Saturday represented the deadline for teams and players to exercise 2024/25 contract options and for teams to issue qualifying offers to players eligible for free agency. While there was a flurry of news about those options and QO decisions yesterday, a few players still slipped through the cracks.
We’ll start with Rockets forward Jeff Green. Reporting last week indicated that Houston planned to exercise his $8MM team option for 2024/25 and the team did just that, per RealGM’s transaction log. Green’s salary technically remains non-guaranteed until July 11 even now that his option has been picked up, but the expectation is that he’ll be retained — his expiring deal could be a useful salary-matching piece in a trade, and he also played rotation minutes for Houston last season, averaging 16.8 MPG in 78 appearances.
While there was no official confirmation on Saturday (as far as we could tell), Grizzlies forward Yuta Watanabe had long been expected to decline his $2.65MM player option for the 2024/25 season, since he’s on track to return to his home country of Japan and play for the Chiba Jets. There’s no indication that those plans have changed or that he picked up his option, so we’re assuming it was declined and that he’ll be off the board for NBA teams this offseason.
Finally, Davis Bertans‘ option with the Hornets was technically an early termination option rather than a player option, meaning that instead of needing to actively exercise it if he wanted to opt in, he needed to do nothing to opt in. He did just that, and will remain under contract with Charlotte for the time being, rather than becoming a free agent. However, his $16MM option salary is only partially guaranteed for $5.25MM, so he’s not assured of having the rest of that salary guaranteed, especially if the Hornets are looking to maximize their cap flexibility this offseason.
Here are a few more updates left over from a busy Saturday:
- Dominick Barlow, a 21-year-old forward who has spent the past two seasons with the Spurs, didn’t receive a qualifying offer to make him a restricted free agent, per Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link). San Antonio isn’t necessarily planning to part ways with Barlow, according to Tom Orsborn of The San Antonio Express-News, who tweets that the Spurs still have interest in discussing a new deal. However, he’ll have interest from other teams as well, says Wojnarowski.
- The Kings didn’t tender qualifying offers to their three players eligible for restricted free agency (Kessler Edwards, Jordan Ford, or Jalen Slawson), confirms Sean Cunningham of FOX 40 Sacramento (Twitter link). All three players will be unrestricted free agents.
- According to RealGM, players who did receive qualifying offers that weren’t previously reported (that we saw) include no-brainers like Sixers guard Tyrese Maxey and Raptors guard Immanuel Quickley, as well as Mavericks two-way player Brandon Williams.
- We’ve previously published trackers for this year’s team option decisions and player option decisions, which are now fully up to date. We’ll be posting a full qualifying offer recap later this morning.
Paul George is overvaluing himself. He’s old, folds in big moments and hasn’t been a factor since he was an Indiana Pacer.
Since he broke his leg… Not the same.
Still one of the best 3pt shooters all time while also me being one of the best 2-way wings in the league. Compare him to Bridges(as a good 2-way player). More pts/asts/rbs/stl/blk/FG% etc. So overall a better player. He might not have been factor playing 2nd to part time Kawahi but to a legit star who will play long term he’s perfect.
Granted he ain’t the AllNBA star he once was but he’s still the best possible 3&D option for anyone and is easily capable of being 2nd scorer who can takeover at any time. He’s worth the money but his age makes a long contract a big risk. Any contender able should take the swing but accept anything over 2 years will become a bad contract down the line.
I disagree; if he’s healthy, you absolutely sign him. He plays arguably the current most important positions in the game, and it’s an extremely scarce commodity
Bertans is gone. Once he got paid he quit on his team
They all do that
PG should definitely go to the dubs. He and Steph works.
Barlow is a good player at the 5/4. I think someone will sign him, if the spurs don’t keep him