Buddy Hield, Jaylen Brown earn rookie contract extensions

Ahead of Monday’s deadline for rookie contract extensions, Buddy Hield and Jaylen Brown both earned four-year deals with their respective teams.

With the deadline for rookie contract extensions rapidly approaching, the Sacramento Kings and Boston Celtics were able to lock down their respective wing players who were eligible.

As reported by The Athletic‘s Sam Amick Monday morning, the Kings were able to reach a four-year, $86 million agreement with guard Buddy Hield, with the deal including up to $20 million in possible incentives.

Just a few hours later, ESPN‘s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the Celtics had agreed to a four-year, $115 million extension with wing Jaylen Brown, locking him down for the future as a foundational piece of their young core. Neither deal contains a player or team option.

The gap between these two extensions is quite, well, extensive. Boston is obviously a larger market, and Hield could make up some of the distance between them by reaching some of the $8 million in “exceedingly reachable incentives,” per Wojnarowski.

However, that still leaves another $12 million in incentives that Hield is more unlikely to reach, and it’s a bit odd the Kings came out looking like winners for their smart fiscal maneuvering compared to a franchise with more championship banners than anyone in NBA history.

Last year, Hield quietly had one of the 10 or so best shooting seasons the league has ever seen. Taking a whopping 7.9 3-point attempts per game, the 26-year-old canned 42.7 percent of them while averaging a career-high 20.7 points per game. In the process, he joined Stephen Curry (six times), Klay Thompson (thrice), Ray Allen and Dennis Scott as the only players in NBA history to submit a season attempting at least seven 3-pointers per game while making at least 42 percent of them.

Hield isn’t much of a defender and still has plenty of areas to work on with his game, but in a league that values 3-point shooting this much, keeping him around for about $23.5 million a season — on a contract that declines by eight percent every year, per Amick — is a savvy play that removes the dark cloud that would’ve hovered over Sacramento’s head all year long.

The Kings still have work to take care of with Bogdan Bogdanovic, who is set to become a restricted free agent this summer if an extension isn’t reached before the deadline, but at least they got one of their two wings locked down for the long haul.

As for Brown, there’s clear two-way potential, but the Celtics are investing in that upside crossing over into legitimate star territory. The market for 2020 free agents was unquestionably dry, especially with Pascal Siakam and Domantas Sabonis also agreeing to rookie-scale extensions over the weekend, which gave Brown more leverage, but ponying up nearly $29 million a season is quite a hedge that he’ll become a superstar.

With Kyrie Irving and Al Horford gone, there will be opportunities for more involvement on offense. Last year, Brown and Jayson Tatum both disappointed in what were supposed to be breakout seasons, with the former averaging 13.0 points and 4.2 rebounds per game on .465/.344/.658 shooting splits. He’ll only turn 23 years old this week, and he’s flashed plenty of potential. Even in a worst-case scenario, he brings a 3-and-D skill-set to the table.

However, this is a major financial commitment to a guy who may be best-suited coming off the bench in a sixth man role, especially if that small-ball starting lineup of Kemba Walker, Tatum, Brown, Gordon Hayward and Daniel Theis doesn’t hold up. Even if Hayward still doesn’t look like his former self in 2019-20, Brown is the third option at best, in an undersized starting five that will be outsized on most nights.

Brown can do a lot more defensively than Hield and has shown growth as a creator with the ball in his hands. In defense of general manager Danny Ainge, these kinds of extensions were probably inevitable for Boston as soon as he decided not to pull the trigger on a trade for a superstar (which happened about 3-4 times). When you hang onto young prospects and draft assets long enough, eventually they turn into real players in need of contract extensions. Brown’s deal will be the measuring stick for whether Ainge made the right decision on that front.

Overall though, the Kings appear to have gotten a solid bargain on their sharpshooting wing by comparison. If Jaylen Brown reaches his ceiling then it won’t be a big deal for Boston, but if he doesn’t, the Charlotte Hornets already gave the world a pretty good glimpse at what happens when you surround Kemba Walker with a few overinflated contracts and inflexibility.