Superpowers are built with superstar discounts

Victor Wembanyama took a potential discount from the Spurs on his extension, mimicking two Thunder stars, the reigning Finals MVP and two older legends.

Good morning. Is this how the band Dire Straights got its name? Let's basketball.

Victor Wembanyama unsurprisingly quickly agreed to a rookie extension with the Spurs in recent days. The plot twist is that Wembanyama has reportedly agreed to accept a straight 25% max – not a potential supermax at 30% of the salary cap, for which he'd be eligible if he won Defensive Player of the Year, MVP or made an All-NBA team next season. (He won DPOY, finished third in MVP voting and made first team All-NBA last year.) The only question really would be whether Wembanyama hits 65 games played, making him eligible for those honors.

Wembanyama is not the first superstar to take a discount to help his team compete in a cap-limited environment. He's not even the first Spurs superstar to do so: Tim Duncan took less than the maximum salary for which he was eligible multiple times, including after his fourth championship at age 31, just before their mid-2010s run and again closer to the end of his career when San Antonio was successfully chasing LaMarcus Aldridge in free agency. Duncan has been around Wembanyama and the Spurs a lot over the past three years. Surely talking about financial sacrifice and team-building limits in lower-revenue markets like San Antonio has been a topic.

While this is something for which Duncan stood out in his era, he's not the only example. Jalen Brunson, the reigning Finals MVP who hoisted the trophies Wembanyama hungers for, took a massive discount two summers ago. That discount is pitched as worth $113 million, though that obfuscates that Brunson will make plenty of money in 2028-29 (currently a player option) and 2029-30. The real value of the discount over the contract term is about $37 million over three years, which is still a massive concession and ... well, the Knicks won the championship in the first year of that deal. Brunson made the roster possible.

The Spurs aren't the only team convincing young stars on their rookie deals to offer up savings in the interest of building deeper rosters, either. The Thunder did this with both of their 2022 draft picks last summer: Chet Holmgren took a straight 25% max (just like Wembanyama) and Jalen Williams agreed to a deal with reduced escalators that would have only granted the full 30% if he'd made first team All-NBA (or won MVP or DPOY) and gotten him 26% (third team All-NBA) or 27% (second team All-NBA) otherwise. Williams ended up missing so much of the season it didn't matter as he was ineligible for all of the awards. Holmgren made All-NBA and so would have been eligible for the supermax if he'd forced Oklahoma City to offer it. He didn't. And now both Williams and Holmgren are on 25% maxes while Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is on a 35% supermax deal through the end of the decade.