The 10 Best and Worst Contracts of 2016 NBA Free Agency

Which teams scored big, and just how bad was Mozgov?

The dust is finally settling on NBA free agency, but not before teams doled (short for Dolan-ed) out over $2 billion in contracts just since July 1st. The huge cap spike and lack of smoothing over time led to a whole lot of money exchanging hands this summer. If you’re a player, any contract with a lot of 0s is bound to look best to you. But teams are trying to build the best roster they can under a cap, so the right deals are key.

The 2016 NBA offseason is just about wrapped. The draft is done, players have signed big deals, and NBA Summer League is over.

So which 2016 free agent contracts were the best, and which were the worst?

Best — Superstars on max deals

GSW Kevin Durant … BOS Al Horford

Duh.

When you can add a top 30 player to your team, you should generally do so at any cost. When it’s Kevin Durant, you should remove the word “should” from that last sentence. This isn’t rocket science.

Worst — Very good players on max deals

TOR DeMar DeRozan, MEM Mike Conley, and WAS Bradley Beal

This trio just signed for 5 years each and a whopping $426m, including the biggest contract in NBA history for Mike Conley.

Yes that Mike Conley the borderline top ten point guard coming off an Achilles injury that will be 29 years old when the season starts, that Brad Beal that has averaged 53 starts a season over his career, and that DDR that shoots 28% on threes in his career and an even worse 39% overall in the playoffs.

These are the sort of deals that mid-market teams feel they have to sign, yet they’re the very ones that will cripple at least 2 of their 3 teams in a few years.

Best — Very good players on below max deals

CHA Nicolas Batum 5/$120m… ORL Evan Fournier 5/$85m

And this is the sort of deals those mid-market teams should be pushing for. Bird rights allow teams to offer their guys more than anyone else, an extra incentive to stay with the team that drafted you — but that doesn’t mean you have to do the absolute max.

Each of these deals saved their team a few million dollars a year over the next few years, enough to pay for a useful role player or keep another good player around in the future.

Worst — DAL Harrison Barnes on a max deal

Dallas managed to bid against itself, throwing a monster 4/$94m offer at a guy whose team had renounced and that no one else had shown any real interest in. Barnes is not as bad as we like to believe — he’s on the Olympic team for a reason — but that still doesn’t mean Dallas needed to offer him so much either.

Best — ATL Dwight Howard 3/$70m

It’s en vogue to hate on Dwight Howard, and he’s earned it the past few years. But he’s also a surefire Hall of Fame center that can still be a dominant force when healthy, motivated, and in the right system.

Atlanta can’t control his health, but they can certainly put him in a much better spot to succeed than his horrible Rockets and Lakers situations. How about an athletic team that will run and feed the big man? Maybe a strong defensive team that will use Howard’s strengths at their core instead of abandoning him to do the whole job?

And on top of all that, the Hawks got Dwight on a $20m discount from what he could have signed for. Howard took the #8 in Atlanta, the biblical number for a new creation, a fresh start. It could pay off.

Worst — LAL Timofey Mozgov 4/$64m

Mozgov is the same age as Dwight and approximately 100% less likely to make the Hall of Fame, yet he got only $6m less. Why? Because he got to play with LeBron James for a good half season.

Moz struggled with injuries last year, and it’s hard to see how a plodding center fits this young fast Lakers team even if he does get healthy. Worse, the Lakers rushed to offer this deal at midnight July 1st when the market clearly showed there were more bigs available than sports needed.

They could’ve spent $2m a year extra to get Bismack Biyombo, a younger, healthier, better fit guy with upside. Or grabbed one of these guys…

Best — Bargain bigs

MIN Cole Aldrich 3/$22m… DEN Darrell Arthur 3/$23m… POR Festus Ezeli 2/$15m… BKN Justin Hamilton 2/$6m

Aldrich, Arthur, Ezeli, and Hamilton will combine to make just $2m more than Mozgov, yet all four are useful modern big men that all fit the wide-open NBA in 2016 better. Athletic bigs will always be useful, especially if they’re young and play good defense. The market was saturated with talented bigs this year and there were never going to be enough starting spots for them all.

Worst — Former Bulls on long contracts

NYK Joakim Noah 4/$72m… LAL Luol Deng 4/$72m

History tells us that the Knicks and Lakers are getting about 65 games from these guys this season, a number of which they’ll play through injury.

When healthy, Noah is a force on defense both on and off the ball and a great facilitator and useful scorer on offense. When healthy, Deng can be a star on ball defender and a stretch 4 in attack. Unfortunately it’s unclear how long it’s been since either played healthy, or if they’ll ever really do so again.

Noah and Deng are an excellent veteran leaders that play hard and set a great tone for a young team. You can give them the first 2 years at $36m if you need a guy like that. But adding the third and especially fourth years on the deal will likely prove to be devastating for both teams.

Best — UTA Joe Johnson, 2/$22m

And this is how you sign a talented veteran to add leadership and moxie to your squad without cannibalizing it long term. Johnson is already pretty old and doesn’t have much left, but he looked good in the playoffs and his game has aged well. He should add a nice scoring punch and some leadership off the bench — and if he doesn’t, it’s a mistake that disappears quickly.

Worst — CHI Dwyane Wade 2/$48m

Is Wade worth $24m a year at this point of his career? Probably not, but maybe if he comes to Chicago rejuvenated and in shape. We just saw how valuable a healthy and motivated Wade can be in these 2016 playoffs.

