The negotiation period for NBA free agency started Friday night and is now mostly over. 

The big moves of the offseason, however, have perhaps just begun, with potential mega-trades looming for the likes of Portland’s Damian Lillard and Philadelphia’s James Harden.

Grizzlies execute sign-and-trade to send Dillon Brooks to Houston Rockets

I’ll wait for those to consider how the Western Conference landscape has shifted and what it might mean for the Memphis Grizzlies. 

Until then, some notes (or, in one case, more notes) on the three Grizzlies-involved transactions from the weekend, and where they leave the team’s roster and salary cap status:

The Desmond Bane deal

Because Memphis’ signing of Derrick Rose preceded it by a few hours Friday night, and because the Rose signing was so much more surprising, I haven’t written about Bane’s contract extension until now. 

We know the big picture, but a lot of the frame is still missing.

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The big picture is this: Bane’s new deal, which will begin in the 2024-2025 season, is a five-year contract reported via Bane’s agents to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski as a “five-year, $207 max contract.” Further information and clarification has, so far, been hard to come by.

One thing that can be firmly gleaned: Bane’s extension, unlike those of fellow new “max” players, such as Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton and Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball and unlike teammate Ja Morant a year ago, does not have “escalator” clauses that can raise the price. 

A max contract for a player of Bane’s experience starts at 25% of the salary cap. With escalator clauses, hitting certain benchmarks (such as making All-NBA) can make the contract a “super max,” starting at 30% of the cap.

Morant missed getting the super max by failing to make All-NBA. Bane’s contract will not have this potential (or, from a team perspective, this risk). Bane is probably an unlikely candidate for All-NBA, but if he has a great season in Morant’s early absence, he could get there. The NBA’s new rules requiring 65 games for eligibility could narrow the field. It’s already removed Morant. 

Keeping “super max” language from Bane’s contract is one win for the Grizzlies. Another seems to be avoiding a player option in the final season, something that the team also kept out of Morant’s deal. That seems to be the case here. But that is not confirmed.

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What does Bane get? More than $200 million, a first in Grizzlies franchise history, and a wildly unlikely success for the 30th pick in the 2020 draft. 

Bane’s deal is larger than Morant’s in terms of raw dollars, a consequence of Morant missing All-NBA and Bane coming a year later under a higher salary cap. 

Another thing that isn’t clear about the Bane contract: Did he technically get a “max” or did he sign for a set amount, one that matches what a max would be based on current salary cap projections for next season?

Morant’s max contract was reported as $193 million last summer. That was a projection. With the actual cap set last week, it actually landed at more than $197 million. Is Bane’s $207 million a projection that might actually rise next summer, or did he instead sign for that specific amount? This is a distinction with minor differences, but as the Grizzlies likely enter luxury tax territory in 2024-2025, those differences (perhaps up to $10 million total) will matter. 

If it’s a contract for a set number rather than for a percentage of the cap, there could be other details we don’t yet know about.

Regardless, what was once presumed is now official: The Grizzlies have Bane under contract for six more seasons (the new deal still a season away from starting) and now have their core trio of Morant, Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr. locked together for at least three more seasons. 

The Derrick Rose signing

I wrote a lot about this Friday, so I will expand and reiterate only briefly here. 

How much Rose will help on the court next season – much less in 2024-2025, when his contract will still be guaranteed – is hard to know. Some NBA people I’ve talked to in the past few days have shrugged at it: “He can’t play anymore” and “I’m not sure he was going to be in the league this season” are things I’ve heard.

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Others have suggested that Rose was mostly put on the shelf by the New York Knicks last season as a conscious decision to give young players more time, not because Rose couldn’t still be effective. I’ve heard he had other free-agency interest, not just a lone life raft from the Grizzlies.

In the franchise history of past-their-prime signings of former superstars, this is at least more likely to resemble Vince Carter than Allen Iverson. 

Carter’s availability and production varied amid injury and age-related decline, but he did have his on-court moments and was valued by the franchise off the floor. Unlike Iverson, who still thought he should be starting, Carter understood where he was in his career and what a proper role would be.

That seems to be the case for Rose. 

In New York, Rose developed a strong reputation for working with the team’s young guards. And that seems to be the main driver of this surprise signing. The Grizzlies value Rose in this role so much that they secured him for two seasons, even though the chance of him being a meaningful on-the-court contributor in that second season, especially, is uncertain.

