Rockets deal for Dillon Brooks (4 yrs/$86 million + incentives)

I explained why

 

Vorkunov: It’s time we start discussing NBA contracts in a different way

It’s late July, and NBA free agency is all but over. All the big names have signed and billions of dollars have been spent. Now comes the next part: the ongoing analysis and discussion of whether each team or player got a good deal. It’s a time-honored passage of the offseason.

While everyone will attach their own grades to each free-agent signing and argue whether this guy should’ve gotten the max or that guy really deserves $10 million a year, the conversation is also kind of out of context. We know the nominal dollars for which each player signed, but it’s not as easy to strike comparisons. A player who signed a contract for $20 million annually in 2023 didn’t get the same kind of contract as a player who signed for the same number in 2021.

There’s a different way we should be talking about contracts. It’s not entirely new — team executives and player agents have been doing it for years — but it has mostly been ignored on the internet and TV, save for a few cap savants like our resident brainiac John Hollinger.

It’s time to stop talking about contracts in their raw dollars and start talking about them as a percentage of the salary cap.

Intuitively, this makes sense. The NBA is a salary-cap league; every financial decision is based on how much cap space a team has or doesn’t have. The collective bargaining agreement already accounts for this in a few ways. Max extensions for veterans and players coming off their rookie-scale deals, for example, are tied to a percentage of the cap. This summer, the Hornets’ LaMelo Ball got a contract that will guarantee him a salary of 25 percent of the salary cap in 2024, the year it kicks in, or up to 30 percent if he qualifies for that bump by making an All-NBA team.

How do you know a player is considered a superstar in the NBA? He has a contract that pays him 35 percent of the cap, like Stephen Curry and Nikola Jokić. That figure allows for an apples-to-apples comparison of each contract, whether it was signed in 2018 or will be agreed to in 2025.

But we can do this with every other deal across the league. The cap has more than doubled over the last decade (with a mighty big spike in 2016). By the end of the decade, the cap might be more than triple what it was a decade ago, a huge rise in such a short period of time. Salaries have risen steadily alongside the cap.

Take the deal Dillon Brooks just inked with the Houston Rockets. He is set to earn $86 million over four seasons; he’ll make $22.6 million for the 2023-24 season, according to a league source. The salary cap is $136.021 million this upcoming season, so he’s set to make 16.6 percent of the cap. If he had signed for the same percentage of the cap last summer, he would have received a deal that paid him $20.5 million in his first year. If he had signed for the same percentage in 2021, he would’ve made roughly $18.68 million in his first year. In the summer of 2014, pre-cap spike, that contract would have been the equivalent of a $10.49 million salary; in 2017, post-cap spike, it would be $16.59 million

Brooks and Lonzo Ball, currently halfway through a four-year, $80 million contract signed in 2021 with the Bulls, took roughly the same percentage of the cap in the first years of their contract. Plus, Brooks’ salary declines with each season, while Ball’s increased. In 2019, Julius Randle signed a contract that paid him $18 million in the first year — 16.5 percent of that season’s cap.

Let’s flip the timeline. In 2018, Aaron Gordon signed a four-year, $82 million deal with the Magic that paid him $21.59 million in his first season before his salary declined each of the subsequent seasons. It was worth 21.2 percent of the cap that year. This offseason, that first-year salary would have been inflated to $28.83 million. That’s roughly in the neighborhood of the salary-cap charge for Khris Middleton in 2023-24, when he will make $29.3 million in base salary and likely incentives as part of a three-year contract that can be worth as much as $102 million.

And remember, the further out each contract goes, the smaller it will be as a percentage of the cap. That’s significant. If a contract is supposed to pay a player the same amount in each season – say, $20 million – then each year, that $20 million will become more and more affordable as the cap rises. If the contract declines with each season while the cap goes up, as the Knicks did with Mitchell Robinson’s four-year, $60 million deal signed last summer, that makes the contract look better. Because of the possibility that the cap may rise the maximum 10 percent with each upcoming season as the NBA sees its new media rights deal kick in, even contracts with the highest allowable annual raises — at eight percent year-over-year — will not be able to grow as fast as the cap and will start to slowly decline as a percentage of the cap.

Another way to consider deals is to peg them to the non-taxpayer midlevel exception. That can be used as a level-setter in negotiations, and it’s not uncommon to see contracts come in at around that number. Under the old CBA, it was worth roughly 8.48 percent of the cap; under the new one, it’s 9.12 percent of the cap. In 2017-18, it was worth $8.406 million; this season, it will be worth $12.4 million. In 2017, the Spurs signed Rudy Gay to a two-year, $17 million deal, with a player option, starting at the midlevel. This month, Dennis Schröder agreed to a two-year, $26 million deal with Toronto, roughly at the midlevel, if not right at it.

