My NBA free agency (and trade) latest
The NBA's summer marketplace officially opens in just a few days, mandating frequent updates to get you ready. Here, then, is another fresh batch of around-the-league notes
As anticipation mounts for Thursday night's 6 PM ET opening bell for NBA free agency, you can likewise expect the start (and middle) of the week to be plenty newsy, too.
Especially Wednesday.
If recent history is any guide, for starters, links between a handful of free agents and their expected landing spots will begin to circulate in earnest before we reach Thursday evening. As covered here last August, when this Substack was still in its infancy, roughly 120 new contracts and contract extensions were reported on by various media outlets during the first 48 hours of last summer's free agency.
That's because, as we wrote then, that theoretical ding-ding-ding to signal the opening of the marketplace is, in truth, much closer to the end of free agency than the beginning. Contractual discussions, like it or not, are a June fixture in the NBA.
Yet Wednesday also looms as the official deadline for five prominent players to make binding decisions about their contracts for next season.
The Los Angeles Lakers' Russell Westbrook and Houston's John Wall will obviously both be exercising their respective $47 million player options. (Wall, in fact, has already notified the Rockets.)
Also by Wednesday at 5 PM ET, Washington's Bradley Beal must reveal the decision he recently said he's already made about his $36.4 million player option for next season. The strong leaguewide expectation has not budged from the belief that Beal will decline the option to become an unrestricted free agent ... and then re-sign with the Wizards on a five-year deal in the $250 million range. As a reminder, Wizards president of basketball operations Tommy Sheppard spoke with great confidence and at length last week about Beal's ongoing presence in the nation's capital.
The real intrigue here thus emanates from Philadelphia and Brooklyn.
We already know James Harden and the 76ers …
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Dot Dot Dot (🏀🏀🏀)
🏀 I wrote Sunday about the strongest indications in months that John Wall could soon successfully negotiate a buyout with Houston, with the Rockets' monthslong efforts to find a workable trade exit for the former All-Star guard repeatedly stalling. League sources reiterated Monday …
This is an excerpt from my latest NBA column. To read it all and receive full access to all of my work, please click the link or the orange button to subscribe.