Players who did not receive extensions and are headed to restricted free agency in 2025

When they chose to acquire Giddey over the summer in a straight swap with the Oklahoma City Thunder for Alex Caruso – passing over multiple offers of draft capital to do so – the Bulls will not have done so with the intent of just using him as a one-year rental. However, with Giddey purportedly having sought a $30 million per annum in a new contract more in line with peers such as Immanuel Quickley, despite having been deemed unstartable in the playoffs, the two were never going to see eye to eye. Giddey, then, will enter free agency as the highest-drafted free agent of the class, while the Bulls will be hoping he can break out anew with them, justifying their decision to trade for him. And using restricted free agency as leverage has been their ethos before, having played the prove-yourself-in-year-four game with both Coby White and Patrick Williams in previous seasons.

The decision to let Kuminga go to free agency without an extension is perhaps one of the more eye-opening ones of this class. His breakout last season was one of the bright spots of a down year for the once-dominant franchise, and the summertime departure of Klay Thompson massively unclogged the once-sticky cap picture. Money was therefore available, and some of it was spent on fellow extension candidate Moses Moody. Then again, the post-mortem of Klay’s departure also illuminated how the Warriors take hard-line positions in negotiating new contracts, not always successfully.

It will have been no surprise to Mitchell that he did not receive a contract extension, as he is fighting for his place in the NBA right now. 26 years old and supposed to be entering his prime years, he went backwards over the first three years of his career, and needs a second wind. Mitchell may get that with Toronto, where he arrived in the salary-dump trade of Sasha Vezenkov over the summer, and he has started three of their five preseason games, perhaps a precursor to getting a lengthy audition with the Raptors this season. Then again, having recorded only 19 points in those five outings, questions as to whether his offense will ever be up to snuff for the lead guard position at the NBA level remain, and he still needs to earn a second contract.

Another former lottery pick to be salary-dumped, Williams was moved by the Memphis Grizzlies to the Nets this offseason, along with a 2030 second-round pick, in exchange for Mamadi Diakite, who was waived before training camp. It was a pure cost-cutting measure, which is never the desired result from a former No. 10 pick, and it followed logically that with his value so low, there was no incentive to tie him down to an extension. Like Mitchell, though, Williams has a shot now with a team expected not to be competitive to redeem his value, start again, make shots, play defense, and re-establish his candidacy as the long languid two-way forward that is so en vogue in the NBA right now. Twice in his first three NBA seasons, he has averaged more than eight points per game; there is a spark in the fire. He just needs to throw a log on it.

Again with echoes of Davion Mitchell above, Duarte was also moved on by the Kings last summer having failed to win a place in their new competitive unit, which marked the second time that the once-hot rookie has been rejected in three years. He arrived in Chicago as an ancillary part of the larger DeMar DeRozan trade, the culmination of a downward spiral for the former Indiana Pacers rookie who entered the league so hot that he averaged 17.7 points per game in his first month. Having been the oldest player in his draft class, Duarte will be turning 28 next June, and so there is not much potential to tie down – instead, the Bulls will be hoping he can get his shot-making and confidence back, without having to invest via an extension to do so.

Mann’s much-improved play after his arrival in Charlotte at last year’s trade deadline made an extension a possibility. He averaged 11.9 points and 5.2 assists per game in his part-season audition after arriving in the Gordon Hayward trade, bringing energy, skill and two-way production to a team that would happily have turned Hayward into anything future-facing. Perhaps the Hornets would prefer to see a full season of Mann, and gauge whether his future is that of a starter or first-guard-off-the-bench, before committing to him longer term. But with a good season in 2024-25, Mann could make that a costly decision for them.

Paint-based backup bigs are not held at the premiums that they used to be, and it is difficult to see a path to being a regular NBA starter for Jackson. Be it here in Indiana (where Myles Turner continues to hold the fort) or in the league in general (where the Kevon Looney types are more of the exception than the rule), Jackson still needs to add a higher skill level to his athleticism, energy, possession-winning length and switching ability to become a top-level player. That said, if he can bring down his foul rates, he could indeed be a quality starter in the future. And if he makes that leap in the upcoming season, perhaps Indiana will regret not tying him down to a smaller extension beforehand, a decision that cost them $58 million with Obi Toppin last season.

