Nets' Cam Thomas receives contract extension projection from front office insider
NBA teams, agents and players will be at the negotiating tables over the next several days . With Monday's 6PM deadline to sign players to rookie-scale extensions approaching, several notable names are not locked into deals. Among those is Brooklyn Nets leading scorer Cam Thomas .
Thomas is entering the final year of his contract after cracking Brooklyn's rotation last season. The 23-year-old made the highest scoring leap among all NBA players in 2023-24, averaging 22.5 points per game on 44/36/86 shooting splits. After spending his first two NBA seasons on the bench, he enters this year as the Nets' lead offensive option.
But what is Thomas worth on the open market?
It's a question many scouts and executives have struggled to get a handle on due to the guard's polarizing skillset. While Thomas has proven he can score in droves, he's undersized, below league average in shooting efficiency, and not known for his playmaking or defense.
He showed signs of development in these areas in his first season as a full-time member of an NBA rotation. How much those improvements swayed opinions among executives remains to be seen. ESPN front office insider Bobby Marks revealed what contract he would offer Thomas in his extension projection series.
"It is important to look at what an extension could look like based on Brooklyn's budget and also if there were no salary cap apron or cap hold restrictions," Marks wrote. "A four-year, $62 million extension that starts at $14 million has Brooklyn losing only $2 million in cap space. Thomas should look at the four-year, $100 million contract that Anfernee Simons signed with Portland in 2022 — which would be equivalent to a four-year, $125 million deal under a projected $154.5 million salary cap in 2025-26."
While the Nets can extend Thomas now, they can maximize their league-leading 2025 cap space by holding off.
Why Cam Thomas and Nets can benefit from waiting on extension
Thomas will have a $12 million cap hold next offseason. A cap hold is a number assigned to a team's cap sheet that acts as a placeholder for impending free agents. Thomas' is lower than other rookie-scale extension candidates because he has a smaller contract as a late draft pick (27th overall).
If the Nets were to extend Thomas now, his 2025-26 salary would count against their cap space next summer. But if they were to wait, only Thomas' $12.1 million cap hold would eat into the space. They could then use their space to sign other players before using Thomas' bird rights to re-sign him above the cap.
Because of this, Thomas would have to take a significant discount – four years, $62 million, as Marks proposes – for an extension to make sense for Brooklyn now. It's far more likely he will wait until next summer when he will hit restricted free agency.
How does Thomas stack up among recently-extended NBA guards?
Marks offers Anfernee Simons' contract (four years, $100 million) as a benchmark for Thomas' next deal. Simons will make roughly 18 percent of the salary cap each year of his deal. This is in the same range as other young guards such as Immanuel Quickley, Tyler Herro and Jordan Poole.
With the salary cap set to rise in coming years due to a $76 billion media rights deal, the new value of such a deal would be roughly four years, $125 million. But is Thomas in the same class as the above players? When assessing their numbers from last season while factoring in age and NBA experience, he has a strong case:
While Thomas has room to improve in terms of scoring efficiency, playmaking and defense, he is two years younger than most of the players in the group. He's played the least NBA minutes by a wide margin:
- Herro: 10,422
- Poole: 10,239
- Simons: 8,143
- Quickley: 7,626
- Thomas: 4,215
If the Nets choose to extend Thomas next summer, there are ways they can structure the contract to their benefit. Brooklyn extended Nic Claxton to a four-year, $97 million deal this offseason. However, with no expectations to contend over the next two seasons, they frontloaded Claxton's deal , paying the bulk of his commitment in the first two years.
The Nets could employ a similar strategy with Thomas, paying him a hefty salary upfront with a descending structure. Here is an example of how Brooklyn could format such a deal based on future salary cap projections:
This structure would allow the Nets to evaluate Thomas while they're still rebuilding. If he continues to develop, the backend could prove valuable as they attempt to move toward contention.
For reference, here are the NBA players who will make between 12.5 – 15.5 percent of the salary cap this season: Patrick Williams, Harrison Barnes, Jusuf Nurkic, Josh Hart, Collin Sexton, D'Angelo Russell, Keldon Johnson, Bojan Bogdanovic, Norman Powell, Jakob Poeltl, Myles Turner, Nikola Vucevic, Jarrett Allen, Derrick White, Marcus Smart, Lonzo Ball and De'Andre Hunter.
Thomas' development in a lead offensive role will be among the Nets' lines in 2024-25. If the fourth-year Net can build upon his improvement late last season, he should be in line for a significant payday next summer.
