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Ben RohrbachSenior writer
Tue, July 14, 2026 at 3:07 PM UTC·10 min read
There are no bad contracts in the NBA, at least not for players. Get your money
There are bad contracts for teams, though, as the second apron acts as a de facto salary cap. The league is so flush with talent at this point that front offices can no longer afford to misallocate any of their financial res one reason we saw the Boston Celtics trade Jaylen Brown’s max contract
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Massive overpays. Wild sign-and-trades. Accounting errors. Missed opportunities. The 2026 NBA free-agency cycle has had it all. Executives are smarter than ever before, but they still make mistakes, and these are the six worst moves of the summer so far, all of which come at an even greater cost than the half a billion dollars these players will earn
1. Trae Young, Washington Wizards
2025-26 (15 games): 17.9 PTS (46/34/83), 8 AST, 2 REB
Contract: 4 years, $212.8 million
The Washington Wizards just tied 30% of their salary cap over the next four years — a future that includes this year’s No. 1 overall pick, AJ Dybantsa — to the prime of four-time All-Star point guard Trae Young’s career. Young once led the Atlanta Hawks to the 2021 Eastern Conference finals, though he has not won a playoff series before or since
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If the vision is to build a high-powered offense orchestrated by Young, I can see it. They have young talent — Alex Sarr, Kyshawn George, Tre Johnson and Bilal Coulibaly among them — to run with him. And for three straight seasons from 2020-23, a similarly young, rebuilding Hawks team constructed a top-10 outfit around Young’s high usage
Over time, though, the 6-foot-2, 164-pound Young’s deficiencies revealed themselves in Atlanta. He is a weak link on defense, and his offense hasn’t been consistently efficient enough to warrant such high usage — or such a high salary. He has thus far been unwilling to move off the ball, which means you’re either a Trae Young team, or you’re not
And 29 other franchises decided they’re not Trae Young teams, mostly because, while he raises a floor somewhere into the play-in tournament hunt, he lowers a ceiling short of a championship. The Hawks wanted out of the Young business, canvassed the league and found nothing else of value beyond CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert from the Wizards
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They made the deal, because they didn’t want to pay this contract. Nor did anyone else
“I know if we win, winning takes care of everything,” Young countered to The Athletic’s Josh Robbins from Las Vegas amid immediate controversy over his deal. “I can’t really get caught up in what people are thinking or what people are saying right now. What’s done is done. So I’m going to make sure the people that believe in me are proved right.”
Guess we’ll have to be proved wrong, then
2. Walker Kessler, Los Angeles Lakers
2025-26 (5 games): 14.4 PTS (70/75/70), 10.8 REB, 3 AST
Contract: 4 years, $129.5 million
It’s not just that the Lakers paid Walker Kessler an average annual value of $32.5 million, or about as much as the Miami Heat will pay three-time All-Star Bam Adebayo next season
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It’s that the Lakers sent the Utah Jazz two first-round draft picks and two first-round pick swaps in a sign-and-trade transaction for the right to give an oft-injured center that deal
The Lakers gave up four future assets — ones that could be used to better build a roster around 27-year-old superstar Luka Dončić — to acquire Kessler, who averaged 9.5 points, 9.3 rebounds and 2.4 blocks in 25.3 minutes over 201 games across four seasons in Utah
The Lakers all but linked the prime of Dončić’s career to Kessler and Austin Reaves, who signed a four-year, $180 million contract in free agency this summer. They also spent $131.2 million in contracts on Quentin Grimes, Sandro Mamukelashvili and Collin Sexton
Who knows what to expect from this team. Oddsmakers currently project them to finish somewhere around sixth in the Western Conference. That’s not good enough, and their ability to get better — to compete for a championship — hinges on the development of Kessler, who played five games last season following surgery to repair a torn left labrum
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The same left shoulder cut short his 2024-25 campaign at 58 games. The hope is that the surgery solved the 7-foot-2, 245-pound rim protector’s injury concerns going forward. The hope is that he plays somewhat commensurate with his production between injuries over the past two seasons — 11.3 points (on 67/29/54 shooting splits), 12.1 rebounds, 2.3 blocks and 1.8 assists in 30.1 minutes per game over 63 appearances — or even better
But it is all just hope. We have not seen it from Kessler. A similar sentiment could be said about the deals for Reaves, Grimes, Mamukelashvili and Sexton. The Lakers, as always, are banking on a lot of things going right for them to be able to compete, only now they have given away the assets they might need in the likely event something goes wrong
3. Gary Trent Jr., Milwaukee Bucks
2025-26 (65 games): 8.1 PTS (39/36/77), 1.2 AST, 1 REB
Contract: 4 years, $64 million
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Gary Trent Jr.’s signing was so surprising that a number of capologists posited that this could have been some kind of under-the-table agreement left over from last summer
Because what other explanation could there possibly be for paying $64 million to a guy who did little else but average 8.1 inefficient points a game for a 32-win team last season?
