5 WORST Contracts Given Out In NBA Free Agency So Far

This offseason has been as crazy as any in recent memory, with so many teams shaking things up a ton so far. You can tell that a lot of teams are hungry to put themselves in contention to potentially win a championship, and with that hunger has come a lot of audacious types of moves. Fortune, of course, does favor the bold, but that boldness can sometimes lead to teams doing a bit much, and that brings us to today's video. Today, we will be discussing the five worst signings made in free agency so far, with the rationale being based on a combination of how much money was given out, how many years were given on the contract, the player's overall production compared to that, and their fit on the team that they signed with. Before we start, though, it turns out a good amount of you watching right now aren't even subscribed to the channel, so if you enjoy the content, consider hitting the subscribe button as not only does it help out a ton, but it also very much appreciated. Now with that being said, let's begin. The first free agency move that we believe was one of the worst of the summer so far is Trae Young re-signing with the Washington Wizards for 4 years and 212 million dollars. The reason why Trae Young is landing on the list today has nothing to do with his fit in Washington or the fact that the Wizards re-signed him long term, it is almost entirely, due to the there is a real chance that paying Trae Young a Supermax contract will blow up in their face and become one of the worst contracts in the entire league. You would think that the Wizards would have learned their lesson from when they gave Bradley Beal that disastrous Supermax contract that almost single-handedly held them back from playing competitive basketball for the foreseeable future, but alas, they have not. Trae Young is coming off of the worst year of his entire career where he was riddled with injuries, hurting his quad, and it held him out of 67 of the 82 games on the season as a whole. Even when he was on the court, he was a shell of himself, averaging just 18 points and 8 assists per game, shooting the ball worse than we know he's capable of. Do I think that's the new norm for Trae Young? No, of course not. We all know Trae Young is capable of stuffing the stat sheet as a scorer and as a facilitator, the likes of which very few others are capable of replicating, but it's been 5 years now since the last time his style of play has resulted in any kind of post-season success whatsoever. The reason why Trae Young's reputation around the NBA sunk drastically even before this injury-riddled season is that he quite frankly is one of the worst defenders in the league and has been getting exploited on that end his entire career. There are very genuine worries about whether or not he's a player that you can win with when he is such a major focal point of a team's lineup, and now that he also has health concerns to worry about moving forward, the timing of paying him over 200 million dollars is very head-scratching. They traded for both him and Anthony Davis last season in order to try to take a leap out of the basement of the standings, but it still doesn't seem like Anthony Davis is fully committed to this experiment in Washington, so if Anthony Davis dips out early, then the Wizards will have a huge chunk of their payroll committed to a player in Trae Young that is not enough to elevate this young squad to anything meaningful regarding contention. I have no doubt about it that Trae can get back to putting up some big numbers next year, but there's a lot of factors that lead most to believe it could become a long-term hindrance. The next signing we'll be discussing that ranks amongst the worst of the summer is Draymond Green re-signing with the Golden State Warriors for 1 year and 27 million dollars. Again, bringing Draymond back on a 1 year deal is not what makes this signing necessarily bad, it's the amount of money they coughed up to him combined with how the entire rest of the team's offseason has gone so far. The Warriors are a team having one of the worst offseasons in the league as a whole because they seem content to just let this core waste away in their final years together. The Warriors put all of their eggs into one basket, hoping that LeBron James would choose them and free agency to team up with Steph Curry, but since LeBron chose to go to Philadelphia instead, they have not shown that they had any kind of plan B over in Golden State. They have made zero new signings this entire summer so far, and the only new player the team has brought in overall has been Yaxel Lendeberg who they drafted. They re-signed and extended players like Al Horford, Kristaps Porzingis, Gary Payton II, and D'Anthony Melton as well, but this is a group that just missed the playoffs last season and are opting to run it back with an already old core that continues to get older and more washed up. Giving Draymond Green this contract was them pretty much just spending all of the rest of the money they had, signifying that they gave up on trying to do anything else meaningful with the money, and on top of that, Draymond is just not a player deserving of this much money per season anymore at this point in his career. Draymond Green gives you 8 points, 5 assists, and 5 rebounds per game, shooting a sub par 41% from the field, and 32% from 3. At his peak, he made his presence felt on the defensive end at a truly elite hall of fame level, and while he is still someone that sets the tone for the team on that end, he is nowhere close to what he once was in that regard either. If the Warriors were still a team that was dominating the Western Conference sitting atop the standings, I would understand overpaying your guys a bit to keep the group together, but this is a team nowhere close to contention with a player in Steph Curry, who clearly still wants to compete at the highest level while he can, so I'd say the Warriors offseason as a whole has been a disaster, and this signing amplifies that notion. The next of the worst free agency signings this summer is the Walkie Bucks signing Gary Trent Jr. for 4 years and $64 million. This signing was so