Shams Charania:

Breaking: Oklahoma City Thunder star and NBA champion Chet Holmgren has agreed to a fully guaranteed five-year maximum rookie contract extension that could reach $250 million, agent Bill Duffy of WME Basketball told ESPN.

https://www.espn.com/contributor/shams-charania/c2d97cd30982d

35 comments

  4. Refreshing to see that our owners are not fucking around with this and locking it all down

  6. Was really thinking they wouldn’t max him. Goddamn that’s a lot of money. He better stay healthy

  7. Oh, this roster is going to be *expensive* expensive.

    Crazy to see this from the team that nickel-and-dimed James Harden in extension talks back in the day.

  11. God damn, knew it was coming but $750M+ committed between three players is wild lol.

  15. i’m ngl i’m a bit surprised he got the max, given injury history and the fact that Dub is almost certainly gonna get the max

    that OKC salary sheet is gonna be… interesting to say the least with a super max and two max contracts

  16. This isn’t to slam OKC, but Holmgren is exactly the kind of player I think teams with the new apron rules should consider trading for a big haul rather than maxing out.

  20. A guy who has missed 50% of his possible games in his first few seasons is not worth that. I fully understand why they did it, but a contract like this is immediately bad based off the risk alone. Wish teams would actually negotiate extensions more and leverage the fact no one has cap space

  22. I think this is the normal 25% max with escalators to 30% if Chet qualifies (which he doesn’t yet). If he doesn’t qualify it’s actually a more manageable 5 years for $200m.

  23. Good for the Thunder for paying their guys. This is the price to keep an all time great team together. Chet is nowhere near his ceiling either.

  24. He wasn’t great on offense but his defensive impact alone altered many games in the playoffs.

    Maybe a little overpay but I expect his offense to get better. Don’t think they’ve fully unlocked how to use him yet.

  26. Feels like too much. 50 million per for someone who hasn’t made an All-Star team or All-NBA as of yet? And just missed 50 games this season, after missing his entire rookie season.

    Chet still has a high ceiling though so we’ll see.

  29. Seems like everyone is missing the play from OKC here. This is a true build around 3 guys situation. There’s a reason they never packaged their picks for a big trade. They’re using the their draft capital to build the supporting roster around their 3 main guys. All 3 are two way players, young and are now going to be locked in for 5 years. They’re already drafting replacements for their bigger contracts.

    Its honestly a win win for everyone involved. The championship core gets paid and stays together and develops together, young players get drafted into an organization that undoubtedly develops their players like no one else in the league, and then those players get high evaluations which will probably return more draft picks for OKC to continue the process.

  31. A lot of non OKC fans don’t understand this was the plan all along. Presti was prepared for this new CBA which is why he never traded any of those first round picks for a superstar. They are there to replace the role players like Ihart, Caruso, Wallace, Joe, Wiggins, etc when it becomes too expensive. Also I expect the cap to increase and the big 3 not to take up as much space as people think. Presti hasn’t always gotten everything right but he always learns from his mistakes.

  32. Based on the comments here, this is an unpopular opinion, but I think this contract is 100% worth it. Chet’s defensive impact is insane. He’s what takes them from a great defense to a truly formidable one, and no one else on the roster can patrol the paint like him. Frankly, his skillset (excellent rim protection + a spacer on offense) is one of the most valuable archetypes and is much harder to replace than JDub’s skillset, which is more common. Yes he’s been injured, but I think he’s still worth the risk. And yes he’s not been super consistently great offensively, but I believe that if he can stay healthy, he can be an incredible scoring threat too, which he showed flashes of early this season pre-injury. So I have no problem with the max.

  33. they won the chip so whatever happens from here on out dont matter

  34. I know he’s extremely important to the team and his defense is great but to give the max to someone who’s been hurt 2 seasons and only averages 15 is insane to me. It’s crazy how easily teams give their players a max.

  35. This thread just makes you realize that r/NBA really has no clue. It’s a risk paying Chet this much, yes. However, people seem to act like Chet is gonna be a permanent Myles Turner type of guy, while neglecting other factors that OKC can take advantage of in the coming years.

    – Chet is still freshly 23 years old. Even if you account for injury, I’d be shocked if he didn’t continue to improve his game on both ends as his career goes on. He’s already one of the best defenders in the league, and his offense was looking good before he got hurt. The offseason will do some good for him.

    – Shai’s supermax doesn’t affect the team for another couple of years. They can avoid the second apron even after paying JDub until then. As Sam Presti also mentioned, I’d also expect the NBAPA to terminate the CBA early by 2028. This way they can avoid the repeater tax, and it’s very possible the apron system gets tweaked.

    – The Thunder have plenty of assets and flexibility to work with. Dort and I-Hart have team options, so they can either renegotiate these guys on cheaper deals, trade them, or let them walk. With the draft capital that they have, they can easily replace some of the pieces that they may walk, especially seeing how good their scouting department has been for years. We might see Nikola Topic make a solid impact off their bench if what we’re seeing from him right now translates to real games. No reason to believe this couldn’t be the case going forward.

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