The NBA’s response misses the actual criticism.
Yes, most RFAs eventually signed contracts. That doesn’t mean they had a healthy market. The issue is whether teams have enough cap flexibility under the current CBA to legitimately compete for these players.
Jalen Duren is coming off an All-Star/All-NBA season and still hasn’t received an offer sheet. Bennedict Mathurin hasn’t either. Last summer, Giddey, Kuminga, Grimes and Cam Thomas all sat unsigned deep into the offseason. Thomas and Grimes ultimately took qualifying offers rather than accept depressed long-term deals.
And pointing to sign-and-trades doesn’t disprove the problem. In some cases, they’re evidence of it: teams have to engineer complicated transactions because they don’t have the flexibility to simply make competitive offers.
The funniest part is the NBA bragging that two offer sheets is tied for the most since 2018.
If two teams making offer sheets is considered an unusually active RFA market, maybe that tells you something about the market.
The question isn’t whether RFAs eventually sign somewhere.
It’s whether they actually have multiple teams competing for their services.
Right now, for too many of them, they don’t.
Biggest gap on tonight's board: Jameson Taillon. Book set 4.5 strikeouts. We project 7.4.
Still only our fourth-ranked arm — edge and confidence aren't the same thing.
These 4 are the top arms. Every hitter and pitcher on the slate is in the app.
#MLB#PlayerProps
The Knicks defense did exactly what the model expected — even with Harden playing 41 minutes, way more than projected, the matchup held. Daily projections on the StatMotive app. #nbaplayoffs#nba#JamesHarden#knicks
The NBA scriptwriters cooking again. 📝
Knicks sweep the Cavs in the ECF so LeBron can ditch the Lakers, sign in Cleveland this summer to be the veteran leader they were missing, run his retirement tour where it all started, and drag them right back to the Finals next June.