The Houston Rockets agreed to two contract extensions on Monday, the deadline for teams to decide whether to extend the contracts of first-round picks from the 2021 NBA Draft. One of them was, by far, my favorite extension of the day. The other was, also by far, my least favorite of the day.
Let’s start with the good news: Extending Alperen Şengün for five years, $185 million is an undeniable victory for the Rockets organization — even if it does have a player option in the fifth year. Şengün has proved himself to be the steal of the 2021 draft, a creative big man selected outside of the lottery with serious skill. He has, to this point, been inarguably the most productive offensive player from the class. With all due respect to Scottie Barnes, Franz Wagner and other top selections, Şengün’s 21-point, nine-rebound, five-assist campaign last year is the best season in terms of offensive production that any player has achieved within that class.
Had Şengün been selected earlier or potentially to a different team, it could have been an automatic decision to give him a rookie max extension, worth 25 percent of the salary cap starting in 2025-26. However, he was selected at No. 16 by the Rockets, who had a truly absurd amount of leverage to wield in negotiations largely because of those two factors. Because he was selected outside of the lottery, Şengün’s cap hold for this coming offseason had he chosen to enter restricted free agency would have been a paltry $16.3 million. Had the Rockets chosen a different pathway on Monday — like the Philadelphia 76ers did just a season ago with Tyrese Maxey, a decision that led to them acquiring Paul George this offseason — the team could have maintained its cap hold on Şengün and kept his restricted free agency rights, and then also had enough money to sign or trade for a max-contract-level player without moving any salary. The team would have been forced to either not exercise its team option on Fred VanVleet or (if it hadn’t signed him on Monday) given up its restricted free-agency rights on Jalen Green, but the flexibility existed. The Rockets could have attempted to bring in a star, then gone over the cap to sign Şengün if they’d been successful.
Alperen Şengün has been one of the most productive players from the 2021 draft class. (Thomas Shea / Imagn Images)
Therefore, if Şengün wanted the certainty of getting paid before the season started to mitigate the injury risk that comes with every basketball season, the only way it made sense for Houston to come to terms was if Şengün chose not to take his full max contract. They needed a reason not to wait. Şengün’s max (assuming he does not make the All-NBA team this season) was right around $225 million, depending on where the salary cap officially lands. By signing this deal, he’s essentially passing up on potentially $40 million over the next five years. The tradeoff is that he is now guaranteed to make at least $200 million over his first nine years in the league.
The pressure that players are under now in rookie-extension discussions to accept below-market deals is real, according to multiple agents involved in negotiations this cycle. Simply put, following the new television rights deal that will see the salary cap rise to a projected $200 million-plus over the next half-decade, the real dollar figures associated with these extensions are so high that players are being asked to make incredibly privileged, yet difficult, choices. Teams hold all of the leverage here under the best of circumstances with the restricted free-agency mechanism. But because of Şengün’s circumstances as a later pick, the Rockets had a double-whammy of leverage in a nine-figure game of chicken. It would be unfair to say Şengün blinked — he’s secured generational wealth for his family through the game of basketball, a goal every player strives to achieve.
But the savings Houston experienced are undeniably real. For an organization that has several excellent young players who will be expecting extensions in coming years, Şengün taking less gives the Rockets more flexibility moving forward. Over the next four years, Şengün will make somewhere between 19 and 21 percent of the salary cap. For reference, that’s equivalent to what Jordan Poole, Anfernee Simons, Nic Claxton and Jerami Grant will receive this season. With all due respect to those players, every general manager in the league would take the 22-year-old Şengün over them — especially given that he’ll now be locked into that value as he begins to enter what should be his prime seasons.
Now the bad news: Houston’s decision to extend Jalen Green earlier in the day was among the more befuddling contracts I’ve seen in a while. I think this deal has very few routes toward being a positive value for the Rockets. I informally polled four front-office executives regarding the deal just to see if they were on the same page, and there was a general sense of confusion regarding why the Rockets chose to do this deal now.