Let’s check in with another deal that might have been a little surprising this summer: Max Strus to the Cavaliers for four years at $63 million. We don’t have the exact contract terms yet, but let’s assume he’s getting $14.49 million in Year 1, which is 10.7 percent of the cap. He is roughly a $15 million-a-year player now, but over the years, that much salary has less and less spending power for teams on the market. Consider the players who signed contracts that started for roughly $15 million in Year 1 of the deal:

The $15 Million Player Year-By-Year
2014-15 Dwyane Wade ($15 million)
2016-17 Pau Gasol ($15.5 million)
2018-19 Trevor Ariza ($15 million)
2020-21 Davis Bertans ($15 million)
2022-23 Tyus Jones ($15 million)
2023-24 Caris LeVert ($15.38 million)

Tying player contracts to a percentage of the cap instead of the salary itself might be the simplest way to conceptually deal with already ballooning salaries that will only grow bigger in years to come.

Jerami Grant signed a five-year, $160 million contract this offseason (with a player option), a number that caught a lot of eyes. He’ll make $27.59 million in the first season of that deal, according to a league source — 20.28 percent of the cap. In 2020, Fred VanVleet signed a four-year, $85 million deal that paid him $21.25 million in year one — 19.5 percent of the cap. In 2015, Goran Dragic signed a five-year, $85 million contract that paid him $14.78 million in year one — 21.1 percent of the cap. In 2025, if the cap goes up the maximum 10 percent each summer, a player signing for that same percent of the cap would make $33.38 million during the 2025-26 season — and be worth roughly $193.6 million over five seasons, assuming the same eight percent annual raises.

The Price of 22% of the Cap Is Going Up
2023-24 $30 million
2021-22 $24.79 million
2019-20 $24.07 million
2017-18 $21.86 million
2015-16 $15.44 million
2013-14 $12.94 million

Expect salaries to keep rising. If a supermax contract kicked in that summer, at that same salary-cap amount, that player would get about $57.6 million for the 2025-26 season — that’s more than $9 million more than Steph Curry made this season as the league’s highest-paid player. Then, it’ll keep going up $4.6 million each season for the length of the deal, amounting to a five-year deal worth nearly $334 million.

There’s going to be a lot of money swishing around the NBA in years to come — there already is — and the best way to judge each deal is to stop paying attention to the raw number and start looking at the percentage of the cap.

 

why wasn't he in the summer league? did @Yetti ever find the 2 players and dylan?

 

Last season Memphis with Dillon Brooks offensive on/off was a -1.3 points per 100 possessions. They were +3.0 on defense so his on/off was +1.7. Two seasons ago, Memphis was +5.0 with him on court on offense, and +2.4 with him on defense. So his on/off was +7.4 for the season. Three seasons ago Memphis was +6.0 with him on offense...

I feel like people people are just assuming Brooks' playoffs this past year is indicative of his entire career, when it's not even that indictive of just this past season. And if you look beyond this season he's not a minus offensive player for the team.

 

Fine, who the **** was Stone competing against to give Brooks 16.6% of the cap!?!? It should have been closed to a deal that gave him about 13% of the cap or so. I'm assuming 10% would have made it competitive for him to choose LA or Dallas since they only had the MLE to work with.

 

He’s had a negative OBPM every year of his career. 2 years ago he was bad, but that was his peak. Most years he’s horrific. If he can be a bad offensive player for the rockets that would be amazing, but I wouldn’t bet on it

 

It is harder to find Yetis and Bigfoots in the Wild.

 

well the bigfoot is sitting at tnt every game mumbling with ernie, chuck and jet. one down, one to go.

 

I appreciate the sentiment of the article, but no one just looks at the raw dollar numbers. Everyone takes the rising cap into consideration, even if just subconsciously. Otherwise, we'd hear people complain that CJ McCollum is getting paid more than prime Jordan and Kobe. Next season, more than 30 players will make more than peak MJ/Kobe. Players getting paid more now than in the past is not news.

I hate the justification of Brooks' contract. Yes, it would have been smaller in prior years. That doesn't make it a great deal today. 16.6% of the cap is an important chunk. Mozgov and Deng had contracts starting at $16M and $18M in 2017 respectively, similar percentage of cap as Brooks, but were albatross signings that ended up getting Jim Buss fired. Ryan Anderson's $18.7M contract was 19.4% of the 2017 cap and was terrible as well. With Brooks we clearly bid hard, offering a full four years to a free agent whose incumbent team was not interested in bringing him back. If he didn't have a notably terrible year I doubt the backlash would have been so bad. It wouldn't surprise me if Eason has taken the starting SF job sometime during the season, making the four year length hurt that much more.

