Breaking down the Donatas Motiejunas offer sheet
The Vertical Front-Office Insider Bobby Marks, a former 20-year executive with the Nets, examines the Brooklyn’s latest attempt to acquire a restricted free agent.
Nets general manager Sean Marks has shown a tendency to be a risk-taker when it comes to restricted free agency.
Signing Donatas Motiejunas, a 2011 first-round pick, represents the third time Brooklyn has signed a player to an offer sheet since Marks took over in February. The Rockets have three days to match the offer.
Portland and Miami matched the Nets’ offer sheets this summer for Allen Crabbe and Tyler Johnson, respectively.
Though teams have shown a propensity for not matching second-round offer sheets (Chandler Parsons, Omer Asik, etc.), the same has usually been the case for restricted free agents who recently finished their first-round contracts.
Other than Harrison Barnes signing with Dallas, which the Warriors could not match because of the Kevin Durant deal, the last first-round pick to have an unmatched offer sheet was the Nuggets’ Linas Kleiza in 2010.
The Motiejunas deal is the first time a restricted free agent has signed an offer sheet during the regular season since the Thunder signed the Nets’ Nenad Krstic in December 2008.
THE CONTRACT
The Rockets have three days to examine the contract and determine whether to match the deal.
The contract is four years, $37 million with some unique provisions.
The first-year salary for Motiejunas will start at $9.3 million before bonus considerations and decreases in the next three years. The second year of the contract doesn’t become guaranteed until the team exercises a trigger during the first season of the contract, league sources told Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical, and each July prior to the 2018 and 2019 seasons, there’s a trigger date to make a decision on Motiejunas’ deal.
Because Motiejunas signed his contract after Nov. 23, he will not be eligible to be traded until after the regular season because of a three-month waiting period.
If the Rockets match the offer sheet, Houston will be prohibited from trading Motiejunas for one year.
Motiejunas, however, can consent to a trade during that one-year period, but Brooklyn would be prohibited from acquiring him.
CAP IMPACT
Brooklyn
The Nets rank 29th in the league with $76.1 million in payroll and would incur an additional $9.8 million cap hit this season.
Motiejunas’ salary will also put Brooklyn right at the $84.8 million salary floor. Had the Nets not reached 90 percent of the salary cap, they would have incurred a financial penalty that would have been distributed to their current players after the season.
If the offer sheet goes unmatched, the Nets would rank 25th in salary with $85.4 million in guaranteed contracts.
Before the offer sheet, Brooklyn was positioned to have $36 million in cap space for 2017-18, which includes the $6.8 million Bojan Bogdanovic free-agent cap hold.
With Motiejunas’ $9.4 million cap hit next season, the Nets will have roughly $24 million in room.
Houston
The Rockets rank 21st in team salary with $94.8 million in guaranteed contracts.
If the Rockets match, Houston will rise to 10th with a $104.3 million payroll.
James Harden’s renegotiation and the free-agent signings of Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson this past summer give Houston $87.4 million in guaranteed contracts in 2017-18.
Roughly $10 million under the cap, not including K.J. McDaniels’ $3.4 million team option, Houston would be right at the cap if they elect to match the offer sheet.
But as past summers have shown, general manager Daryl Morey has found ways to create cap space for free agency.
ROSTER IMPLICATIONS
Brooklyn
Each team will not need to make any roster moves until the decision on the offer sheet is made.
With point guard Jeremy Lin close to returning from a hamstring injury that has sidelined him for 13 games, Yogi Ferrell could be the odd man out.
Ferrell is currently signed to a non-guaranteed contract.
Houston
Houston has 13 guaranteed contracts and two players with partials: guard Bobby Brown and forward Kyle Wiltjer.
Both players have appeared in a total of 9 games this season.
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