Two of those executives simply didn’t rate Green all that highly as a player and wouldn’t have been interested in extending his contract right now. That’s fair enough given his play thus far. Those executives may turn out right, or they may turn out wrong. But even the other two who were willing to think more deeply about Houston’s plan still came away questioning the structure of the contract.
Green signed a three-year, $106 million extension that will see him make $68 million over the first two years of the deal before he decides on a player option for about $38 million. Essentially, by agreeing to this deal, the Rockets are only buying out two seasons of Green’s free agency. If it’s a three-year deal, why are they only getting two seasons’ worth of value? Largely, that’s because of the nature of Green’s game. Evaluators around the league see Green as a volatile asset. Some love him, and some are not particularly fans. However, almost everyone around the league agrees that if Green makes the necessary improvements and does end up being good, he’s likely to at least resemble a star-level player because of his athleticism and shot-creation ability. To reach that level, a lot needs to go right. But the pathway clearly exists.
Here’s the issue for Houston, though: If Green ends up hitting on that potential, there’s no way that he won’t opt out after two seasons. But even for Green, this ends up being more complicated than normal because of the structures of the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement. To be eligible to make a maximum of 30 percent of the salary cap (unless they make an All-NBA team), players must accrue at least seven years of service. By the end of those first two years, Green will still only have six years of service, meaning he’d only be eligible to make up to 25 percent of a team’s salary cap. The difference between a four-year maximum deal with 5 percent raises in 2027-28 for a player with six years of service versus a similar four-year max deal for a player with seven years of service is currently projected at $40 million.
You might be thinking that could make him more inclined to opt into his seventh year, but I’m highly skeptical of such an arrangement if Green ends up becoming the player the Rockets are betting on. If Green is a star by that point, his most lucrative strategy would be to opt out and sign a two-year contract with a player option in the second season for more than the $38 million he’d be slated to make in 2027-28. Based on current projections, he’d be eligible to sign a deal that would see him make nearly $47 million per season. If he’s good and the Rockets are reaping the benefit of this agreement, he’s almost certainly going to opt out. If that’s the case, the Rockets are surely going to regret this deal. Even if he re-signs with the team then and doesn’t leave in free agency, the Rockets still won’t reap the third- and fourth-season rewards of a typical rookie max deal that often results in stars getting paid less than they’re worth.
That’s the positive outcome. What if he doesn’t take that next step? To this point, Green has not been remotely worth $30 million per season outside of March 2024. He has yet to be a positive player in any of his three seasons, according to nearly every advanced metric. Last year was his best season in most measures. Yet, for example, he still graded out as a negative-0.7 EPM player last year according to dunksandthrees.com. To this point in his career, he has been worth an estimated 6.4 wins in 225 career games. For reference, Jalen Suggs was worth 8.2 wins last season alone. Scottie Barnes was worth 7.7 despite missing 22 games. Şengün was worth 7.8 despite missing 19 games.
Largely, that’s because of Green’s overall inefficiency and his defense. Green has yet to post a season any better than 3 percent below league average as a shooter from beyond the 3-point line. His finishing has been even worse. Last season, per Synergy, among the 134 players in the league to take at least 200 shots at the rim, Green finished 134th while making just 55.7 percent of his attempts (largely because of his struggles in half-court settings, where he made just over half his looks). That was also a marked improvement from his sophomore year, where he made just 50.6 percent of his attempts at the rim, and finished 149th out of 155 players in the league to take at least 200 attempts at the basket. You may be asking why Green is such a poor finisher given his explosive athleticism. Largely, I think it’s because of contact balance and his footwork. He tends to make things harder than they need to be.
Essentially, Green has been a play-finishing scorer who struggles to efficiently finish plays. And yet, the scoring issues pale in comparison to where the defense has been throughout the large sample of his career. He has struggled immensely dealing with ball screens, typically dying on the screen and struggling to get over the top. Off the ball, he’s not all that impactful despite his athleticism. He doesn’t really get into passing lanes and can occasionally miss a rotation. In the middle of last season, there were plenty of games where Green did not feature in the closing lineup for the Rockets because coach Ime Udoka felt like he had better options. That version of Green is not a player who would have anything resembling value league-wide while making over $30 million per year.
