{"id":2021369,"date":"2026-07-01T13:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T10:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2021369"},"modified":"2026-07-01T13:16:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T10:16:13","slug":"how-i-helped-spend-a-quarter-billion-dollars-during-2016-nba-free-agency-frenzy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2021369","title":{"rendered":"How I helped spend a quarter-billion dollars during 2016 NBA free-agency frenzy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ten years ago today, I spent a quarter-billion dollars of somebody else\u2019s money in less than an hour.<\/p>\n

Well, it wasn\u2019t me<\/i>, exactly, but as a member of the Memphis Grizzlies\u2019 front office, I certainly had a prominent role in it.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the crawl into free agency that we\u2019ve seen in 2026, where \u201cpre-agency\u201d took many of the best players off the table before they ever hit the market and most of the rest of the good ones are also re-signing with their own teams, NBA free agency in 2016 was madness.<\/p>\n

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A sudden spike in the salary cap had resulted in virtually every team in the league having significant cap space. And with significantly more cap space than talent, well \u2026 mistakes were made.<\/p>\n

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What You Should Read Next<\/div>\n
\n \"From<\/p>\n
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\n From Jalen Duren to LeBron James to Ayo Dosunmu, the NBA offseason\u2019s Top 25 free agents\n <\/div>\n
\n Free agency officially starts on June 30, and we might have a lot of running in place this July.\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Save for one key player, virtually the entirety of free agency that year happened in 24 hours, starting at 9 p.m. PT in a series of hotels and agents\u2019 houses in the L.A. area.<\/p>\n

While a select group of teams waited nervously on the other side of the country for Kevin Durant to meet with them in the Hamptons, everyone else was Richard Pryor in \u201cBrewster\u2019s Millions<\/a>,\u201d trying to burn through their cap space as quickly as possible before the game of free-agency musical chairs ended.<\/p>\n

What a time to be alive.<\/p>\n

If you weren\u2019t willing to fork out in the high eight figures for another team\u2019s ninth-best player, five other teams were lined up behind you, ready to do it. And this was in 2016 money \u2014 with max contracts below $30 million \u2014 not 2026 money!<\/p>\n

The first announced deal came just at the stroke of midnight on the East Coast, when Timofey Mozgov was reported to be going to the Los Angeles Lakers for four years and $64 million. Things quickly degenerated from there.<\/p>\n

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To give you an idea of where things stood: We were upset that we couldn\u2019t get a meeting with Kent Bazemore to offer him a near-max contract, something he eventually signed with the Atlanta Hawks.<\/p>\n

We had a meeting at the first possible moment \u2014 9 p.m. in L.A. \u2014 with little-used Indiana Pacers forward Solomon Hill, and realized our hopes of getting him for \u201cjust\u201d four years and $40 million were unrealistic given the multiple rivals<\/i> lining up to beat our offer (New Orleans eventually got him for four years and $52 million).<\/p>\n

We tried to get Eric Gordon to take $40 million, since he\u2019d known our star guard, Mike Conley, since childhood; we didn\u2019t know he had more than $50 million waiting for him in Houston.<\/p>\n

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We also bailed on a five-team bidding war for a player who averaged seven points the previous season, when we all stopped, looked at each other and asked, \u201cWhat are we doing here?\u201d He got nearly as much as Hill and Gordon.<\/p>\n

However, we quickly agreed to three contracts that day, totaling $253 million. Our owner, Robert Pera, posted a clip of a baby throwing dollar bills out the window.<\/p>\n

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pic.twitter.com\/nJVwA5Z9Qw<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Robert Pera (@RobertPera) July 2, 2016<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Amazingly, two of the deals turned out well. Conley signed what was, at the time, the richest contract in NBA history: a five-year, $153 million deal to stay with us in Memphis. He played well enough to return two first-round picks near the end of that contract. And James Ennis signed with us on a two-year, $6 million deal for our cap room exception. He ended up starting for us in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Alas, the other deal didn\u2019t work out so well: Chandler Parsons signed a four-year, $94 million deal with us that, of course, went down as one of the biggest lemon contracts in NBA history.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t get into the details of how that decision came about, but I will say that we weren\u2019t alone. That day, several of the worst contracts of the current century came into being.<\/p>\n

In addition to Mozgov, Hill and our Parsons deal, the carnage from that summer is quite the cautionary tale: Bazemore got four years and $70 million from the Hawks; Nic Batum got five years and $120 million from Charlotte; Andre Drummond got five years and $130 million from Detroit; Allen Crabbe got a four-year $75 million offer sheet from Brooklyn that Portland matched<\/i>; Evan Turner got four years and $70 million from Portland; Luol Deng got four years and $70 million from the Lakers; Joakim Noah got four years and $72 million from New York; Bismack Biyombo got four years and $72 million Orlando; Ian Mahinmi got four years and $64 million from Washington; Andrew Nicholson got four years and $26 million from Washington; Miles Plumlee got four years and $52 million from Milwaukee; Dwight Howard got three years and $70 million from Atlanta; Ryan Anderson got four years and $80 million from Houston; Jon Leuer got four years and $42 million from Detroit.<\/p>\n

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Every single one of the above contracts ended horribly, as they were either stretched, waived or dumped by the teams that signed them (Hill, Plumlee and Parsons were traded for each other three years later).<\/p>\n

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How Did We Get Here?<\/div>\n
\n \"Analysis:<\/p>\n
\n
\n Analysis: Why the Hawks traded for Chandler Parsons and his $25 million salary\n <\/div>\n
\n Parsons doesn’t offer the Hawks much salary cap relief. But if he can stay healthy, he could offer meaningful minutes.\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Fortunately, lessons were learned. Thanks to this fit of irrational exuberance, the NBA realized the benefits of cap smoothing and more-friendly contract-extension language in the collective bargaining agreement.<\/p>\n

As a result, we\u2019re launching into a gentler version of free agency today \u2014 one with just a handful of cap room teams, and far fewer key players available to be signed away from their former teams.<\/p>\n

Spending a quarter billion dollars on unrestricted free agents in one day takes a lot more effort now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ten years ago today, I spent a quarter-billion dollars of somebody else\u2019s money in less than an hour. Well, it wasn\u2019t me, exactly, but as a member of the Memphis Grizzlies\u2019 front office, I certainly had a prominent role in it. In contrast to the crawl into free agency that we\u2019ve seen in 2026, where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-2021369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2021369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2021369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2021369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2021369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}