At the beginning of the summer, there were four major players in the NBA restricted free agent market. Cam Thomas signed his qualifying offer with Brooklyn to enter unrestricted free agency next year. Josh Giddey signed a four-year, $100 million deal to remain with the Chicago Bulls long-term. Now, Jonathan Kuminga is the latest domino to fall.
Kuminga’s salary will be $22.5 million for the upcoming season, and he waived his no-trade clause as part of the deal. It’s an interesting middle ground between the two parties who had undergone a contentious summer of negotiations. Kuminga gets around $15 million over the qualifying offer, but potentially gives up the ability to enter unrestricted free agency next summer if Golden State trades him and his next employer decides to retain him under next season’s team option (although getting $26 million next season is hardly some worst-case scenario).
Naturally, Philadelphia 76ers fans are left wondering what it all means for the last of those four restricted free agents: Quentin Grimes. The deadline for Grimes to sign his qualifying offer is October 1 at 11:59pm ET (a little over a day away as of this writing). There hasn’t appeared to be any significant developments between the Sixers and Grimes’ camp in coming to any sort of long-term agreement. The latest reporting hinted that a one-year balloon deal might be the likeliest outcome, which would somewhat mirror the Kuminga development, minus the second-year team option.
I don’t think we’re going to see anywhere close to $22.5 million for Grimes this season, but some sort of bump up from the $8.7 million qualifying offer would benefit both sides. Still, no one would have predicted Grimes would be the last guy unsigned from this restricted free agency group and go this long. So we’ll wait one more day and see what awaits us in October.
