DeMar DeRozan’s tepid free-agent market says more about the league than the collective bargaining agreement

The rule changes stemming from the 2023 collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and its players haven’t even been fully implemented yet, and they’ve already proven to be one of the most powerful forces against player movement in league history. The second apron broke the Golden State Warriors. It forced the Los Angeles Clippers to let Paul George walk for nothing instead of trading him and recouping his salary. It’s an “apron world” now, as Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka said Tuesday. All 30 teams live in it.

This reality comes with a ready-made excuse. Whenever something that would have made sense in the old world doesn’t happen, people will point to the collective bargaining agreement as the bogeyman that stopped it. That’s what’s happening, to some extent, to DeMar DeRozan.

DeRozan was an All-Star in 2023. He nearly won Player of the Year last season. He has yet to experience a significant statistical decline. There was a time in NBA history when such a player would have been among the most coveted on the entire free-agent market. That is not the case now. “The type of contract he might want is simply not going to be available,” ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski said Tuesday. “He’s not being left on the market. The Bulls are more than willing to negotiate a sign-and-trade deal to get him the years and money he might want, but with the new salary cap rules, that’s a lot harder for teams to do.”

We’re now just days away from free agency. As of Tuesday night, only two teams have more than $20 million in cap space. Those teams are the Utah Jazz, who are either on the verge of a rebuild or using their cap space to renegotiate and extend Lauri Markkanen’s contract, and the Detroit Pistons, who have more playmakers than they know what to do with and a serious lack of three-point shooters to complement them. Neither team seems like an obvious destination.

Still, at this point, the idea of ​​a significant pay cut is still off the table. “For teams that might ask or assess DeMar’s interest in a full mid-level exception, which costs around $13 million, I’m told that’s not even being considered right now,” Bleacher Report’s Chris Haynes said. DeRozan is still operating under the old assumption that he’s a star and should be paid like one.

It would be tempting to say here that the CBA is costing DeRozan money, but that wouldn’t necessarily be accurate. Free agency hasn’t been a major driver of player movement for several years now. Just go back to 2022, the last offseason before this new CBA was designed. No free agent has changed teams for more than the $27.3 million annual salary DeRozan was making under his last contract. Only two free agents have changed teams for more than the $13 million starting salary DeRozan is now turning down: Jalen Brunson and Collin Sexton, who did so in a trade that netted the Cavaliers Donovan Mitchell. Sexton’s deal came in September. Had Cleveland not been lucky enough to land its All-Star, Sexton might have stuck with the Cavaliers on a cheap one-year qualifying offer. Free agency simply doesn’t allow players to be paid outside to the same extent as before.

The last time DeRozan was a free agent in 2021, he needed an outside force to bail him out. He himself said he expected to land with the Lakers. They ultimately decided to trade for Russell Westbrook. There’s never been a full and clear account of why, but the simplest explanation is that signing and trading DeRozan would have put them under a (then-only) cap hit. Acceptable if DeRozan left enough money on the table. Not so much at the price he ended up getting paid.

The first day of free agency has passed. Most of the league’s funds have been spent. It’s all forgotten now. There was a brief moment three years ago when the basketball world thought it might consider a mid-level contract. Even after he was paid, the general reaction was one of bewilderment. John Hollinger explained it in a piece for The Athletic:

“Consider this: if they had paid half — $14 million a year — who outbid them? The Clippers and Lakers had only the taxpayer-imposed mid-level exception. The Knicks quickly exhausted their salary cap to secure the No. 6 spot for the next three years. The only teams with room to make a trade here were Oklahoma City, which isn’t rebuilding around a 32-year-old, and DeRozan’s team in San Antonio, which didn’t seem in a hurry to bring him back.

So here we have two separate free agency markets that operate under two different sets of CBA rules. In both cases, the market for DeRozan was seemingly limited. In 2021, a team stepped up and met DeRozan’s demands. So far, in 2024, they haven’t. So why is that?

Well, it’s probably pretty simple. The NBA values ​​different things today than it did in the past. The NBA champion Boston Celtics ranked No. 1 in 3-point attempts and No. 2 in defense. The youngest No. 1 in NBA history, the Oklahoma City Thunder, ranked No. 4 in defense and led the NBA in 3-point field goal percentage. Mikal Bridges brings other things to the table, but he’s best known as perhaps the pinnacle of the modern 3-and-D archetype. He was just traded for five first round pick.

While this trade was far more complicated than it seems, it gives a sense of what the NBA values ​​today. Shot creation, at the superstar level, remains the most valuable skill in basketball. But more and more teams are deciding that outside of their best or second-best players, the skills they value most are three-point shooting and defense.

