{"id":765632,"date":"2026-06-20T04:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T04:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/765632\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T04:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T04:30:14","slug":"grizzlies-caldwell-pope-exercising-2026-27-player-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/765632\/","title":{"rendered":"Grizzlies’ Caldwell-Pope Exercising 2026\/27 Player Option"},"content":{"rendered":"

Veteran Grizzlies guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope<\/a> is exercising his player option for next season, reports Shams Charania of ESPN (via Twitter<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"\"Caldwell-Pope will earn $21.6MM in 2026\/27. He\u2019s on track for unrestricted free agency next summer.<\/p>\n

The move was expected<\/a>, as Caldwell-Pope was unlikely to approach that $21.6MM figure on the open market.<\/p>\n

Caldwell-Pope, who was acquired from Orlando last summer in the Desmond Bane<\/a> trade, made 51 appearances for the Grizzlies in 2025\/26, averaging 8.4 points, 2.7 assists and 2.5 rebounds in 21.3 minutes per game. His shooting line was .410\/.316\/.913.<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old was a quality three-and-D contributor for several years and won a pair of championships \u2014 with the Lakers in 2020 and the Nuggets in 2023 \u2014 as a key role player. However, his production has fallen off the past two seasons, particularly from three-point range, after he signed a three-year, $66MM contract with the Magic in the summer of 2024.<\/p>\n

Caldwell-Pope has been remarkably durable throughout his 13-year career, never missing more than eight games in a season until 2025\/26. He underwent season-ending surgery<\/a> in February to address a misalignment of his right pinky finger.<\/p>\n

While his contract wouldn\u2019t have positive value on its own, the fact that Caldwell-Pope is on an expiring deal and doesn\u2019t fit Memphis\u2019 rebuilding timeline makes him an obvious trade candidate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran Grizzlies guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is exercising his player option for next season, reports Shams Charania of ESPN…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3795],"tags":[7,294,865,293,177,4070,6],"class_list":["post-765632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-memphis-grizzlies","tag-basketball","tag-grizzlies","tag-kentavious-caldwell-pope","tag-memphis","tag-memphis-grizzlies","tag-memphisgrizzlies","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116780559654700763","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}