Trent struck below-market, near-minimum deals with the Bucks in the summers of 2024 and 2025, only to — in another contract year — submit his worst season since his rookie campaign, when he totaled just 111 minutes over 15 games for the Portland Trail Blazers
So, what did the Bucks do? They rewarded him with a contract nobody else would pay. In Milwaukee’s post-Giannis Antetokounmpo era, the Bucks could have allocated their wing minutes to newcomers Brayden Burries and Nate Ament, saving money for a team bound for nowhere, but instead they will pay Trent more than twice his value on the open market
4. DeAndre Jordan, New Orleans Pelicans
2025-26 (12 games): 4.4 PTS (66/0/65), 6.3 REB, 0.9 AST
Contract: 2 years, $7.95 million
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This is an interesting one, especially for cap nerds
It is not easy being a 37-year-old on a 26-win team. Yet, DeAndre Jordan turned last season into a Teammate of the Year campaign, mentoring Yves Missi, among others. For that alone, he is worth the veteran’s minimum, and that’s what he gets for two more years
Except, the contract will cost the Pelicans $3 million more than it has to
On single-season vet minimum deals, the NBA subsidizes all costs beyond two years of service ($2.45 million). Because Jordan is an 18-year vet, he is owed $3.88 million, which means the league would have issued the Pelicans a $1.43 million check for the difference
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Similar savings would have been available had the Pelicans re-signed Jordan to the same deal again next season, but because he signed for two years, they are reportedly on the hook for the entirety of his $7.95 million, all of which now counts against the salary cap
Either it was a bookmaking mistake, or the Pelicans were so concerned about losing a 38-year-old who played 12 games last season that they had to grant him two years right now. Regardless, it will cost team owner Gayle Benson $3 million over the next two years, not an insignificant amount for a small-market franchise that makes its money on the margins
5. Tobias Harris, San Antonio Spurs
2025-26 (63 games): 13.3 PTS (47/37/87), 5.1 REB, 2.5 AST
Contract: 2 years, $30.8 million
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Tobias Harris is a solid veteran, good on the court and in the locker room. He’s probably worth the non-taxpayer’s midlevel exception over the next two seasons from some team
But from the Spurs, who have championship aspirations? They needed to upgrade at the 4 position from Harrison Barnes, another beloved veteran who could not perform at the level they needed him to through four rounds of the playoffs, so they go with Harris, who in his 15 years of NBA service has never helped a team beyond the second round
Four times Harris’ teams have reached a Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals, and four times they have lost. In those outings, he has averaged 15.8 points (on 38/24/90 shooting splits), 8.5 rebounds and 2.3 assists (against 1.5 turnovers) — decently average
That was good enough for the Detroit Pistons, who signed Harris to take them from the league’s worst record to 60 wins, and it worked — to a point. Until they needed to elevate themselves into championship contention, then they let him walk. And that’s when San Antonio decided, You know what, their discard is who we need to take us over the top
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And maybe they’re right. Maybe Harris vibes his way to a title in San Antonio, the steady hand on a team that developed the shakes in the NBA Finals, and that would be great for all parties involved. More likely, though, he, too, fades from the biggest moments, all while he takes touches away from Julian Champagnie, who deserves those minutes at the 4
6. John Collins, Detroit Pistons
2025-26 (69 games): 13.6 PTS (55/41/77), 5.3 REB, 1 AST
Contract: 3 years, $51 million
Just as the Spurs asked themselves, “Who is the missing piece to our championship puzzle?” and responded with Harris, the Pistons answered the same question with John Collins. Given a chance to move on from Harris, to replace his minutes at the 4 with someone who could get them over the top, the Pistons opted for Collins, another free agent whose only playoff success came on a fluky run to the 2021 conference finals with Atlanta
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Collins has not contributed to a playoff team in three seasons, spending the 2023-24 and 2024-25 campaigns on the lottery-bound Jazz, before moving on to the Los Angeles Clippers last season, when they, too, had bigger plans for the once-promising forward
He played 69 games in L.A., starting 56 of them, though he came off the bench in the Clippers’ disappointing play-in tournament loss to the Golden State Warriors. They didn’t quite have a spot for the 28-year-old, which was the case for him in Atlanta and Utah, too
So, Detroit figured it would wedge Collins into the position vacated by Harris, hoping it can make him fit, when there might not be all that big of a difference between the two
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Meanwhile, Jalen Duren languishes in restricted free agency, and the Pistons, who won the East’s No. 1 seed, are now pegged with the seventh-best title odds in the conference. Detroit desperately needed an upgrade, and what it got instead were diminishing returns