But what exactly is Wade supposed to bring to this Bulls team? The summer goals were to get younger and more athletic and to give the keys to Jimmy Butler… and bringing in Wade is 0 for 3. Now the Bulls have three guys that want to control the ball so this move could hurt them now and again later if they frustrate Butler enough that he wants out.

This one is a lose-lose. Why did Wade left Miami over $7.5m difference, and how is he supposed to help the Bulls?

Best — Brooklyn RFA offer sheets

Tyler Johnson and Allen Crabbe

Brooklyn is hurting. They didn’t get their #3 pick this year, don’t own the rights to either of their next first round picks, and only have one legit NBA player on the roster — and Brook Lopez probably won’t be around long either.

So there’s no reason they’ll be good but there’s also no incentive to tank. Given that, I applaud what they were trying to do here. They put out a hefty offer to a pair of restricted free agents, first to Tyler Johnson then to Allen Crabbe, trying to find some young talent to infuse the roster. Both Miami and Portland swallowed hard and matched deals that are not as nice for them as they’d have been for Brooklyn, but it was worth a shot anyway.

Worst — Replacement level point guards

ORL DJ Augustin 4/$29m, PHI Jerryd Bayless 3/$27m

These deals make no sense. There were precious few PGs available this year and every team needs at least 2 or 3 good handlers, but these deals don’t make sense anyway. There’s no way that Augustin or Bayless are that much better than any of 100 other guys Orlando or Philly could have signed out of the Summer League or D League. And honestly, they might well be worse.

These guys should’ve been on minimum contracts. This is just wasteful.

Best — Cheap useful point guards

BKN Jeremy Lin 3/$36m… LAC Austin Rivers 3/$35m

Everyone loves to make fun of GM Doc Rivers, but signing his son to this deal is very justifiable when you put it next to the Augustin and Bayless contracts. Austin Rivers is still just 23 and has developed well. At this point he’s one of the better backup PGs in the league and is actually a fairly valuable point guard asset, totally worth that deal.

As for Lin, he was the best PG on the market outside of Mike Conley so this was one of the best deals in the summer. In hindsight, he could have probably got almost twice as much money from Brooklyn or another team.

Worst — LAC Jamal Crawford 3/$42m

Crawford was nearly paid his age, since he’s already 36. This is just way too much money for a guy that age, especially when there’s no reason to believe he was going to see this type of money elsewhere and when Crawford has a history of shooting his teams both into and out of games.

The Clippers didn’t have a lot of options this summer other than resigning their own guys, so they did, but they didn’t have to spend so much.

Best — New Orleans Pelicans role players

E’Twaun Moore 4/$34m… Langston Galloway 2/$10m… Tim Frazier 2/$4m

Anthony Davis is the forgotten superstar of the NBA, a legitimate top 10 guy that has the talent to be top 1 someday. Unfortunately he’s been on a team with a bunch of guys that fit horribly around him.

This summer the Pels wisely let Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson sign big deals elsewhere and opted to sign cheap role players to help Davis out instead. Moore gives New Orleans badly needed perimeter defense and leadership, and Galloway and Frazier offer cheap upside and shooting.

New Orleans did well to avoid the same mistake Cleveland made during LeBron’s initial stay. They should build slowly around their star and pay for only the right pieces when they come.

Worst — Former Pelicans in Houston

Ryan Anderson 4/$80m, Eric Gordon 4/$53m

Anderson has missed at least 16 games all but one season in his career, and Eric Gordon has played in just over half of the games the last 5 years. Both of them are very injury prone, neither plays a lick of defense, and neither could win with Anthony Davis who is better than James Harden.

Not sure what Morey is trying to build in Houston, but even one of these guys on the court with Harden dooms the defense, let alone both. Houston has hoarded cap space for so long — now they blow $123m on this?

Best — Bargain Hornet role players

CHA Marvin Williams 4/$55m… NYK Courtney Lee 4/$50m

Both of these guys are very valuable role players, starters on a good team. Lee is the perfect fit in New York and could save a roster that was put together very questionably before that, and Williams has developed into a solid 3-and-D big that adds versatility and flexibility to his Hornets team.

Neither of these guys make the highlight reel most nights. Instead they do the dirty work to ensure that their teammates can.

Worst — POR Evan Turner 4/$70m

Take everything just said about Lee and Williams and flip it upside down and you’ve got Evan Turner. The Villain has always been an incredibly inefficient player and one that hunts his own stats usually at the cost of team success.

He got a bit better at it last year playing in the perfect situation in Boston under a good coach and still wasn’t worth half of this contract there. In Portland, Turner is a terrible fit. Every touch he has is just one less touch for star young guards Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum.

Best — Useful players on minimum deals

GSW Zaza Pachulia, GSW David West, LAC Mo Speights, HOU Nene, MIA Willie Reid, ATL Jarrett Jack, MIA Dion Waiters

Any useful player on a minimum deal is a massive steal in this NBA landscape. Some of these guys had to take the minimum to play for the teams that recruited them, like Speights in LA and Zaza and West in Oakland. Many NBA executives were supposedly even madder about the Zaza signing than the Durant one. You can bet Zaza and West will be worth every penny of the $4.5m they’ll make combined this year.

Worst — ORL Jeff Green 1/$15m

This didn’t make sense for either end. Green isn’t going to get enough minutes to help himself in Orlando but he’ll play just enough to screw Mario Hezonja or Aaron Gordon out of developmental minutes.

Jeff Green has been terrible and actively hurt the Thunder, Celtics, Grizzlies, and Clippers. Looks like the the Magic are next.

Never sign Jeff Green.

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