Already dealt twice in 2024 – firstly as a small part of the deadline-time trade from the Knicks to the Pistons in exchange for Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks, then again this summer as the only returning player in the Tim Hardaway Jr salary-dump – it is fair to say that Grimes is not top of the Mavericks’ hierarchy. Indeed, while he has gone without an extension, he has had to watch as his immediate rival for playing time, Jaden Hardy, got one. That said, the Mavericks do want Grimes, even going back to the deadline, where they were said to be trying to trade for him, five months before they were finally able to do so. Despite inconsistent results, he has featured prominently in their preseason, and has already got a double-figure scoring average across a full NBA season on his résumé. Grimes still has to cement his place going forward, hence the lack of extension, but his name is written in in pencil.

Rattled by Paul George’s market-making departure this summer, the Clippers are in a state of flux. They are still reeling from the cost of their win-now mentality over the past seasons and all the expenditure in assets and money that it cost them, and will be for a while, without the wins to show for it. They are thus short of draft capital and young talent with which to begin again, built around a pairing of Kawhi Leonard and James Harden that is long past its best-before-end date, and in real danger of being in the worst place an NBA franchise can be; in the middle, slowly sinking downwards. There is therefore a lot of work to do, a lot of questions to answer, a lot of talent to acquire, and a lot of reassurance required. Bones Hyland, a spotty shooter with significant defensive shortcomings, is not the answer to any of those things. What Bones will be hoping is that he will get more opportunities in this moribund Clippers season to showcase his scoring talent and rebuild his stock around the league, with a view to earning a crust next summer in free agency. But 27.8 percent shooting in preseason will not have helped, and an extension was never going to happen in those circumstances.

The unrepentently-aggressive Thomas shot his way to a 22.5 point per game average on last year’s disjointed Nets team, and will happily do so again. Indeed, with Mikal Bridges now gone and the Nets planning for the future, he might average 48 points and 2 assists per game, such is his scoring bag and his confidence in it. It is however that same forward planning that likely prevented Thomas signing an extension this offseason; once the unwanted contract of Ben Simmons finally expires, the Nets will be big free agency players in the summer of 2025, and a fair market extension for Thomas would impinge on that.

(In all probability, Thomas will hit the starter criteria next offseason and boost his qualifying offer amount next summer. But the free agency cap hold will remain the same; at $12,123,747, it will be much lower than his first year’s salary in an extension, hence why it benefits Brooklyn to wait until next summer if they intend to tie him down.)

Having rarely if ever gotten into the rotation of the Philadelphia 76ers across his first two and a half years in the league, traded to the Boston Celtics for a mere second-round pick at the deadline, and then only being a passenger in their title run, Springer still has things to prove. He still has only 602 minutes of experience to his name – barely a week’s worth of game time to Tom Thibodeau – and has not had a chance to demonstrate his viability as a two-way player at the top level. It will be hard to change that on a Celtics’ roster looking to repeat, and so an extension never made sense for a player outside of the Top 12 of his team’s roster. Springer has talent, though, and should not be forgotten on both the trade and free agency markets.

Perhaps compatibility questions surrounding Sharpe and Nic Claxton played a part in Brooklyn’s decision not to extend the former’s contract this offseason. Both are excellent players, but both play the same position in similar ways in the same areas of the court, and are very hard to play together. With Claxton signing a big deal last summer and continuing to improve, the pathway to much more than a role as a quality backup is difficult for Sharpe, unless he were to change teams, something best done via free agency and thus disincentivizing an extension for him. That, combined with Brooklyn’s aforementioned cap aspirations, means he will head to free agency this summer. And once there, Sharpe could be a name to watch on the market. He’s good.

The last man picked in the first round outperformed several of the players in front of him. Aldama has shown himself to be a versatile and rare modern-day offensive big, averaging 10.7 points and 2.3 assists per game last season on a range of shots that included 106 three-pointers made at a 34.9 percent clip. In a 6-foot-11 frame and at only 23 years of age, that is a coveted package. Clearly not coveted enough for an extension, though. Aldama does still need to improve his defense, put on muscle, stay healthy and flop less, but he has shown a lot, and will show more.