Sunday Best: The latest on late-summer NBA contract extensions, trade possibilities and more
Around the league we go because — yeah — it’s still Sunday
Around-the-league NBA notes on Sunday?
Later than I wanted on this Sunday in late August but published regardless as opposed to waiting for Monday?
As it should be!
To the latest from my notebook on the most pressing extension chatter for both players and coaches, insight into Sacramento's and Atlanta's trade thinking, some international intrigue via the FIBA AfroBasket tournament and more:
We speak often in the modern NBA about veteran players increasingly opting to sign extensions rather than test free agency.
According to the enclosed chart assembled by ESPN's Bobby Marks, 53 players have already signed veteran extensions during the first three summers of the NBA's new Collective Bargaining Agreement. There were 74 such extensions across six seasons in the previous labor deal, per Marks' math, but 44 of those 74 extensions took place during the final two seasons of that deal (2021-22 and 2022-23).
So make it 87 veteran extensions over the past half-decade.
See? Counterintuitive as it sounds: Free agency, as one wise veteran agent so often likes to remind me, is no longer a desired status. Which is pretty wild to say out loud.
However …