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What type of deals will the four remaining restricted free agents sign?

It’s a land of parched ground. What scant vegetation persists wilts under oppressive heat. It’s a barren wasteland, and through it, four young men wander in search of millions. Welcome to restricted free agency.

Not to be dramatic, but restricted free agency is a barren wasteland. The mechanisms in place artificially suppress a player’s market and make what should be the biggest contract of their career feel like a treacherous journey into the unknown. Yes, they’ll find the treasure they desire, but were all the obstacles and hardships really worth it?

The architect of all this hardship stems from the qualifying offer, which makes a player a restricted free agent. Once a qualifying offer is extended to an eligible player, the team gains the right of first refusal, and any contract presented to the player (aka an offer sheet) can then be matched. A player can always accept the qualifying offer, and while it functionally provides a no-trade clause, it’s only a one-year deal at 135% of their previous year's salary, which is not exactly the raise or long-term security they’re looking for.

To make matters worse, to extend an offer sheet (i.e, sign a restricted free agent away from their previous team), the team actually has to have enough cap space available at that exact moment. Unsurprisingly, teams don’t love building their offseason around offer sheets because there’s a good chance they won’t even end up with the player, and by the time the dust settles, they’ll have a bunch of cap space and all the prettiest free agents will have been scooped up.

Even in the most normal of times, restricted free agents straight up do not have a good time. But in the year 2025, when few teams have cap space, the market has largely ignored them. However, becoming a restricted free agent is itself an indictment of the player. Generally, the players are good, but never great. And it’s very likely there’s already a sizeable chasm between the team and player over what their next contract should look like. Unfortunately, this is precisely the predicament Josh Giddey, Jonathan Kuminga, Quentin Grimes, and Cameron Thomas find themselves in. So let’s see what would be a fair deal for the qualified quartet.

Josh Giddey

Of all the unrestricted free agents, Giddey, presumably, has the most leverage. The Chicago Bulls traded Alex Caruso to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Giddey and nothing else. The nothing else part is important because if Giddey just leaves for nothing in a year, then the Bulls will have traded a championship-altering role player for functionally nothing. Following that logic, the Bulls, presumably, traded Caruso for Giddey and nothing else because they were intent on locking him up for the long term. I’m not suggesting the Bulls should give him the max, but not retaining Giddey at a reasonable figure would make the Caruso trade– which is already a total debacle because, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but they got no draft picks, even though the Thunder have so many draft picks they could take care of the league’s expansion plans all on their own– look so incredibly incompetent.

Now, Giddey is an interesting player. He has a real high-level NBA skill in his passing, great positional size (6’8), which leads to excellent rebounding, and he hit a career high percentage of his threes (37.8%) this past season. Another factor working in Giddey’s favor is his age. He won’t turn 23 until February, making him younger than upcoming rookie Nique Clifford. The success rate of players who average 14.6 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 7.2 assists per game in their age-22 season is exceptionally high, and if it were 2004, he’d be locked up already.

Unfortunately, Giddey also has some serious flaws. Despite his size, he’s a bad defender, struggles to create advantages in the half-court off the dribble, and one season of decent shooting does not make a decent shooter. On a bad team, Giddey is tailor-made to rack up stats, accrue double-digit Jason Kidd memorial triple-doubles, and help your team win between 32 and 38 games. On a good team, he soaks up minutes and stats, and the coaching staff realizes all your best lineups are mysteriously when he sits.

The issue has little to do with talent and overall basketball ability, and much more to do with the value of actually having a player with Giddey’s combination of talent and traits. He’s a player who is good with the ball in his hands, something that is actually quite rare, but he isn’t so good with the ball that it raises you to a playoff caliber team, and his inability to be effective off the ball is the exact reason the Thunder traded him in the first place.

This conundrum is probably what’s holding negotiations up. Giddey and his representatives can rightly point to his production and age, and say, “This guy’s good. Pay him good.” While the Bulls can just as easily point to his flaws and say, “I know we look like we want to win 37 games every year, but maybe once, we’d like to accidentally win 46.”

The truth is, both sides have merit. Giddey is a good player right now, and if he develops as a scorer and/or defender, he could be borderline great. If he largely remains the same player he is, he’s still a serviceable offensive engine that can keep the team warm until a true franchise player arrives. I think a deal worth 15% of the salary cap ($23.2 million) in 2025-26 that goes for four years with 8% raises would be fair value for both sides. As much as Giddey might want more money, he’s the type of player who needs a team to commit to him for him to reach his ceiling. And four years and $103.9 million sounds like a real commitment that also won’t completely destroy your next few years if things go belly-up.

Josh Giddey: 4yr, $103.9 million

Jonathan Kuminga

A question you may have is, “Why don’t more teams send players to restricted free agency to get better deals?” And the answer is, have you seen the toxic waste catastrophe in the bay? Like seriously, this has gotten nastier than his summer league nickname– The Kum Bucket. All jokes aside, the relationship between Kuminga and the Warriors has basically been a slowly percolating ecological disaster from the start.

