NBA contract extensions: Alperen Sengun, Jalen Johnson, Jalen Suggs get big deals, plus an unprecedented pact

The NBA’s rookie extension deadline has come and gone, and seven 2021 first-round picks agreed to sub-max deals on Monday. Those young players are Alperen Sengun, Jalen Johnson, Jalen Green, Jalen Suggs, Trey Murphy, Moses Moody and Corey Kispert, and when you throw in the max contracts that Scottie Barnes, Evan Mobley, Franz Wagner and Cade Cunningham already got, we’re up to 11 total rookie extensions for the 2021 class.

That leaves 19 first-round picks from 2021 still left to be signed. Most notable among them? Cam Thomas, who figures to post enormous numbers on a rebuilding Nets team, and Jonathan Kuminga, who couldn’t come to terms with the Warriors. Any 2021 first-round pick who did not re-sign by 6 p.m. on Monday is now slated to become a restricted free agent next summer, but for now, let’s focus on the players who did extend.

Jalen Green gets a unique deal

Jalen Green is staying in Houston on a three-year, $106 million deal with a player option after the second season, CBS Sports’ Bill Reiter has confirmed. At his best, Green looks destined for stardom. Last season, in a 15-game stretch beginning on Feb. 29, he averaged 29.2 points, 6.2 rebounds and 3.7 assists and shot 42.2% from deep. Green did not command a max contract, though, because his overall numbers aren’t nearly as pretty. In Green’s last nine games of 2023-24, he averaged 16.6 points, 5.4 rebounds and 4.4 assists and shot 27% from deep. While there were times when it looked like he had vastly improved — particularly in March — his stats ended up looking strikingly similar to the ones he put up in 2022-23, with a slight uptick in defensive rebounding.

The structure of Green’s deal is unprecedented, and it reflects the gap between his upside and his production. The Rockets have committed to him, but not the same way that the Raptors have committed to Barnes or the Pistons have committed to Cunningham. Green is betting on himself by taking a shorter deal, but not the same way that the Golden State Warriors‘ Jonathan Kuminga — more on him later — reportedly is. If Green becomes a more efficient scorer and rounds out his game, he could put himself in a position to earn a max contract after the 2026-27 season. If he doesn’t, then Houston will at least have avoided making a long-term investment based on the assumption that he’d improve.

Alperen Sengun gets closer to the max than anyone

Coming in right under the bell: Alperen Sengun will be a Rocket for the long haul as he agreed to a five-year, $185 million extension, according to ESPN. The deal is surprising in light of Houston’s purported plan to use cap space next summer. Sengun would have had a relatively small cap hold in restricted free agency of $16.2 million. Instead, he’ll now have a new cap number reflecting his salary, which vaporizes a significant amount of possible cap space for the Rockets.

Of course, the Rockets have decided giving up that cap space was worthwhile because Sengun left quite a bit of money on the table to sign this deal. His max was roughly $40 million higher—roughly $225 million guaranteed—and that figured could have gotten even bigger if he had made an All-NBA Team and earned Rose Rule eligibility. Sengun was an All-Star candidate last season and Houston’s offensive engine. The Rockets ultimately decided that getting him at a discount made more sense than waiting for cap space and paying him closer to market rate next summer.

Jalen Johnson will be a building block in Atlanta

Like Sengun, Jalen Johnson was a candidate for Most Improved Player last season, but he wound up making a bit less on this deal. As first reported by Chris Haynes, Johnson is getting $150 million from the Hawks over five years. The deal represents a compromise on both sides. Johnson is going to have a chance to post huge numbers on a Hawks team that dealt Dejounte Murray this offseason. He is now the clear No. 2 option on offense, and with a breakout season, he could have commanded a max deal next summer.

By locking him in now, the Hawks assure that they won’t have to pay him quite that much. Johnson, however, gets a bit of insurance. He dealt with injuries last season, appearing in only 56 games, and was not a full-time rotation player before that. If he had regressed in his fourth season, he would have stood to lose quite a bit of money. Both sides settle on a $150 million compromise.

Murphy gets his money

Murphy has agreed to a four-year, $112 million contract extension with the Pelicans, his agents told The Stein Line’s Marc Stein on Monday. There are no options in the deal, according to ESPN.

Last season, Murphy started slowly while recovering from a knee injury, but averaged 18.1 points (on 66.1% true shooting!), 6.2 rebounds and 2.9 assists in 33.9 minutes in his final 24 games. Murphy made 41.7% of his 3-point attempts during that stretch on 8.8 attempts per game.

