Tag: Dejounte Murray

Recently, The Athletic’s Shams Charania noted that the Pelicans and Lonzo Ball will have contract extension talks in the upcoming off-season. It’s a move that should surprise few given the success Ball has had in New Orleans this season and the fact the Pelicans are still fighting for playoff contention.

Ball’s career has been an interesting one. Bright moments were routinely interchanged with injuries in Los Angeles as he struggled to find consistency. After a similar start in New Orleans, Ball turned things around and put together the strongest stretch of his time in the NBA.

Over the final 31 games before the season came to a halt, Ball shot 41.0% from three-point territory while averaging 14.2 points, 8.5 assists and 7.3 rebounds per game. But while Ball proved he can put up those numbers, what value does a 31-game sample size hold against the previous two-plus years of his career? Did he turn the corner or did he have a well-timed hot streak?

Those are the questions the Pelicans will have to both ask and answer when opening up negotiations. Those discussions will be very interesting as it’s hard to gauge what a starting and ending point for a Ball contract would be.

In discussing a start point, the obvious caveat would come up that the salary cap for the 2020-21 season will be wildly different and lower than any predictions had forecasted. The latest projections came in January and had the cap at $115 million. For the sake of argument, and simply because the true effect COVID-19 will have on the salary cap is not yet known, that figure will be what is used when discussing Ball’s contract. If the salary dips significantly, the annual average value (AAV) of Ball’s contract will naturally drop as well.

Ball’s playstyle is so unique that it’s hard to pinpoint similar players and even harder to find similar players who have recently signed contracts. A decent starting point would be to look at Marcus Smart. While older than Ball, he is a point guard that is not a scorer but contributes in various other aspects of the game. Like Ball, his shot has steadily improved in recent seasons as well. Before the 2018-19 season, Smart signed a four-year, $52 million deal to stay in Boston.

That deal, which comes out to an AAV of $13 million per year, will likely be the absolute baseline in any discussions for an extension. Another similar player in some aspects would be Justise Winslow. Like Ball and Smart, Winslow has not always relied on his scoring and three-point shooting to become a valuable player. And like Smart, he signed a deal worth $26 million deal over two years, another deal with an AAV of $13 million.

A player closer to Ball in age for comparison would be Dejounte Murray. After a breakout season with the Spurs, Murray inked a four-year, $64 million offer with an AAV of $16 million. Ball and Murray have similar playstyles in many regards. Ball has exploded more in his third season than Murray did, though Murray’s injury sidelined him for a year.

All three contracts should serve as reference points for Ball when discussing a deal. Ball’s deal will likely exceed even Murray’s, whose deal looks more like a win for him than the Spurs so far. But how much more would Ball’s deal be?

An AAV of $20 million seems like the realistic ceiling. That deal would likely only come if Ball has a huge close to the regular season and playoffs. But even then, only 53 players in the current NBA have an AAV of $20 million. Even players like Zach LaVine and Bojan Bogdanovic make under $20 million annually.

Ball’s contract, then, would likely come in somewhere in the neighborhood of $18 million at the top end and $15-16 million on the low end. The amount of years is far less predictable. It wouldn’t be a surprise if it was a three-year deal with a player option for a fourth year. That would get him into free agency after his seventh season in the league where, under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, he would be eligible for a 30% max contract.

As noted, though, all of these figures are likely subject to change. As the NBA’s salary comes down, Ball’s deal would likely come down at the same rate. For example, a $17 million AAV deal with a $115 million salary cap would be roughly 14% of the salary cap. If the salary cap goes down to $100 million, Ball’s salary would likely be closer to $14 million AAV. It’s not an exact science, obviously, but it gives an idea of the payday Ball is set for if he and the Pelicans can agree to a deal.

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