The Warriors, aka team light years ahead, drafted Kuminga seventh overall in the 2021 NBA draft. He and James Wiseman were the two pillars of the big-brain two timelines plan that saw LaMelo Ball and Franz Wagner taken directly after both– okay, so maybe they’re not light years ahead, but they’re definitely streets ahead.

As a rookie, Kuminga played sparingly while the Warriors, relying heavily on veterans, won the title. As a second-year player, Kuminga played a bit more, but he still only averaged 20.8 minutes per game. In his third season, he started 46 out of 74 games, averaged 26.3 minutes per game, and set a career high in points per game at 16.1. So, was year four the year Kuminga was destined to take the next step and make all the two timelines jokes look stupid? No, it was not.

Kuminga is coming off a season derailed by injuries that saw his minutes per game drop to 24.3, his scoring fall to 15.3 points per game, while posting an absolutely abysmal effective field goal percentage of 49.5%; the league average was 54.3%. This was less of a platform year and more of a plank year for Kuminga, and now he and the Warriors are stuck in a mutually assured destruction pact.

According to reports, Kuminga has offers from the Suns and Kings “approaching” four years and $90 million, but the Warriors have only offered him a two-year deal worth $45 million with a second-year team option and language that would remove his de facto no-trade clause to preserve his bird rights. To put it bluntly, the Warriors' offer is about as close as you can come to giving someone the finger, while simultaneously offering them $22.5 million. Their offer would functionally turn him into a human trade chip.

Fortunately, we have sourcing on two contracts that are “approaching” $90 million, which gives us a real figure to work with. Let’s be generous and say the deals are worth $90 million and that there are 8% raises. That nets out to a $20.08 million salary in 2025-26, which is almost 13% of the salary cap. As it pertains to first-year salary, the Warriors’ offer is right in line with the market, but it’s everything after that that is turning these negotiations into a circus.

I think the best course of action is for the Warriors to either turn that second year into a player option or offer him a three-year, $65 million contract with a third-year team option. The reality is the Warriors have done basically nothing to help Kuminga’s career. He was dropped in a situation where they couldn’t afford to play him big minutes, or through his mistakes, and he’s now in a hostage situation where the Warriors are hoping to do a prisoner swap at some undesignated future date. Kuminga hasn’t done all that much to warrant a $90 million commitment, but the talent is clearly there, and there is nothing NBA teams like to do more than overpay wings for the player they wish they were.

If the Warriors don’t change their stance, I think Kuminga should just accept the qualifying offer and take control of his career next offseason. As the unwanted stepchild of the two timelines era, Kuminga’s top priority should be finding a franchise that believes in him. My guess is the Warriors will bridge the gap and present Kuminga with an offer that isn’t abjectly insulting, but with enough mechanisms that it will allow him to be traded.

Jonathan Kuminga: 3yrs, $68 million, third-year player option

Quentin Grimes

For a player who allegedly fills such a coveted skillset, a 3-and-D wing/guard, Grimes has been given up on by almost every team that has employed him. First drafted by the New York Knicks, Grimes played sparingly as an older rookie before bursting onto the scene in his second season and establishing himself as a promising young player. Somehow, in his third season, he managed to simultaneously shoot far more efficiently and lose playing time. The Knicks sent him to Detroit mid-season, where a knee injury limited him to six games in his new home. That offseason, Detroit traded Grimes to Dallas for Tim Hardaway Jr., who is currently on a veteran minimum, and then Dallas flipped him to the Sixers for Caleb Martin at the trade deadline, presumably because they didn’t want to pay him.

Then, Grimes caught fire on a decimated Sixers team. Over 28 games, he averaged 21.9 points per game on a 55.9% effective field goal percentage, and made these negotiations far more complicated. In the span of four seasons, Grimes has been functionally dumped three times, but he has also shown to be a solid defender, floor spacer, and scorer, although rarely all at the same time. At 25 years old, Grimes is smack in the middle of his prime, and this may be his one chance at a massive contract. I’m not surprised that these negotiations have taken a long time, but what does a fair deal even look like?

It’s safe to say that Grimes is not a 20-points-per-game scorer, but he’s also far better than the 8.5 points per game he averaged over his first three seasons. As a 3-point shooter, he has been sporadic, but overall, he’s a career 37.5% shooter. Okay, so he’s a solid scorer who can shoot some threes, but that skillset on its own doesn’t get you paid. What you think about his defense is the swing skill, and his defensive impact is up in the air.

Last season, Dunks and Threes’ Estimated Plus-Minus (EPM) had his expected defensive contributions come in at -1.8 points per 100 possessions, which put him in the fourth percentile. That’s not Trae Young bad, but it’s the same rating that Collin Sexton, who was traded with a second-round pick for the corpse of Jusuf Nurkic, managed. Now, Grimes did spend over a third of the season dragging the decrepit Sixers offense. His defense cratering when thrust into a higher usage offensive role isn’t ideal, but it’s understandable and expected to a degree. However, it’s hard for me to see a player next to Collin Sexton and Bojan Bogdanovic in defensive impact and get excited.