DeRozan doesn’t have much to offer on either end. He attempted 2.8 three-pointers per game last season, which is surprisingly the second-highest number of his career, but on 17.2 field goal attempts, that’s a three-point attempt rate of just 16.6 percent. That’s the fourth-lowest number among the 34 players with his shooting volume, ahead of Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

In the 2022-23 season, he was dead last, behind Antetokounmpo. He has had a negative Defensive Estimated Plus Minus in four of the last five years. He has never had a positive Defensive Daily Plus-Minus. If you’re not the analytics type, here’s a simpler way to put it: If you judge defenses by the number of points per 100 possessions they allow, all three of DeRozan’s Bulls defenses were better with him on the bench than with him on the floor. The same was true of all three of his Spurs defenses. To find a defense that was better with DeRozan on the floor than off it, you’d have to go back to the 2014-15 Raptors.

The NBA was already moving toward a hyper-emphasis on 3-point shooting and defense in 2021, but not quite to the same degree as it is today. The Lakers, for example, traded for Westbrook, who had similar (and frankly, bigger) flaws. The Bulls had already added Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso, so they felt comfortable covering for DeRozan’s defensive flaws. Offensively, they led the NBA in mid-range shots attempted in all three of DeRozan’s seasons, but Billy Donovan had never coached a team that finished in the NBA’s top 10 in 3-point volume, so there was a stylistic fit.

Would there still be a game this time? Potentially. The Heat have emerged as a potential interested party, but it’s worth noting that they’re already about $7 million above the first apron. Acquiring a sign-and-trade caps you at the first apron, so the Heat wouldn’t just have to trade the salary they were planning to pay DeRozan, but add about $7 million more (and that’s not to mention rounding out the rest of the roster). To make that feasible, they’d basically have to give up either Tyler Herro or Terry Rozier. Maybe Miami is willing to do that, but Herro is a decade younger than DeRozan, the Heat just gave up a first-round pick for Rozier, and the Heat already rank 18th in the NBA in 3-point attempts per game, so replacing DeRozan with a willing shooter would be suboptimal to say the least.

ESPN’s Marc Spears said the Kings were an underdog for DeRozan. The fit here is, again, awkward. Sacramento already has three guards who attack first and defend last in De’Aaron Fox, Malik Monk and Kevin Huerter. Keon Ellis is the only above-average defender in the rotation. Their general manager, Monte McNair, grew up in basketball working for a Houston Rockets team that led the NBA in three-point attempts nearly every year. He’s not the kind of executive you’d expect to pay to shoot long 2-pointers. Franky, this report screams ownership pressure.

Kings insider James Ham reported during Mike Brown’s contentious extension negotiations that “the failure to repeat the success of the previous year did not sit well with the owners.” The Kings have been linked to nearly every big name that could hit the market since their surprise trip to the 2023 playoffs. Bradley Beal. Zach LaVine. Markkanen. Brandon Ingram. And now, surprise, surprise, DeRozan.

Impatient owners force management to make hasty decisions quite often. The Heat or a similar team could make a surprising trade to free up the money to bring in DeRozan at a price they deem acceptable via a sign-and-trade. But, to be frank, when teams want to do that, they tend to be able to do it quickly. The Mavericks wanted to pay Klay Thompson above the mid-level exception. They quickly traded Josh Green to create the money to do so. The Lakers reportedly wanted to and tried to do the same thing. Klay Thompson is a three-point shooter. DeRozan is not. If there was a team willing to pay DeRozan anywhere near his old salary…wouldn’t they have arrived by now?

Haynes reports that DeRozan is willing to be patient in his search for the right deal. It’s rare for big free agent paydays to come after the first wave. Eventually, a lot of these teams calling DeRozan up with mid-tier deals are going to have to move on. There’s only so much money on the market. Eventually, the music stops and a certain number of players don’t have a chair anymore. These days, players with DeRozan’s skill set are more and more likely to end up in that position. He hasn’t declined like, say, Westbrook. But the league’s interest in players like him has waned regardless. He’s coming off three years as the best player on a play-in team. No one’s going to add him hoping he can lead them, but no one really wants role players with his shortcomings, either.

It takes a very specific roster to maximize DeRozan at this stage of his career, one with a lot of shooting, a lot of defense, a lot of size and a certain need for maneuverability. How many teams fill that box, at least in the starting lineup? Not many. That was true under the old collective bargaining agreement. It’s true under the new one. The NBA is starting to realize that. DeRozan may be losing money for every day he doesn’t do it.