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Rose’s past connections to Memphis can make for “a good story,” though good stories can cease to be so when the underlying realities don’t cooperate. But the Grizzlies don’t really care about that good story or about Rose’s past. This was not a sentimental signing. It’s more about what Rose is now, and how that could help get the franchise’s future back on track.

Let’s hope they’re correct. Strictly in terms of helping on the floor and increasing the team’s future trade flexibility, there were almost certainly better options available. 

The Dillon Brooks sign-and-trade

Details on the trade that will officially end Dillon Brooks’ Memphis tenure were still being sorted as of this writing. 

The Houston Rockets, Brooks’ new franchise, seem to be pulling together at least four other teams in a pair of contract-oriented transactions that will result in landing Brooks on a four-year, $80 million contract.

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Individual pieces of these transactions have leaked out while it all still seems to be in the process of being put together, which has created some confusion, with two different national outlets blasting headlines that the Grizzlies were acquiring New Jersey Nets point guard Patty Mills as part of the deal.

They aren’t. 

Things can change as the Rockets try to land this particular plane, but the Grizzlies aspect of this is likely to remain pretty simple. 

Barring a change, the Grizzlies will send out Brooks, taking back young guard Josh Christopher to create a trade exception. 

Christopher, a 21-year-old guard who averaged 5.8 points in his second season for Houston, has some Grizzlies connections, particularly to executive Tayshaun Prince. This has led to some over-interpretation of the still-in-process transaction. But Christopher’s inclusion will be at the request of the Rockets, not the Grizzlies. It may be that taking Christopher’s contract is the Grizzlies’ payment for creating the trade exception rather than sending out a draft pick.

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If and when Christopher lands on the Memphis roster, it will be as the 16th man with only 15 eligible to be carried into the season. This could lead to Christopher being waived or could set up other, likely minor, roster maneuvers. I doubt the Grizzlies will be in a hurry to sort it out with major trades still looming elsewhere in the league that could put a lot of things in play. 

If the Grizzlies’ portion of the deal remains this simple, the team will generate a trade exception of roughly $8.9 million. They’ll have this for a full calendar year and can use it to take back another player in a trade without the need to send out a matching salary.

Trade exceptions often go unused, but the Grizzlies have used this mechanism many times over the years, most recently when the current front office created one in 2019 by trading Mike Conley and then used it to acquire Andre Iguodala from Golden State, getting paid a first-round pick to do so.

Keep that in mind. 

Fans will daydream of players the team might be able to get with that exception who would be on the roster this season. Perhaps the Grizzlies will be as likely to use it to take on a player they would then waive and get paid to do so. It could be a mechanism to rebuild some of the future draft-pick assets the team has used in recent months to acquire Luke Kennard and Marcus Smart.

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As for Brooks, it only takes one, and he found it. The four-year $80 million deal with Houston, reportedly fully guaranteed, is significantly higher than the four-year $61 million extension that the Grizzlies were able to offer last season, though it seems likely Brooks would have gotten less than that from another team if Houston hadn’t come through for him.

I wrote about Brooks' time in Memphis and why it was ending in May.

Roster and salary cap status

Fast forward to Morant’s mid-December return, and the Grizzlies depth chart now might look something like this:

Basketball is a fluid game, of course. Smart will presumably start in Morant’s place and may well stay in the lineup when Morant returns, becoming the nominal “small forward” in a three-guard lineup with Morant and Bane. 

Including the $2.5 million Christopher is owed next season, the team’s salary is at $149 million, well above the salary cap ($136 million) but still roughly $16 million below the luxury tax.

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The team could still use all of its $12.4 million mid-level exception in free agency or all of the $8.9 million trade exception, but not both, and stay under the tax line. I’d assume at this point that they will not touch the MLE but will be on the lookout for productive ways to use the trade exception.

Even if the team used all of that exception now to launder a contract for a draft pick, they’d still have a decent amount of room under the tax for potential in-season trades. 

Next season? Adding the Bane extension and two-year Rose deal to the mix, the Grizzlies are likely several million dollars over the luxury tax line for 2024-2025. My sense is that they’re willing to stay there. How much more into the tax would they be willing to go? That might impact further moves the team will or won’t make.