On Saturday night, the Suns made one of the first meaningful moves of the offseason, re-signing Collin Gillespie to a four-year, $48 million contract. They followed that up on Sunday morning by bringing back another one of their promising young guards, re-signing Jordan Goodwin to a three-year, $19 million deal to stay in Phoenix.
These are two great deals for the Suns, as they keep two players they’ve developed into meaningful rotation players on team-friendly contracts. It may seem like bad news for the rest of the league, and either one of Gillespie or Goodwin would have been a great signing for the Celtics in free agency.Â
But it’s promising for Boston that the market has been set for locking up young, breakout players, because the Celtics have team options on Neemias Queta and Jordan Walsh. Ideally, they’d love to decline the options and extend both players to keep them around long term, but that may be difficult while staying under the luxury tax line.
Free agency market may be mild this offseason
Based on these deals, it may be more realistic than previously imagined, though. The Cs have some leverage, in that they can simply pick up the options and keep both players for minimum deals next season. But if they decline the options to negotiate longer deals, Walshy and Neemy could get paid sooner, and they’d be guaranteed for more years.
The Celtics don’t have to do that, so perhaps both players would be inclined to take a bit of a discount to get that money now, instead of being forced to wait and earn it for another year. And now that the market has been set, Boston may be able to squeeze some real value out of these contracts.
Gillespie especially likely could have commanded the full midlevel exception ($15 million), or even more on the open market, but settling for $12 million in average annual value shows that the open market may not be that hot this summer.Â
Celtics should extend Walsh and Queta if possible
Queta’s value is projected somewhere close to $20 million a year, and Walsh should be somewhere between the TPMLE and the MLE, but again, with Boston doing them a bit of a favor by extending them early, they may be willing to take less.
The Celtics could have about as much as $25 million to play with under the tax line if they decline both of these options, and depending on other moves this summer, they could offer Neemy somewhere in the $12-16 million per/year range, while trying to keep Walsh around $5-7 million a season.
Boston will have options to spend its money this offseason, and they have the MLE and several traded player exceptions to work with. In the midst of a mega Giannis pursuit and shrouded in many other trade rumors, it feels like almost anything is on the table. But when the dust settles, if there’s a chance to keep some of their homegrown talent on a discount, the Celtics should jump all over that.
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