Get updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
USA TODAY Sports Media Group
NBA rookie extensions for Alperen Sengun, Jalen Green and other stars are about to come down to the wire
By Mike D. Sykes, II,
2 hours ago
Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter.Subscribe hereto get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew?Leave your questions, comments and concernsthrough this brief reader survey. Now, here’s Mike Sykes
Happy Friday, folks! Welcome back to Layup Lines. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you’ve had a fantastic week.
The NBA season is almost upon us! Things officially start on October 22, but even before that, we’ll have media day coming soon at the end of September, and then, before you know it, training camp will be here.
That’s why it’s time to start talking about contract extensions.
Every year, before the season starts, teams must decide whether to sign their up-and-coming players on rookie deals to new contract extensions. The window for negotiations this season was from July 6 and extends to October 21, just a day before the season begins. Once the deadline passes, teams won’t be able to negotiate and their players will enter restricted free agency.
That includes big names like Alperen Sengun, Jalen Green (the former No. 2 overall pick), Jalen Suggs, Jonathan Kuminga and Josh Giddey. Those are a lot of key players who could be entering into lame-duck years next season.
But for names like Green, Sengun and even Kuminga, it feels more likely that their teams will just revisit things next offseason. Those players will get a chance to prove themselves in new, bigger roles and their teams will make determinations from there.
It’s a risky bet. And there’s a chance they may enter a restricted free agency and find money out there that will have them on another team next season. But that seems to be a risk these teams are willing to take.
There’s still just over a month left until the deadline, so these deals could still happen. But with the way things are looking right now, we might be in for a wild finish to the NBA’s offseason.
What’s happening with AJ Griffin?
You rarely see top draft picks flame out of the league after just a couple of seasons, but it seems that might be happening with AJ Griffin.
Seeing that was flat-out shocking. Griffin was once considered one of the best high school players in the country and was a top recruit at Duke. Injuries have really derailed his career since.
“Griffin, who was a five-star recruit coming out of high school and the top-rated player in the state of New York, was a McDonald’s All-American. He played college basketball for the Duke Blue Devils and was named ACC All-Freshman in 2022.
While he missed part of his one-and-done season due to injuries, he was then selected by the Atlanta Hawks with the No. 16 overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft.
After averaging 19.5 minutes across 72 games as a rookie, Griffin did not get as much playing time for the Hawks during his second professional season. It ended with 8.5 minutes per game across just 20 appearances.”
I don’t know if injuries are the problem for Griffin here or if there’s something else we don’t know about going on. All I know is that it stinks to hear that this might be the end of the road for him playing in the NBA. He’s such a talented player.
Get updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency:
Our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. As a platform hosting over 100,000 pieces of content published daily, we cannot pre-vet content, but we strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation.
Comments / 0