It's Contract Extension Season

Last week, we saw each of Billy Donovan, Mikal Bridges, and Luka Doncic receive contract extensions from their respective teams. Let's run through some thoughts on each of them, in the order they were handed down.

Billy the Bull

You can consider this section something of a stand-in for a "Where Are We Going?" post on the Bulls.

I'll somewhat sheepishly admit here that I kind of like Billy Donovan. I think he gets something of a bad rap because he happens to be the coach of a Bulls team that is essentially ambition-less. The Bulls don't strive to be anything more than Not Terrible. To their credit, they are continually Not Terrible. It's just that striving to be merely Not Terrible is not a worthy goal, and so the Bulls seem like something of a joke because they're never Actually Good, either.

That's not necessarily Donovan's fault, per se, but as the coach of the team, he — along with the front office, which deserves a larger share of the blame — becomes something of an avatar for mere Not Terrible-ness, and I'm not sure I think he's merely a Not Terrible coach.

That said, I do like to use a different rubric than most when looking at the coaching position. As I wrote when wishing the Knicks a good summer: "Unless your coach is giving you an obvious advantage through scheme or culture or preparedness or something else every single night, you should be open to a change, and you should search far and wide to find the right fit."

Is Donovan giving the Bulls an advantage night after night? I'm honestly not sure. The culture in Chicago is hard to change as the coach, because it's set by ownership, which only cares about being Not Terrible. It's hard to argue that Donovan is giving Chicago an advantage there. The Bulls under Donovan don't look unprepared or under-prepared, but I don't necessarily think they have some major advantage in that area where they come out and look like they know exactly what the other team is doing every single game, either.

I think Donovan is probably a little bit underrated tactically. He has shown throughout his career an ability and willingness to change his schemes dramatically to fit his personnel. He coached the final season of the Kevin Durant/Russell Westbrook Thunder team, which looked markedly different from the Westbrook-only Thunder, the Westbrook-and-Paul George Thunder, and the Shai Gilgeous-Alexander/Chris Paul/Dennis Schroder Thunder. That first year where the Bulls had Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso smothering everyone up and down the floor looked a lot different than any of those Thunder teams, and the Bulls have had to look considerably different in each year since then as they've changed over their personnel.

I don't think Donovan is an elite schemer, to be clear, but I do value a willingness to be flexible and match scheme to personnel rather than trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Is that enough to say that the Bulls shouldn't be looking around and trying to find a coach who can do better, though? I don't really think so.

Donovan rises above Not Terrible in terms of quality as a coach, but settling for a coach who is merely good or pretty good is, I think, the kind of thing that a team striving to merely be Not Terrible would do. I think there is clearly upside available somewhere, but you have to want to find it — and be willing to risk some possible downside to do so. The Bulls, very obviously, don't want to find it — or at least aren't willing to risk any downside to do so.

Their entire modus operandi as an organization is about avoiding downside, even if it means limiting access to upside. And that's how you get long-term extensions for not just Donovan, but the front office that has been building yet another version of this Not Terrible team.

Water under the Bridges

It seems highly likely that this contract was agreed to as a wink-wink, nudge-nudge part of the trade the Knicks executed with the Nets last offseason. Bridges got a four-year extension worth $150 million — a deal that contains a player option for the final season, meaning he's under contract through 2029 with an option to stick around for 2030 that is likely to be resolved in a way that is adverse to the Knicks. (As I've discussed before, player options are always going to be resolved this way. If the dude plays well enough that the team wants him to pick it up, he will likely instead opt for free agency and get more money. If the team would rather he decline the option because it's now a bad value, he'll pick it up and take the money.)

Before discussing the relative value of the deal, I do want to note two things:

• Bridges took a very, VERY slight trim from his absolute maximum of $156 million. That's seemingly designed to potentially help the Knicks avoid the second apron for another season (2026-27) while still paying him just about as much as is legally allowable under the extension rules. (If they let Mitchell Robinson walk, they can probably do it. If they bring Mitch back, they might have to trade someone like Josh Hart in order to do it.)
• Bridges notably signed this deal several days before the day on which, if he were to sign, he would be ineligible to be traded this upcoming season. We saw Lauri Markkanen wait until after that date last year to extend with the Jazz, but Bridges saw fit to extend beforehand.

According to Spotrac, the new deal will take Bridges from being the 88th highest-paid player in the league in terms of average annual value, to the 50th. He'll check in just behind Darius Garland, Desmond Bane, and Jalen Brunson, and just ahead of Alperen Sengun, Rudy Gobert, and Jalen Green.

If the Knicks are getting the version of Bridges they got last season, it's an overpay by several million dollars per year. If they're getting the version of Bridges they thought they were getting when they traded for him, it's probably neutral value. They're probably getting a version of Bridges somewhere in between those two poles, which probably makes it a slight overpay but not a disastrous one.

Bridges should be better defensively overall after struggling badly early on and then recovering for most of the year and taking it up a level in the first two rounds of the playoffs, in particular. If the Knicks start Robinson at center next to Towns, Bridges should benefit from having a pick-and-roll defense partner who knows what he's doing more often. He undoubtedly looked worse than he actually was quite often last year by virtue of having to defend so many ball screens with Towns. (No two players were called on to defend more pick and rolls together than those two, per GeniusIQ tracking.) The sample was small but the Knicks yielded just 0.958 points per direct screen when Bridges had Robinson as his partner last year, compared with 1.068 when he defended the screen with Towns.

