Tough for players who were young or those with proud dads. If the asking price on the extension was team-friendly, the what-if maybe could have been better than KJ's current reality. Teams after the Rockets 2023-24 (Clippers) 2023-25 (76ers) 2024-25 (Jazz) He's age 24, young in human age. But average career of a NBA player is 4-5 years. KJ's a 2nd rounder who started in 2020, so he has clocked in those 5 yrs of experience already. By law of averages, he technically due to fall out of the league. The pay day ----------------------------------- HOU 2020-21 - 898k HOU 2021-22 - 1.5m HOU 2022-23 - 1.7m ----------------------------------- PHI 2023-24 - 1.9m UTH 2024-25 - 7.9m ----------------------------------- He got a nice final pay bump with Utah last year, but UTH didn't keep him this go around. Ainge's son came in cleared out room for more playing time for their youngsters, getting rid of guys like Sexton (and KJ). If KJ agreed and stayed in HOU, even if becoming a Tate or Landale, those guys while being a walking Hinkie special for Rockets ('optionality'), still collected 6-8m per year. If KJ settled for $10m per, for two years, that's still money he could have banked. He's a nice kid, I do wish him well.
Even if he only made the first $898K he'd still be about 10-15 years ahead of the rest of us on average, especially at age 24. Enjoy your next gig!
I think 40 mil is more than feasible if he'd stayed and grown in the Udoka system. 4 years 40 mil is only 10mil a year, that's not a big contract in modern NBA.
The Rockets didn't think that highly of him. This is the reason his father whined. Sure, you can make the argument if the Rockets really valued KJ, then $40 million might have been possible. But they did not, that's why it turned negative and they traded him for pocket change. IMO, if things hadn't gone negative, they would have kept him. Dad should have kept his mouth shut.
Oh I agree 100% I'm just saying it's not out of the realm of possibility that KJ developed into a serviceable player under Ime if he'd stayed as one of our end of the bench guys and been able to earn 40 mil in a contract. 40 mil aint **** in modern NBA tbh.
He absolutely should play overseas if this is the end of his NBA career. Still a great salary, lower cost of living, and still get to play basketball for a living. That is a win.
Not only that, he's at the low-end obviously but NBA caliber players are generally the best players in the European leagues. With NBA Europe in a few years if he's got no shot at the real league any more then he could do a lot worse than signing for a big EU club who regularly compete in Euroleague to build his name for when they try and conjure British teams out of nowhere. A lot of those fringe NBA guys could be seeing decent paydays when they pump money in to try and create a market out of almost nothing, and it's a lot easier culture transition going from an English speaking country full of American pop culture to another English speaking country still full of American pop culture haha.
Or maybe he could adapt and become a practice dummy NBA teams like having around. But if KJ really loves basketball and has any ambition left, may as well try overseas.
