2021 NBA free agency tracker: Grades for every deal so far
By Duncan Smith
This won’t quite be the same NBA free agency period we had expected last offseason, with names like LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Anthony Davis and Paul George signing extensions and taking themselves off the market.
Even without the big-ticket players off the table and only a few teams having cap space, the free agency landscape is still wide open. In recent years, the sign-and-trade has become a tool that opens up possibilities for teams without that traditional space, and general managers are getting more creative in how they implement it.
NBA free agency is set to begin and nearly 200 players around the league will be looking for deals. We’ll track it all here with real-time grades.
So where there is a mutual desire between player and team, cap space means less than ever if all parties are invested in making something work. Once you start factoring in multi-team deals, we find ourselves with a situation where almost anything can happen.
This is an offseason with almost 200 free agents around the NBA, so the player movement could be absolutely unprecedented. Kyle Lowry is a free agent, Kawhi Leonard opted out of his contract and will become a free agent (even though he might not even play most of next season), as did Chris Paul.
DeMar DeRozan is also a free agent, and this class could end up being a historic one for any number of reasons.
There should also be plenty of extensions around the NBA, including a max extension for Luka Doncic (although that may not be signed until after the Olympics). These extensions won’t officially be signed until after midnight EST, although it’s safe to say that teams and players will enter into negotiations and agreements in principle well beforehand.
We’re going to track and grade these Night 1 deals and the biggest deals thereafter, and we’ll do it right here. So come back frequently throughout the evening to keep up on what’s happening as we embark on one of the craziest nights of the NBA calendar, beginning at 6PM EST.