horrendous that, I swear I'm not joking, the NBA is literally investigating the move for possible nefarious activity on suspicion of being salary cap circumvention. Long story short, Gary Trent Jr. is just flat out not good enough to garner a contract like this, and the entire league knows this. This isn't to say that Trent is necessarily terrible, and not that long ago he was putting up some solid production out on the wing, but he is coming off the 5th season in a row where his scoring output has decreased from the year before, and outside of his rookie season when he barely played, he is coming off the worst season he's had in the NBA. His valuation, according to most around the league, pegged him as someone teams may want to take a flyer on by giving him a league minimum contract as a buy low candidate with some low risk potentially high reward upside as a shooter, so for the Bucks to shell out this much cash on a long term contract when they weren't bidding against anyone else for him on the open market is incredibly suspicious. Trent's already a very replaceable archetype as a pure shooter by nature, but the problem is that he's not actually a sharpshooter based on production, only by reputation. He's coming off of a year where he averaged about 8 points per game for the Bucks, shooting 36% from three, which is as bang average as it gets for a shooter. He's not a consistent threat to create off the dribble, he's not a playmaker as he barely dishes out 1 assist per game, and he's also been a pretty bad defender over the last few seasons, so when his three ball is not falling, he's more of a negative than a positive. That is exactly the type of player that typically finds themselves signing a minimum contract in free agency, and yet the Bucks committed an amount of money reminiscent to being a high-end role player. Salary cap circumvention is one of the few reasonable explanations for this decision, and in terms of this list today, Trent's inclusion was a very obvious choice. The next bad signing from this offseason we'll be discussing is Isaiah Hartenstein re-signing with the Oklahoma City Thunder for 3 years and $75 million. Hartenstein re-signing with the Thunder this summer genuinely shocked me, and it's not because of what I think of him as a player or even as a fit on the Thunder at all. Hartenstein has been awesome in Oklahoma City ever since arriving. He's been a vital piece in their rotation during their ascension to the top, and he made a big impact during their run to the NBA Finals where they won it all for the first time in franchise history. On the surface, it's obvious why the team would want to bring him back. He's an incredible rebounder, he sets good hard screens, he has terrific touch around the basket finishing with smooth floaters and powerful dunks, and he's a big body on defense to help counteract stronger matchups that Chet Holmgren's thin frame can't quite handle yet. Unfortunately for them, though, there is a business side of things that will make life much more difficult for this group moving forward, and they're already starting to feel the ramifications of it. The Thunder have now given out massive paydays to their trio of young stars, with Shea Gildas Alexander, Chet Holmgren, and Jalen Williams making big money for the foreseeable future, and that means that they have to be very smart with how they spend the rest of the cash available, which is not that much. Luckily for the Thunder, they seem to have an infinitely loaded treasure chest full of draft picks to use at their disposal over the next few years, which makes letting some pieces go a little easier when they can retool through the draft, and based on what they did in this year's draft, it felt like they were preparing for life after Isaiah Hartenstein. They drafted Ade Mara, who is a beast of a 7'3 center prospect, who blocks a ton of shots, has great touch around the basket, and can be molded into that Hartenstein role in the rotation. The Thunder offloaded Aaron Wiggins, Isaiah Joe, and Lou Dort this summer because of these salary cap restrictions, and the roster cuts that they're going to have to make moving forward are only going to become even more difficult due to these constraints, so paying Isaiah Hartenstein $25 million annually feels like an overpay based on both the fact that they already drafted his replacement, and based on what he actually, realistically gives them as a player. And finally, the last of the worst signings from the offseason we'll be discussing today is Kevin Herter, re-signing with the Detroit Pistons for 3 years and $27 million. Similar to the Gary Trent Jr. situation, although not to nearly the same extreme degree, Herter is a player whose impact has been dwindling for years now. He's coming off of the worst year of his career, he's incredibly one-dimensional, and he somehow managed to swindle Detroit into giving him a multi-year contract worth a good bit more than the league minimum, which is probably what he would actually be worth based on recent production. Kevin Herter is another guy who falls into the category of being a supposed sharpshooter, by reputation only, because his output is not deserving of that title. Kevin Herter spent time playing for the Bulls and Pistons last season, and overall on the year he averaged about 10 points per game, shooting 31% from three, but just 29% from three after being traded to Detroit, which is amongst the worst percentages in the whole league of those that take three-point shots at high volume. He is a bit of a better creator for himself and playmaker than Gary Trent Jr., who we discussed earlier, but not to a notable degree to overcome these woes. Detroit are a team that broke out in a big way this season, finishing as the one seed in the east, so this summer was supposed to be where they carry that momentum forward, but these are the kind of moves that can result in the window of contention closing faster than planned. And with that being said, that's all I have for you today. Make sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel, and comment down below what you think about these signings in particular. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you all next time.