Thunder Reach Deals With Adams & Oladipo But Not Roberson
By Randy Renner, Senior Writer
The Oklahoma City Thunder have reached agreement on contract extensions with Steven Adams and Victor Oladipo but were not able to come to an agreement with Andre Roberson.
The team did not announce details of the deals but various reports have indicated Adams’ extension is worth about $100 million over four years and Oladipo’s comes in at about $84 million over the same time frame.
Both are less than what the two players likely would have been offered had they gone into restricted free agency. In fact before he was traded from Orlando, Oladipo had indicated he wanted a max contract extension to stay with the Magic. He ended up settling for a deal that is slightly less than $21 million under what a maximum extension would have generated.
Adams’ contract also comes in under the max level but by about $6 million. Still those savings will mean a lot as the Thunder move forward because with the current roster and the new deals OKC is already over the projected salary cap for next season.
Roberson now will become a restricted free agent at the end of the regular season. The Thunder would be allowed to match any offer he receives and the Thunder is allowed under the current rules to go over the cap to re-sign players the team drafted.
An agreement on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NBA and its players is expected within the next six weeks and the rules are expected to change. That’s one reason why the Thunder opted to get deals done now rather than wait until the summer.
Without the threat of CBA alterations the team might have preferred to put off the signings so that more money would be available under the cap to chase a big name free agent.
As things stand now if the Thunder want to go after a max contract type free agent, like say Oklahoma City native and former OU star Blake Griffin, the Thunder will have to renounce the rights to all or some current players whose contracts are expiring at the end of the season (Nick Collison, Anthony Morrow, Semaj Christon, Ersan Ilyasova and Joffrey Lauvergne) plus the team would need to trade Enes Kanter and his big contract and perhaps another player or two in order to clear the approximately $29 million in salary cap space needed to absorb another max deal.
Exactly how that would shake out won’t be known until a new CBA is finalized.
The Thunder decided the risk with all the uncertainty wasn’t worth a roll of the dice. They wanted to know they would at least have three foundation pieces in place with Russell Westbrook, Adams and Oladipo signed.