a team’s cap space this year, and Sacramento offered a good example. While a few teams still have shards of unused room lingering on their books (Indiana, Orlando and San Antonio, for instance), that may or may not be put in service, a couple of teams have already to give up on using the last few chunks. Utah, for instance, was about to lose its last $2.8 million in room if Paul Reed’s offer sheet hadn’t been matched, and Houston didn’t quite use all its room even after inserting extra padding into the deals for Green and Brooks.

Sacramento, for a variety of seasons, end up in a similar jam and walked away with some unused cap room. The Kings ended up in a position similar to Houston when a couple of free-agent targets got away and they needed to move on with other business.

The Kings theoretically had $5 million in spare cap room once they completed Domantas Sabonis’s renegotiation and extension, but that went way once Trey Lyles re-signed and saw his cap hold increase from $3 million to $8 million. After signing Lyles, Colby Jones and Alex Len, the Kings are about $1 million over the cap, and will have 14 players under contract once they’re finished signing Sasha Vezenkov into their room exception. (The paperwork on that, I’m told, may take a minute. Having done an international buyout or two, let’s just say it can be a sluggish process).

The Kings’ cap room wasn’t quite enough to sign Vezenkov into cap space (plus that would have blocked all their other business while they waited), nor was it quite large enough to get in on the Mills and Gay contracts. If the Kings knew then what they know now they could have done Harrison Barnes’s deal with declining money and cleaned up another $2 million, but they needed that extension locked and loaded on June 30. Similarly, changing up Sabonis’s extension was going to be challenging because his side wanted a high number in the final year as a platform for a potential next contract.

The Kings did use a chunk of that room to take in Chris Duarte, and spent much of early July scrambling trying to figure out an efficient use for the rest. In the end, the only realistic option was overpaying somebody just to potentially use them as a de facto trade exception later, something that probably is less valuable on a $5 million deal. (Also, we tend to ignore this part, but it does involve spending $5 million in actual money.)

Instead, the Kings will have roughly $1.4 million in leftover space with their room exception that can be used on an in-season singing to a multi-year minimum deal and, for the moment, an open 15throster spot.

(Top photo of Dillon Brooks: Logan Riely/NBAE via Getty Images)