Lakers big man Anthony Davis is now eligible to sign a veteran contract extension, as Bobby Marks of ESPN tweets.
Davis officially signed his current contract, a five-year, maximum-salary deal, on December 3, 2020. Typically, a player who signs a five-year contract must wait three full calendar years before he becomes extension-eligible, but the 2020 offseason was an unusual one due to the schedule irregularities caused by COVID-19.
Free agency didn’t begin until November 21 that year, with the regular season tipping off on December 22. The NBA determined that Dec. 3 of that offseason would have corresponded to August 4 in a typical offseason, which is why Davis became extension-eligible today.
Davis has two years left on his current contract — he’s owed a guaranteed $40,600,080 salary in 2023/24, with an early termination option worth $43,219,440 in 2024/25.
Exercising an early termination option is essentially the same as declining a player option — in either case, the player ends his contract a year early. However, there’s one key difference: an early termination option can’t be exercised as part of a veteran extension agreement. That means that if Davis wants to sign an extension this offseason, he would have to decline that ETO, which would lock in his current 2024/25 salary and result in his new deal beginning in ’25/26.
Davis will have until the day before the regular season begins in October to sign an extension this year. If he and the Lakers haven’t worked out a new agreement by that time, he would have to wait until the 2024 offseason to revisit his contract situation. At that point, he could either opt into the final year of his current contract and extend off that deal, or opt out and seek a new contract as a free agent.
The maximum value of a potential extension for Davis will depend on the rate at which the NBA’s salary cap increases during the next two offseasons. In an NBA Today appearance on ESPN on Thursday (YouTube link), Marks stated that a three-year extension for Davis could be worth up to about $169.1MM, but that would be based on a relatively conservative cap projection in the neighborhood of $149MM in 2025/26.
If the cap were to increase by the maximum allowable 10% in each of the next two seasons, a three-year extension for Davis could instead be worth as much as $186.6MM.
That may seem like a risky investment for a player who has battled injuries throughout his career and who wasn’t necessarily playing at a superstar level offensively during the Lakers’ postseason run this spring (he averaged 22.6 points per game in 16 contests).
However, Davis is still one of the NBA’s top two-way stars when healthy, and he’s only 30 years old. It’s worth noting too that extending him now would pay off in the long run if the alternative is negotiating a maximum-salary free agent contract of up to five years in 2024. If the Lakers were to extend Davis now, they’d lock him into a salary below his max in 2024/25 and would only have to commit to up to four total seasons beyond ’23/24, rather than five, reducing some of the risk on the back end.
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst recently suggested that there’s an expectation the Lakers will make Davis an extension offer fairly soon, while his colleague Dave McMenamin predicted the two sides will have a deal in place before training camp.
Yes
Whenever you have a star, you give him extension.
When I want to trade Lillard, I’d demand a top-10 young star in return. I don’t want any draft picks
a top-10 young star + Lowry
Brings up the question if AD gets hurt right before the playoffs do they trade AD to Portland for Lliard. Portland can build around AD while LeBron gets a shot at the championship. Don’t laugh it could happen.
Uh, did you see what happened to the Wizards with the Beal extension. Basically paid him $50M a year and then traded him for pennies on the dollar.
You don’t always sign a Superstar, and that should be true in Davis’ case.
Him and LBJ can both walk away next year. If James leaves, is your plan to build around Davis? If you re-sign him and add another three years to his contract knowing that he has been injury prone and only getting older, he could be hard to trade without taking back a lesser return. If he and James leave, the Lakers would only have $63M committed to players, opening up nearly two max contracts of cap space to pursue younger star players that they can build around long term.
Sign younger star players ?
How ? When ? Who ?
This isn’t 2 k
Street clothes can buy some more street clothes.
A.D. is finishing up with the Bulls. There will be no extension.
Why wouldn’t he sign his extension? The Lakers will offer him one. I think he ends his career in LA. but if not the Lakers would rather trade him for talent and he still gets the security of a large payday for a few more years.
And the Bulls would have to offer a ludicrous package to get him in trade.
AD ain’t interested in representing the hometown Chicago Bulls anymore. He is all about LA, and it has been that way since before he joined the Lakers.
AD came up during a time in Chicago where the city was literally producing the best young basketball talent on the planet. Chicago is now no longer a hotbed of basketball talent. The entire gene pool is now different.
I had a front row seat for Anthony Davis literally from the start. In my prior basketball life, I was one of the top Basketball Event organizers in the country. I actually had AD in the 8th grade 6’0 tall and wearing goggles. He was a guard. In his grammar school days he played for Chicago Select, a program run by former NBAer Sonny Parker, father of Jabari Parker. Kid went to a horrible basketball high school and disappeared for 3 years. Grew to 6’10 just before senior year. Got scooped up by Nike sponsored Meanstreets. Totally unknown.
AD played first event of Spring with Meanstreets. The Boo Williams Invitational in Virginia. Balled out the first half, and then did what AD does ….. He got hurt and missed the rest of the weekend …. NOBODY saw him. The next weekend, I did an event with Nike in Chicago. At this point, I knew what he was. I set his first matchup against Under Armour sponsored Illinois Wolves. Wolves had a future NBA journeyman in Chasson Randle, but they also had a big fella of their own …. Frank Kaminsky. AD dropped a 3 on Kaminsky to open the game. He was the #1 player in the country 1 month later. He dominated the top players in the country that easily. He was a freak!
Well, so much for that theory.
Extending an often injured player, atleast as often injured as Davis doesn’t seem like a wise financial decision moving into the future.
Lakers are in a big question for the future. They must resign him and take the gamble he doesn’t get hurt. If not they lose AD and back to a lottery team.
There was a point early in his career where I thought he was the best all-around player in the NBA.
He’s been on a Dwight Howard trajectory for the past 2-3 years and now he’s supposed to get $169.1m and maybe more?
More like hyper extension eligible
Ammirite?