When you factor in Grimes’ somewhat checkered injury history, inconsistent 3-point shooting, and declining defense, I just don’t see how you could offer him anywhere close to $20 million a year, which is a stark contrast to the reported $25 million per season he’s seeking, or at least negotiating from. I think $15 million would be the absolute maximum first-year salary I’d be comfortable with, and a deal starting at $12 million would be ideal. For the Sixers, the length of the deal doesn’t really matter if the starting salary is in the $12 to $15 million range, and working with Grimes on the total years and options would be a good way to bridge the gap between his insane expectations and reality.

If Grimes truly believes he’s a $25 million a year player, then he should be looking to hit free agency as soon as possible. A three-year, $38.8 million deal with a third-year player option would be a good compromise. Grimes can guarantee that he triples his career earnings, and if he is a $25 million player, then he can opt out and hit free agency while still in his prime. Since the Sixers already have Tyrese Maxey, Jared McCain, and now VJ Edgecombe, keeping Grimes long-term is more of a luxury than a necessity, and if a one-plus-one is what it takes, they shouldn’t have any qualms.

Quentin Grimes: 3yrs, $38.8 million, third-year player option

Cam Thomas

The final restricted free agent is also the most difficult to parse. Cam Thomas has one borderline elite skill–scoring– and it just happens to be the skill that translates best to dollar signs. Last offseason, I delved into what traits correlated best to rookie scale extensions, and the single best predictor was points per game. Thomas is coming off a season where he averaged 24.0 points per game on league-average true shooting, which should lead to a significant financial commitment from the Nets, but instead, it has been the root of the two’s impasse.

According to reports, Thomas’ camp expected an offer in the range of 4 years and $100 million, but the Nets countered with a two-year, $24 million deal, containing a team option in the second season. Now, this is how negotiations generally go. Both sides present something incredibly unreasonable, and then they work to bridge the gap. Thomas will turn 24 in October and, despite an injury-truncated season, has averaged 22.9 points per game over the past two seasons, encompassing 91 games. Players who can average 20 points per game get paid, and $25 million a season is hardly a max contract. While I don’t believe Thomas is worth $25 million a season, he has done enough to ask for it, without getting laughed off the stage.

The Nets’ offer represents a relatively rapid shift in the way NBA teams evaluate scorers. Take Collin Sexton as an example, over his age 21 and 22 seasons, he played 125 games and averaged 22.5 points per game on league average true shooting. That’s not a dead ringer for Thomas, but it’s close. Coming off an injury-ravaged fourth season, Sexton signed a four-year, $72 million contract that accounted for 13.34% of the salary cap in its first season. Sexton, who I swear I’m not picking on, was literally traded along with a second-round pick for Jusuf Nurkic, despite averaging 17.5 points per game on an adjusted true shooting of 104 (100 is league average) and 23.9 points per 36 minutes.

While Thomas is asking for $28 million more than Sexton, his first-year salary, assuming 8% annual raises, would be $22.3 million and account for 14.4% of the salary cap in 2025-26. However, the Nets view Thomas as a player worth basically 7.5% of the salary cap, and with no guarantees beyond a year. The score first, second, and only guard has seen their value around the league nosedive. It isn’t just Sexton and Thomas who are having a hard time of it; Norman Powell was moved for next to nothing, Gary Trent Jr and Tim Hardaway Jr. signed for the minimum, and Anfernee Simons, along with two second-round picks, landed the Trail Blazers Jrue Holiday’s onerous contract.

The landscape has changed so dramatically for a player like Thomas that the Nets’ offer doesn’t seem all that out of sorts. If Thomas wants to get paid, he needs to prove he’s more than just a high-volume scorer. Dunks and Threes graded his defensive impact at -1.9 points per 100 possessions, a second percentile figure, and his combination of a 32.6% usage percentage and 22.9% assist percentage puts him at the very bottom of playmaking among high usage guards. The other players with a similar usage to assist ratio are either significantly better defenders– Anthony Edwards and Jaylen Brown– or are significantly more efficient scorers– Donovan Mitchell.

I think the most likely outcome for Thomas is a very short contract at around $20 million, or a longer contract that’s much closer to the Nets’ annual average valuation of $12 million. These two contracts represent what he’ll likely mean to the Nets going forward. Next season, they’ll need him to soak up offensive responsibilities, but long term, he’s likely viewed as a sixth man. A two-year, $39 million deal with a second-year team option would likely scratch both sides' itch, while a four-year, $50 million deal, with a fourth-year player option, would provide Thomas long-term security and the chance to hit free agency while in his prime.

Cam Thomas: 2yrs, $39 million, second-year team option or 4yrs, $50 million, fourth-year player option

For any inquiries about work, discussion, and the like, you can email me at nevin.l.brown@gmail.com.