 

Brooks was there in SL once the contract was fully announced.

 

You are forgetting the context in that the Rox had money to run and no one to give it to and the Rox have a bunch of rookies making rookie salaries. Personally I would have split that money up and gone for guys like Grant Williams and Taurean Prince but if Brooks is who Ime wants then ok.

As far as contracts go Brooks isn't as bad as Deng and Mozghov cuz he is only 27 and in his prime unlike Deng and Mozghov. Not sure if you remember but Deng was an all star when he was 27. Even if Eason gets the starting job within the year who cares? That just means we got a nice rotation at SF since we got an all defense guy as the bench.

 

That is the question many ask. I haven't heard a totally satisfactory answer yet.
But there are a host of reasons why it could have gone the way it did.

1- Brooks was on the fence and Houston needed an answer pronto given the other moves they had planned.
So they upped their offer to one that got him to commit right away.
2- There was another bidder, I heard the Lakers wanted him also.
3- There were rumors another team was going to enter the bidding war so....(see 1-)
4- Ime wanted him that bad

And who knows what else?

 

I don't know what OBPM is but your initial statement is that he's one of the worst offensive players in the game. So why has Memphis offense been better with him on the court in 2 of the past 3 seasons? Those things are inherently contractive. You can't be a terrible offensive player when your team is scoring more with you on the court.

If your entire argument is that OBPM doesn't like him, then you don't really have a good argument unless you can prove that NBA teams definitively believe it to be the end all be all of player offensive value.

 

I know the context. The team had cap space and needed to spend it. I just don't like the player and I don't like the deal. There were other free agents of a similar talent level that got either lower salary or fewer years. Bruce Brown, Austin Reaves, Grant Williams, Herb Jones, and Rui Hachimura got a fraction of the guaranteed salary Brooks did. We paid a big "Ime's guy" tax. I'm not even optimistic about his contribution to our team culture. I didn't see him as a team leader, true professional type in Memphis.

 

He could play with their better offensive players, similar to how someone like jokic or curry make everyone’s offensive ratings look good. Memphis is at 102 per 100 with him on the court for his career which is basically the worst there is. God i’m just so bummed he’s on the team and tired of even talking about him. Sucks we signed him, but it is what it is, i’m gonna hold out hope he can just be bad and not abominable

 

I don't have much hope that he will improve in terms of his shot selection, but I guess I am holding out some hope that as he hits his peak years in his late 20s, his shooting skills will improve so that his efficiency becomes better. We've seen that happen with some players in the past like Blake Griffin, Rajon Rondo, Trevor Ariza, etc. On the other hand, some guys pretty much just stay the same, so who knows.

If he can clear 35% three point shooting and .520 TS% I'll be more okay with the signing... still an overpay but at least he'll only be hurting us a little bit on offense.

 

I think (and hope) that by year 2 of the deal he’s barely playing. If Tari can’t pass him this season that’s a major problem long term IMO and would mean Tari is a bust, which i don’t believe is the case. The reason i’m so against the deal (other then him being awful) is the dead money for the last 2 years. I wouldn’t have cared if he got 2/60, that’s better then 4/86

 

I don't like the signing either and I'm no fan of Brooks and think he has negative impact on offense. But you seem to be locked in with OBPM. Why do you use one single metric to conclude that he is the WORST offensive player in the league. Do you use the same one thing to rank all players in the league? If you do and you are right, then you have done something nobody has ever done ( I mean kind of like achieving world peace).

Where do you get the idea that a single metric can judge accurately on an individual player in a team sport? For the record, I do believe that the ultimate judge of a player's impact to winning should be some kind of on/off points. But I also know that any +/- stat is full of noise because of all the variables created by the teammates he plays with and the opponents he plays against. Unlike baseball, basketball is a dynamic game that all 10 players on the court (not to mention the refs and coaches) have significant impact on the performance of each player. You have expended so much energy to defend a view that is based on a single number. That's pretty weird for a guy who is supposed to understand math.

 

Poor way to spend money though.

 

You're right that may be the case. But you still haven't shown anything definitive to say he's a bad offensive player. Everyone knows he's an inefficient shooter. Everyone knows he put up too many bad shots. Plenty of players have been good offensive players in a team context despite those limitations. Everyone agrees he's not an efficient scorer. But that is totally different from being a bad offensive player, especially someone who's basically a 4th option on his team.