The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the 2020-21 NBA salary cap will not settle until definitive stances are taken on the suspended season. It can potentially impact free agency, trades, the draft and even future contract extensions, including for the San Antonio Spurs’ Derrick White.
The fourth season of an NBA career, at least for previous first-round picks, spotlights contract extensions for those players. Failure to do so puts that player into the restricted free agent pool—pending his parent team tenders a qualifying offer.
The Spurs just rewarded Dejounte Murray in October with a four-year, $64 million extension, preventing him from testing the market this off-season. The deal does not kick in until the start of 2020-21, increasing by roughly $1.1 million over the contract’s duration. It took a high price for a player who had not played a regular season game since 2017-18, but San Antonio paid for defensive value, potential development and stability since few players were under contract after 2020-21.
Results were uneven for Murray, including losing his starting spot for eight of the 58 games he played. He gained steam as a shooter, making 47 percent of his shots and becoming more consistent from behind the arc, but the need for more development as a scorer still creates questions on him as a full-time starter.
For White, while an occasional starter and mostly in a sixth/seventh man role, he posted 10.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game on 45.9 percent shooting and 35.6 percent on 3-pointers. Add a 52 percent effective field goal percentage and a 58.5 percent true shooting percentage, and the Colorado product was more efficient, the better offensive player than Murray and brought just over half a steal and just under one block per game to the table in 2019-20.
But White is, perhaps, not in line for that same deal as Murray. The former is not the athletic and physical freak that his Spurs draft predecessor is; they stand 6-foot-4, but Murray owns a 6-foot-10 wingspan to White’s 6-foot-7, has an All-Defensive Second Team award on his resume and was deemed the point guard of the future upon Tony Parker’s demotion two years ago. Plus, if the Spurs pay White as the secondary man coming off the bench, it seems difficult to think his payday will approach Murray’s.
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