Still, he has not been nearly the defender for the last 2.5 seasons in Brooklyn and New York that he was when he was with the Suns, and that's less than ideal for a team that is counting on wing defense being a major piece of the puzzle. The Knicks last season shunted him into a role that was less than ideal, too. Because Brunson is such a liability at the point of attack, the Knicks needed to use Bridges to defend point guards more often than not. But he's better against wings. There's a reason his best defense of the year came against the Celtics, while he didn't look as good in the ensuing series against the Pacers.

The Knicks could have him on wings more often by starting Deuce McBride and letting him defend lead ball-handlers, but then they'd be back to starting Towns at center and sacrificing the ability to protect the paint. They're caught a little bit in between in terms of being able to set him up for his best defensive role.

New York definitely did not get the best out of him offensively last season, either, even as he averaged 17.6 points per game. He was too often a bystander in the offense, relegated to standing in the corner. That's what he largely did with the Suns, but the Knicks traded for him to get a hybrid of what he did with Phoenix and what he did with Brooklyn, when he was on the ball and creating for himself and others far more often. They did not access that part of his game often enough last year, and at times didn't seem like they wanted to access it at all. (It was especially infuriating to see Bridges play so rarely with the second unit to start second and fourth quarters while Brunson took his rest. Having another off-the-bounce threat in those minutes was obviously part of the rationale for trading for him. But the Knicks just never used him that way until the playoffs, when he did have a few huge fourth-quarter stretches in their comeback wins.)

That said, Bridges himself was also far too passive last season, including and perhaps especially when he had the ball in his hands. He showed an almost comical aversion to contact, cratering to a pathetic 1.4 free throws per game after averaging 6.6 during his initial stint in Brooklyn and 3.9 during the 2023-24 campaign. He settled for FAR too many mid-range attempts, and while he made those shots at an efficient clip (51.3% from 3-10 feet, 50.7% from 10-16 feet, and 52.0% from 16-23 feet), the fact that defenses knew he wasn't going all the way to the rim made him a far less dangerous threat than he should have been given that level of efficiency.

The three-point shooting was also an issue, as his conversion rate dipped to just 35.4% — his lowest mark since his rookie year. He was dynamite from the corners, hitting 42.3% of the time, but he shot just 30.5% above the break thanks in large part to a new release point that was much higher and made his shot all arms and no legs, so he was routinely missing short. (His wrist height at release was almost 8 inches higher than it was during the 2020-21 season when he shot a career-best 42.5% from deep, per GeniusIQ.) Bridges said last offseason that he tweaks his shot every summer in an attempt to get back to the motion he used in college. He should tweak it again and drop that release point back down.

Some of these issues could alleviate themselves to varying degrees. Perhaps touching the ball more often and in different situations will help him rediscover his aggressiveness. Perhaps altering his release point will bring back the above-the-break shooting. Perhaps having Robinson or McBride on the floor more often will help him avoid having to defend so many actions with Towns as his partner and no help behind them. Those are a lot of perhapses, though, and you don't want that many perhapses when paying a player this much money over the long term.

Allllll of that said, though, this strikes me as a contract designed to be traded next offseason. If they didn't extend Bridges, the Knicks were in danger of losing him for nothing next offseason, with no ability to replace him barring a friendly sign-and-trade. (The Dunc'd On guys call this the Bird Rights trap.) Making sure to keep his salary slot around as a moveable piece makes sense from that perspective — as does having a guy who makes a significant-enough salary to be the large part of the ballast in a true superstar trade. (The fact that he has to be that guy rather than the superstar himself, though, kind of obviates the need to have traded for him in the first place, but that's another discussion.) The Knicks liquidated some of the assets they'd need to make such a trade to acquire Bridges in the first place, but they'd really be out of options on that front if they let him walk. Overpaying to retain him and not lose out on the optionality makes a degree of sense.

There's also the fact that the Knicks are not building a cap sheet — they're building a basketball team. They're in position to potentially win the Eastern Conference this year. They're been a top-three seed two years in a row. They made the conference finals this past year. Several East powers have been laid low. They are and should be all-in on trying to win the title right now. (Or at least win the East and then give the Thunder a run for their money.) And Bridges, with his combination of wing defense, shooting (especially from the corners), and ability to create off the dribble, would be incredibly difficult for them to replace. If they went looking for a replacement, they'd be looking for a guy a lot like Bridges. And those guys, as we see here, are very expensive. (Especially when you have to overpay them to keep them around.)

Nobody leaves the Lakers

I'm not sure there was anybody who actually thought Luka Doncic wasn't going to sign an extension to remain with the Lakers. Perhaps those people existed (probably almost exclusively in Miami or but maybe some in Denver), but they were deluding themselves.

The only real question here was whether Doncic would extend for the maximum allowable amount (four years and around $220 million) or take the deal he actually took (three years and around $161 million). The latter structure allows him to enter free agency one year earlier, when he'll have 10 years of service and be eligible for the super-max extension he can't sign with L.A. now because the Mavericks traded him after his rookie deal expired but before he'd accrued enough service time to be super-max eligible. As John Hollinger notes, he'll now be able to sign for five years and around $406 million during the summer of 2028.

And this was never going to happen anywhere but L.A. Nobody passes up the chance to be the face of the Lakers, once they're in the Laker machine. Some guys might decide to go somewhere else or not give them the time of day in free agency (like LaMarcus Aldridge back in the day), but the only star-level player to go there and leave of his own accord is Dwight Howard, and that was a personality clash with Kobe Bryant and Dwight wouldn't have been the face of the franchise like Luka will for the next half-decade and more.

The Lakers obviously still have to both navigate the eventual end of the LeBron James era and actually build a team around Luka, but there are very few players you would rather have to build a team around. Especially now that he's apparently dedicated to being in shape, which was utterly predictable.