If Murphy builds on that, this contract will be a massive home run for the Pelicans. He’s a 6-foot-8 forward with a sky-high release who shoots deep 3s comfortably, and there aren’t a lot of players on the planet who fit that description. Going forward, though, the question is how much — and when — New Orleans can reasonably expect his usage and minutes to increase. 

Murphy was the Pelicans’ sixth man when they were healthy last season, and he seems ready to graduate into a more prominent role, but, after a summer in which they traded for Dejounte Murray and did not trade Brandon Ingram, there is not necessarily space for him to spread his wings. Murphy had an 18.2% usage rate last season.

Murphy is expected to miss the beginning of the 2024-25 due to a hamstring strain suffered in training camp.

“Obviously, starting the season again hurts me a lot, Murphy told reporters earlier this month. “And just trying to do everything I can, summer-wise, to be prepared for a season, then having something like that really sucks. But I’m just looking at it in perspective. It could be a lot worse. The good thing it it’s an NBA season — I’ll be there for the majority of it.”

Suggs stays put

Jalen Suggs is staying with the Magic at a robust $150.5 million over five years, according to ESPN. Suggs, the No. 4 pick in the 2021 draft, had a breakout season for Orlando last season. His defense was his selling point from the moment he arrived in the NBA, but last season, his offense finally took a significant step towards matching it. While Suggs is no primary ball-handler, he made a career-best 39.7% of his 3-pointers on a career-high 5.1 attempts per game.

Ideally, Suggs would take on a greater ball-handling role with time. Even if he doesn’t, that shooting is enough to warrant a deal like this. If nothing else, Suggs was perhaps the best 3-and-D player in basketball last season. He was a Second-Team All-Defense choice that hit nearly 40% of his triples, and in a league that increasingly emphasizes those two skills over most others, he is an extremely valuable role player. 

Orlando is now mostly capped out for the long haul. They have now inked Suggs, Wagner, Wendell Carter Jr. and Jonathan Isaac to hefty extensions this offseason. They added Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in free agency, and a long-term deal for Paolo Banchero looms next summer as well. The Magic have locked up their young core, and will only add to it from here.

Warriors extend Moody, won’t extend Kuminga

Moody, 22, is sticking with Golden State on an extension worth $39 million over three years, his agent told ESPN. This is a team-friendly deal — it starts at slightly below the midlevel exception — but it is not difficult to understand why it might have been appealing to Moody. For the first three years of his career, he has been productive in his minutes, but has not solidified his spot as an every-night rotation player under coach Steve Kerr. This season, with Golden State as deep as it has ever been, the situation could be similar. In preseason, though, Moody was impressive. He appears to have gotten stronger, and, more importantly, he has comfortably knocked down shots off movement.

“He’s playing great,” Kerr told reporters last week, following a win against the Los Angeles Lakers in which Moody scored 21 points in 19 minutes on 7-for-14 shooting. “He’s gotten so much better in so may ways. We’ve always loved his character, his work ethic, but I think this is the most confidence that I think he’s played with. And he’s going to play a big role for us, but so are a lot of other guys. We’re sitting in that coaches room every day saying, ‘How do we play all these guys?’ ‘Cause they all deserve to play.”

There is still time, in theory, for the Warriors to also get a deal done with Kuminga. According to both ESPN and The Athletic, though, it’s not going to happen. Golden State had offered him a deal worth around $30 million annually, per The Athletic, but it was not willing to go higher than that, so Kuminga has decided to bet on himself becoming a star.

Kuminga, who is also 22 years old, was selected No. 7 overall, seven spots ahead of Moody, in the 2021 draft. He had something of a breakout last season, but has not proven to Golden State’s coaching staff that he can play the 3 spot without floor-spacing bigs in the frontcourt. This makes him a tricky fit alongside Draymond Green, unless Green is playing center. Kerr’s opening-night starting lineup remains a mystery.

Washington retains its sharpshooter

Corey Kispert, a teammate of Suggs’ at Gonzaga, has landed a new deal with the Wizards for $54 million over four years according to Marc Stein. Kispert earned his money as one of the NBA’s best shooters over the past few seasons, making 38.8% of his attempts since joining the Wizards in 2021. Washington is in the midst of an aggressive rebuild at the moment, and that cost them several key veterans this offseason including Deni Avdija and Tyus Jones. That puts Kispert in position to rack up numbers for the Wizards this season, and now they have him locked in without risking heftier demands following a possible breakout campaign.