Hoops Rumors Originals

Every week, the Hoops Rumors writing team compiles original content to complement our news feed. Here are some of our favorite segments and features from the past seven days:

• Luke Adams checked in on the new Designated Veteran Extension.
• Adams also delved into which teams hold the largest trade exceptions.
• Arthur Hill discussed the likelihood of Kyrie Irving being traded to the Heat, Cavaliers turmoil, and the status of Nerlens Noel in his weekly Sunday mailbag. Submit your questions via Twitter (@HoopsRumors) or by sending us an email (hoopsrumorsmailbag@gmail.com).
• Check out our free Trade Rumors app available for IOS and Android.
• Here are the questions we asked you in our Community Shootaround discussions and polls this week:
  • Chris Crouse asked for your thoughts on a potential Kyrie to the 76ers trade.
  • Arthur Hill asked how you expect the Kyrie situation to unfold. Will the point guard remain in Cleveland or be traded?

Although the NBA and NBPA didn’t agree to make many significant changes to the league’s rules and regulations when they negotiated their most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement, the new CBA did introduce a new wrinkle that allows star players to receive higher salaries.

The new Designated Veteran Extension allows players who meet a certain set of criteria to sign contracts with a starting salary of up to 35% of the cap instead of just 30%. These players generally have to make at least one All-NBA team, can’t change teams after signing their rookie extensions, and have between seven and nine years of NBA experience.

Designated Veteran Extensions couldn’t be signed until July 2017, so now that the new league year is underway and the new CBA has taken effect, we’re starting to get a sense of how these extensions will work. The sample size is still very small, but here’s what we know so far:

Three of four players eligible for Designated Veteran Extensions have signed them.

Having met the required criteria, Stephen Curry, James Harden, John Wall, and Russell Westbrook were the four players eligible this offseason for the new kind of contract. Curry inked his quickly, becoming the first player to do so as a free agent. He’ll receive a five-year contract starting in 2017/18 that will be worth more than $200MM.

Harden and Wall followed suit in recent weeks. Both players have two years remaining on their respective contracts, but were permitted to sign Designated Veteran Extensions that added four new years to their existing deals. We won’t know the precise value of those extensions until the salary cap is set for the 2019/20 league year, but they currently project to be worth upwards of $170MM over four years.

Westbrook is the lone holdout so far, but there has been no indication yet that he’s unwilling to sign an extension. Last summer, the MVP-to-be didn’t sign his new deal with the team until August. Westbrook has until opening night this year to re-up with the Thunder, and the club sounds confident that he’ll do so. If he does, that would mean all four DVE-eligible players would sign new extensions.

Multiple DVE candidates have been traded.

The Designated Veteran Extension has had an interesting side effect so far. Three players who were candidates to become eligible for a new super-max extension have been traded before getting a chance to gain that eligibility.

DeMarcus Cousins was the first to be dealt — he would have become eligible for a Designated Veteran Extension with the Kings if he’d earned an All-NBA nod this season, but was dealt to the Pelicans in February, eliminating the possibility for such a deal.

Meanwhile, last month, Jimmy Butler and Paul George were both traded despite the fact that they’d have become DVE-eligible in the summer of 2018 if they’d earned spots on one of next year’s All-NBA teams.

Not all of those players and teams were in exactly the same boat. George, for instance, seemed to want out of Indiana whether or not a Designated Veteran Extension would be on the table a year from now. However, Cousins and Butler seemed more invested in remaining with their current teams to see whether or not that opportunity at a super-max deal panned out.

In those instances, it’s possible that the Kings and Bulls were simply ready to rebuild, and decided the time was right to cash in on their stars. However, it’s worth considering whether the looming possibility of a Designated Veteran Extension played a part in those teams’ decisions. Unlike Curry, Westbrook, and Harden, players like Cousins and Butler aren’t perennial MVP candidates, so their teams may have been less eager to commit to a contract that paid $40MM+ annually.

For instance, had Cousins remained on the Kings and become eligible for a DVE this offseason, the franchise would have been in a tough spot — if the team was uncertain about committing that sort of money to Cousins and made a lesser offer, he may have viewed it as a sign of disrespect and demanded a trade, knowing that he wouldn’t be giving up a chance to max out his earnings since his current team was unwilling to give him that DVE. At that point, Sacramento’s trade leverage would have been reduced significantly.

It’s still too early to know exactly how the Designated Veteran Extension will affect player movement long-term, but based on the early returns, it appears it will work as intended for the very best players in the NBA, while perhaps further complicating the contract situations for the second- or third-tier stars.

With the 2017/18 NBA league year well underway, and news of contract agreements still coming in, Hoops Rumors is here to help you keep track of which players are heading to which teams this offseason. To that end, we present our Free Agent Tracker, a feature we’ve had each year since our inception in 2012. Using our tracker, you can quickly look up deals, sorting by team, years, salary, and a handful of other variables.

A few notes on the tracker:

• Some of the information you’ll find in the tracker will reflect reported agreements, rather than finalized deals. As signings become official, we’ll continue to update and modify the data.
• Similarly, contract years and dollars will be based on what’s been reported to date, so in many cases those amounts will be approximations rather than official figures. Listed salaries aren’t necessarily fully guaranteed either.
• A restricted free agent who agrees to or signs an offer sheet will be included in the tracker, but the team won’t be specified until his original club matches or passes on the offer sheet, in order to avoid confusion.
• Two-way contracts and draft pick signings aren’t included in the tracker.
• Click on a player’s name for our full report on his deal.
• If you’re viewing the tracker on mobile, be sure to turn your phone sideways to see more details.

Our 2017 Free Agent Tracker can be found anytime on the right sidebar under “Hoops Rumors Features,” and it’s also under the “Tools” menu atop the site. It will be updated throughout the offseason, so be sure to check back for the latest info. If you have any corrections, please let us know right here.

Our lists of free agents by position/type and by team break down the players who have yet to reach contract agreements.

We at Hoops Rumors love interacting with our readers. This is why we provide an opportunity for you to hit us up with your questions in our mailbag feature, which is posted on Sundays.

Have a question regarding trades, free agent rumors, the salary cap, the NBA draft, or the top storylines of the week? You can e-mail them here: hoopsrumorsmailbag@gmail.com. Feel free to send emails throughout the week, but please be mindful that we may receive a sizable number of questions and likely won’t get to all of them.

If you missed out on any past mailbags and would like to catch up, you can view the full archives here.