Then, to quote poets of modern America A.J. and Big Justice, came the boom. In March, Green won the Western Conference Player of the Month award while averaging 27.7 points, 6.3 rebounds, 3.9 assists and only 2.2 turnovers. He shot 49 percent from the field and consistently made more shots around the rim. Truly, he was everything the Rockets believed he had a chance to be when they selected him at No. 2 in 2021.
Was that breakout a function of late-season basketball when the Rockets played a particularly poor schedule, or a function of Green finally turning a corner? I think there’s a case for it being the latter. Offensively, whereas Green often looked sped up in his first two-and-a-half years, he started to slow down. Şengün was out for this run, and Green got more reps on the ball to create. He felt more at ease with the ball in his hands, knowing that the team needed him to reach its goal of a .500 season. Some of his reckless drives and poor shot selection turned into patient decision-making. And defensively, Green wasn’t quite a difference-maker, but he was active and engaged. He showed marked improvement as a whole last year at defending one-on-one against opposing guards. Teams would try to attack him, and he held up by competing hard and using his quickness to stay in front. Some of the issues in screens still exist, but there was real growth.
However, there are also signs that it could have merely been an offensive heater. After making just 30 percent of his 3s in the three months and 43 games before his March explosion, Green hit 41 percent from distance while taking over nine attempts per game. And then over the final eight games of Green’s season in April — when the schedule picked up a bit — he averaged just 17.1 points and shot 38 percent from the field and 29 percent from 3. The Rockets went 3-5 during that stretch and lost those games by a combined 27 points; they actually lost Green’s minutes by 53 points during that stretch.
This is what makes the Green evaluation so complicated. We have about a 200-game sample of him struggling to make a positive impact. But then, late last year, we have a 25-game sample of him being the kind of star guard playmaker teams scour the globe to find. Typically, it makes sense to bet on the bigger sample. But when a player is 22 years old and clearly has the athletic gifts that Green does, it’s hard not to look at what he did late last year and believe that he has turned a corner. And, while I know that taking any results from preseason basketball as meaningful is foolhardy, it does feel more like the March version of Green has shown up to Rockets camp and played in preseason. He’s driving and attacking the basket more. He only turned the ball over three times in 74 minutes of play during the team’s final three preseason games. He’s firing from 3 with a similar confidence and volume to his impressive March run.
.@JalenGreen closed out the preseason with a bang 💥
📊 30 PTS in 27 min
📊 7-13 from 3️⃣
📊 2 AST | 2 REB | 1 STL pic.twitter.com/BmSs8j2uRD— Houston Rockets (@HoustonRockets) October 18, 2024
Truly, Green is one of the most interesting players in the NBA this season. If the March leap is anything resembling real, the Rockets could surprise and end up in the playoffs despite playing in a comically loaded Western Conference.
And yet, given all of those factors, it feels like this is a classic case where patience would have been a virtue. It made more sense to wait to see what Green did this season — especially if the answer was this contract that will either result in Houston not getting full advantage of a star turn from Green, or in them overpaying him for a few seasons if he remains inconsistent. If the Rockets had waited and Green turned into a star, they probably would not be that disappointed in paying him more than this over a longer term. But if he doesn’t make that turn, then you’re stuck with this deal on your books in an NBA that seems to be less enthusiastic about paying players like Green than ever before, if this summer’s free agency was any indication.
Even though the Rockets didn’t quite hold the same amount of leverage with Green as they did with Şengün because of their draft positions, they could have held off to get more information on who exactly Green is. Instead, they agreed to a deal where they tried to middle the negotiations. Because of that choice, this deal will almost certainly end poorly for at least one side, and could end up being disappointing for both if Green realizes his potential.
(Top photo of Jalen Green and Alperen Şengün: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)
