The Sacramento Kings and power forward Domantas Sabonis have agreed to a contract renegotiation and extension for a total of $217 million over five years, Sabonis’ agent Greg Lawrence confirmed to The Athletic. ESPN was the first to report the news. Here’s what you need to know:
- Sabonis averaged 19.1 points and 7.3 assists per game for the Kings last season.
- He also averaged 12.3 rebounds per game, leading the league in 2022-23.
- The three-time NBA All-Star has career averages of 15.1 points, 4.2 assists and 9.7 rebounds per game through seven NBA seasons that include stints with Oklahoma City, Indiana and Sacramento.
The Athletic’s instant analysis:
Evaluating the deal
WOWZER. That is an absolutely full bag right there for Sabonis, as it appears the Kings will commit the entirety of their remaining $17 million in cap space to a renegotiate-and-extend deal that would see him hit their books at $36.1 million this year — including $2.6 million for likely incentives — and then tack on four years and $175 million ($12 million of which again would be likely incentives) to keep him in Sacramento for the next half-decade. Sabonis is a valuable player who deserved his All-NBA flowers last year, but this feels like a pretty sizable overreaction to both his 2022-23 season and that of the Kings; BORD$ values him at $26.6 million for next year and he’ll be making over $40 million a pop in his age 28 through 31 seasons.
And the question is … did the Kings really need to go this far? Aside from the opportunity cost of other players it might have signed with $17 million, Sacramento shot its first-round pick into the sun to get this room in the first place. All to pay Sabonis a deal that it seems unlikely anyone would have offered next summer, when the Kings would have still had full Bird Rights on him. — Hollinger
Required reading
(Photo: Rocky Widner / NBAE via Getty Images)
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