ConSarnit wrote:I went back and looked at rookie extensions over the past 13 years. I tried to remove injuries as a reason for poor performance (doesn't really apply to RJ). It wasn't easy to parse out all of the data but for rookie extension contracts that were considered "bad" in their first year I'd estimate 25% of those deals became "neutral" (or better) by the end of the contract. For the most part, if you were identified as a "bad" deal the second pen hits paper, it's likely to remain bad for the duration of the contract. These non-max rookie extension guys are probably the least likely to turn it around because they are the type of player teams have jumped the gun on. The max extension guys are often already all-stars (or close to it) and most 2nd contract guys get their deal after their 4th season when teams have more information to make a decision based off of. Non-max rookie extension contracts might be considered negative value early on more so than other rookie contracts but they are a smaller section of all rookie contracts. If we are looking at all rookie contracts then I believe the majority would not be considered negative value in their 1st year of their new contract.
25% sounds low to me. Again, almost every rookie extension is by definition negative value the second the pen hits the paper because those players are being paid at least partially based on potential. There are definitely examples of guys who got stuck with fair value deals right out of the gate. We had two of them in Fred and OG who btw vastly outplayed their deals.
I'd love to see some examples. It shouldn't be hard to find a bunch given it's 75% of extensions. I assume you weren't including small/insignificant deals. A few recent examples of lotto picks who went from overpaid to outperforming or neutral value on their rookie extensions: Andrew Wiggins, Zach Lavine, Aaron Gordon, Devin Booker, Jaylen Brown, Jamal Murray, Buddy Hield, Domantas Sabonis, De'Aron Fox, Lauri Markkanen, JJJ, Shai,..Jalen Brunson is a great undrafted example. Julius Randle doesn't count because technically it was after his fifth season, but he went from overpaid to neutral value pretty quick. We've seen examples further in the past with guys like Demar.
You might argue all those guys were better than RJ was when they inked their deals. I think there's a lot of evidence that betting on development of pedigree guys works. And maybe RJ never gets to a point of neutral value from the average fan's perspective, but his contract is only 17-18% of the cap. That's what you pay for a decent starter. RJ is already starting for us. The bar for growth isn't exactly super high here.
