What Terry Rozier’s Hornets Deal Says About the Next Free Agent Class

You’d be forgiven if your response to Thursday’s report that Terry Rozier had agreed to a four-year, $97 million contract extension with the Hornets sounded something like, “Wait, what?!?!?” After all, 97 is very close to 100. (Just 3 million away!) At first blush, the notion that Rozier—neither Charlotte’s best all-around player (Gordon Hayward) nor its top guard (LaMelo Ball), and a vet at the same position where it just spent a lottery pick (James Bouknight)—is a $100 million player seems kind of difficult to square.

Of course, contracts aren’t handed out in a vacuum. The Hornets threw every dollar they could at Rozier now—four additional seasons, starting at 120 percent of his 2021-22 salary with an 8 percent raise after the first season, the most lucrative possible extension they were able to offer him under the collective bargaining agreement—for a few reasons. At or near the top of the list: The 2022 free agent class is shaping up to be an absolute yikes festival.

A slew of names that would’ve headlined 2022 free agency—Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Kawhi Leonard, and Jimmy Butler on the unrestricted/player option side; Luka Doncic, Trae Young, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander among restricted types—have already agreed to extensions this summer. Two more, James Harden and Kyrie Irving, are expected to join teammate Durant in inking new max deals that will cement Brooklyn as both next season’s odds-on title favorite and the most expensive contender the NBA has ever seen.

Locking up all that talent wouldn’t leave the market barren, per se. There’s still Bradley Beal, if he decides he wants to opt out of the $37.3 million he’s owed in ’22-’23 in pursuit of a longer-term deal, whether with the Wizards or another suitor. There’s Zach LaVine, fresh off his first All-Star berth and Olympic gold, who’s entering the final season of his deal in Chicago and looks poised to cash in come next summer. Some enticing players approaching the end of their rookie-scale contracts—Deandre Ayton and Mikal Bridges in Phoenix, Michael Porter Jr., Jaren Jackson Jr., Collin Sexton, Kevin Huerter—could wind up hitting the market, provided they don’t reach agreements on extensions before the start of the 2021-22 season in October, but restricted free agency is a crapshoot, and one that heavily favors incumbent teams.

That means that, outside of Beal and LaVine, the list of high-profile players who might actually be available next summer could be limited to names like Russell Westbrook, John Wall, Aaron Gordon, Goran Dragic, Gary Harris, and Dennis Schröder—fine players, all, but few who seem likely to dramatically change a franchise’s fortunes in free agency. And it seems clear that the low likelihood of landing a big-ticket free agent has already informed teams’ decision-making.

Chicago spent big in hopes of building a team good enough to convince LaVine to re-up on a long-term contract next summer. (The Bulls could have used their cap space to prioritize renegotiating LaVine’s contract up to the max for the upcoming season and offering him a multiyear extension off of that; that they chose a different…