NBA Free Agency 2018: 10 biggest player option decisions

The deadlines for players and teams to exercise options for next season are rapidly approaching. What are the biggest decisions waiting to be made?

Player movement is constant, circumstantial and leverage-pending in the NBA. Regardless of whether a player’s current team negotiated the contract, the players in this list all hold next year’s future exclusively in their hands.

As agents start to gauge interest around the league, player decisions arrive as a product of their age, earning potential on the open market and family to name a few. After contracts exploded in the wake of new TV revenue, the impact of opening up the flood gates instead of a slow trickle of the new money leaves only nine teams with space to sign a max contract (by my calculations) and several more without much more room than the mid-level exception. In other words, there may not be enough money to pay non-max players what they probably deserve this year.

Teams with positive relationships to the player may be able to sway them one way or another, but they are ultimately stuck on the sidelines. Even so, roster construction and cap flexibility may change drastically depending on the decisions made on June 29.