Jazz Renegotiate, Extend Jordan Clarkson’s Contract

JULY 7: Clarkson’s renegotiated and extended contract is now official, per the Jazz.


JULY 2: After picking up his 2023/24 option last week to remain in Utah, Jordan Clarkson will commit to the team for a couple more seasons, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).

Clarkson and the Jazz are finalizing a renegotiation and extension that will give him a raise in 2023/24 and will add two new years to his current contract, his agents at Klutch Sports tell Charania.

The deal will be worth $55MM, Charania adds. Based on the wording of his report, it’s unclear if that $55MM is all new money or if it includes Clarkson’s preexisting $14.3MM salary for 2023/24 — I’d assume the latter unless we hear otherwise, since agents leaking word of an agreement typically frame it in the most flattering light.

As we outlined on Saturday when Domantas Sabonis completed a similar deal with the Kings, contract renegotiations in the NBA are rare, since they can only be completed when a team has cap space and intends to increase a player’s salary rather than reducing it. Like Sacramento with Sabonis, Utah has the cap room necessary to give Clarkson’s current-year salary a bump and negotiate an extension off that new cap hit.

Interestingly, without a renegotiation, the maximum two-year extension Utah could give Clarkson would be worth about $41.5MM — when added to his current $14.3MM salary, that would also work out to just over $55MM.

By forgoing a traditional ascending extension structure and renegotiating his current-year salary to give him an immediate raise, the Jazz may end up paying the veteran guard the same amount of money overall while applying more of it to the 2023/24 cap in order to maximize future flexibility. An extension signed signed as part of a renegotiation can decline by as much as 40% in the first season.

Clarkson, 31, entered Utah’s starting lineup in 2022/23 after coming off the bench as a microwave scorer for most of his nine-year NBA career. In 61 games (32.6 MPG) in 2022/23, he averaged 20.8 points, 4.4 assists, and 4.0 rebounds with a shooting line of .444/.338/.816.

The Jazz, who are acquiring John Collins into their cap room in a trade with Atlanta, still projected to have nearly $15MM in cap room available after completing that deal, per Keith Smith of Spotrac (Twitter link). Whether or not they have more room to operate after the Clarkson renegotiation will depend on how much money they add to his 2023/24 salary, as well as the team’s plans for players on non-guaranteed contracts like Luka Samanic and Vernon Carey.

Clarkson is the third player to agree to renegotiate his contract in 2023, joining Sabonis and Pacers center Myles Turner. Prior to Turner, no player had renegotiated a deal since Robert Covington in 2017.

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