NBA free agency 2024: The 7 best contracts of the summer, starring Paul George

We brought you the NBA’s seven worst contracts of the summer, so what would we be if we did not bring you the seven best? We would be the worst. And we obviously are not the worst. We are the best at this.

Listen: It is hard being right about every contract. It makes every general manager around the league uncomfortable how right we are. “Why do they have to be so right all the time?” they say. It is humbling.

Seriously, though, this is just, like, my opinion, man.

And I wanted to talk about some good deals. Not in the sense that these seven players just guaranteed themselves a combined $489.8 million. Good on them, but that is not what I am talking about. I want to talk about who changed his team’s fortunes, how much and in what ways. Let us talk some basketball.

THE 2024 OFFSEASON’S 7 BEST CONTRACTS

Contract: 4 years, $212 million

Percentage of the 2024-25 salary cap: 35%

2023-24 (74 games): 22.6 PTS (47/41/91), 5.2 REB, 3.5 AST, 33.8 MIN

Advanced: 19.3 PER, 61.3 TS%, .140 WS/48, 3.2 BPM, 3.3 VORP

Cost Per Win: $7,246,059.59

No other move in free agency transformed a team from a pretender to a contender.

The Sixers created maximum salary cap space this summer, and then some, almost all of which was going to disappear once Tyrese Maxey signed his five-year, $204 million rookie-scale contract extension. They desperately needed another dimension, as their first-round playoff exit laid bare, and this was their only chance to find it. They did not have the assets to outbid other trade suitors for an All-Star-caliber player.

The presence of Maxey and Joel Embiid meant that player better be a wing — a two-way one at that. The question was not whether the Sixers should sign George. He fit their description exactly. It was what they would do if they could not sign him. There was DeMar DeRozan and Klay Thompson and … who else exactly changed teams? The Sixers might have been left picking up the pieces of Tobias Harris, Nicolas Batum, Buddy Hield and De’Anthony Melton — the same guys who participated in that first-round playoff exit.

The 76ers got the third star they were looking for. (Photo by Jim Cowsert/NBAE via Getty…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba-free-agency-2024-the-7-best-contracts-of-the-summer-starring-paul-george-150815008.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-07-11 15:08:15

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