Report: Nuggets, Faried agree to reworked 4-year, $50-million extension
Kenneth Faried may not be getting a fifth year in his contract, but the Denver Nuggets big man will still be well taken care of.
Faried and the Nuggets have reworked their original extension agreement, which was for $60 million over five years, into a four-year, $50-million extension, according to Yahoo! Sports Adrian Wojnarowski.
After consulting with NBA, Denver had to re-work 5-year deal to 4 years. This time, Faried gets $12.5M per, chance to be free agent at 28.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) October 7, 2014
The problem with the original five-year, $60-million agreement was that under terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, five-year extensions coming off rookie scale contracts, as Faried is, can only be for maximum dollars. If teams want to extend a player on a rookie scale contract for less than the max, a four-year term is the longest they can offer.
Faried would have become a restricted free agent next summer if he and the Nuggets could not reach an extension agreement by the October 31 deadline.
The 24-year-old has career averages of 12.1 points, 8.6 rebounds, 1.0 assists, and 1.0 blocks through three seasons, and his offensive game is limited by poor range and free throw shooting (64 percent), but Faried made major strides towards the end of last season.
Faried averaged 20.0 points, 11.1 rebounds, 1.5 assists, and 1.1 steals over his final 22 games (roughly the final quarter) of 2013-14, then starred on the gold medal winning American team at the FIBA World Cup of Basketball.
Faried is a poor individual defender and much of his effectiveness is energy-dependent, but considering his youth, his recent play, and the rising salary cap in the near future, $12.5 million per year for him looks like a solid bargain for the Nuggets.