The Best And Worst Contracts Of The 2024 NBA Offseason

When targeting players in free agency, considering how their skillset fits on your current roster is paramount. However, in the NBA — a league where teams are bound by an intricate salary cap — you also need to take into account how much you are paying for a player’s production.

In the past, we have used multiple methods to try and project how much a player should make on their next contract. Well, in this article, we are going to focus on a method inspired by Seth Partnow’s book, “The Midrange Theory.”

In his book, the NBA analyst for The Athletic and former Director of Basketball Research for the Milwaukee Bucks, discusses a formula that teams use to estimate a player’s monetary value. In its essence, the formula involves multiplying how many points a player is “worth” by the amount a win “costs” in a given season. Unfortunately, Real-Adjusted Plus-Minus (RAPM) — a major component in the formula — is no longer available. So, I’ve revised Partnow’s formula a bit.

The Website Dunks & Threes offers a metric called Estimated Wins (EW). As the name implies, this measure quite literally estimates how many wins a player earned for their team in a given season. Theoretically, by multiplying this number by the amount a win is worth in a given season (3.4 in 2024-25), we can get an idea of how much they should be making next season. From there, we can compare the average annual value of the contract they received to the amount this exercise produced to see the disparity in how much they got paid versus what they are actually worth.

Now, there are some shortcomings to using such a simple method for calculating a player’s value. First, we are limited to the methodology used to compute EW. As is the case with any catch-all metric, EW can only tell you how many wins a player added in their specific role on their specific team.

And second, this sort of method biases against players who struggled with injuries last season — since they weren’t on the court to help have an impact on winning. In some instances, like with players who are consistently injured, this can be helpful. But in one-off cases, where a player is uncharacteristically unhealthy for a year, this can make a player look far less valuable than they actually are.

(Sidebar #1: In this article, we are only going to look at the best and worst contracts. But if you want to see all the contracts that have been signed so far, here is a link to the spreadsheet — updated as of 07/14/2024. Also, we are only focusing on contracts signed by restricted/unrestricted free agents, not extensions signed by players with time still left on their current contract.)

Anyway, of the 68 contracts that have been announced so far, here are the ten “best” contracts as of 07/10/2024 (in terms of largest positive difference between average annual value and production value):

There is a ton you can take away from this, but here are some key takeaways. First, the best contract of the 2024 offseason belongs to Kevin Love, who, if he produces the way he did in 2023-24 next season, will be worth over three times what he’s set to make (four million dollars).

Second, despite many people criticizing the Oklahoma City Thunder about supposedly overpaying for Isaiah Hartenstein, his contract is the second-best value contract of any player set to make over 20 million dollars next season (the best is DeMar DeRozan).

And third, it’s both ironic and promising that the Detroit Pistons (a front office that has been viewed as a laughing stock over the last couple of years) handed out two of the best contracts (to Malik Beasley and Simone Fontecchio) of this offseason.

Now, here are the ten worst contracts of the 2024 offseason as of 07/10/2024:

Again, a number of noteworthy points to make from this information. First, the three “worst” contracts all involve players involved in the two blockbuster trades orchestrated by the Toronto Raptors last season.

Both OG Anunoby and Immanuel Quickley missed time. Anunoby has a history of missing time, though (played 50 games or less in three of his last four seasons). So, it makes sense to bake that into his production value. However, Quickley is generally pretty healthy. If we used his EW from 2022-23 (8.3), Quickley’s production value would be at 28.2 million (which would still have him in the bottom ten, just not in the doldrums like he currently is).

Second, the names that are really concerning to see on this list are the role players. As we discussed in a recent article on the Dallas Mavericks, it’s okay to spoil your stars (like the Indiana Pacers did with Pascal Siakam) if you can get your ancillary players for prices that fall below their market value. Here, we see a team like the Chicago Bulls paying Patrick Williams three times above his production value (to be fair, he did miss half the season with injury, though).

Lastly, despite handing out two of the best contracts, the Pistons also handed out one of the worst contracts (Tobias Harris’ two-year, 52-million dollar deal).

(Sidebar #2: Fun fact: the only player whose average annual salary matches their production value is Aaron Holiday. Based on our method, Holiday is worth 4.8 million dollars next season, which is also the yearly average of the two-year, 9.6 million dollar deal he signed to remain with the Houston Rockets.)

Please remember that this is just one way to estimate production value and that just because this method says a contract is good/bad doesn’t make that true beyond a reasonable doubt. For instance, I think the Max Christie deal could end up looking much better than it does now.

Still, looking at contracts through this lens really does make you think, doesn’t it?