NBA 2026: Defense Gets $155 Million, Scorers Get Two-Way Deals

Jaden Bradley heard his name called at No. 50 in June's draft. He signed a two-way contract with the Toronto Raptors, practised, waited. Last Monday, the Raptors converted that deal into a standard contract: four years, just under $9.3 million in total, plus a freed-up two-way slot.

In the same week, Ausar Thompson signed a five-year, $155 million extension with the Detroit Pistons. Keyonte George agreed to five years and $157.5 million with the Utah Jazz. Pelle Larsson took four years and $60 million from the Miami Heat. Saddiq Bey took three years and $55.5 million from the New Orleans Pelicans. Nicolas Batum announced his retirement after 18 NBA seasons. Kawhi Leonard moved close to a Toronto extension worth up to $126 million over two years, per Jake Fischer.

Bradley's four years combined do not equal two-thirds of one year of Larsson's salary.

I reopened the contract tracker I built in 2026 — the Excel file I assembled by hand after watching a Japanese U18 game and logging Rui Hachimura's numbers across 15 games, at a time when no Japanese outlet had a decent dataset on him. That file now has an extra column: contract mechanism. The column shows that last week was about the rulebook more than about belief.

The summer of 2026 has one odd feature: money flowed toward players the traditional box score undervalues. Thompson averaged 9.9 points, 5.7 rebounds and 2.0 steals, started 72 of 73 games, and made the NBA All-Defensive First Team. Detroit finished as the East's top seed for the first time since 2026-07. Empires are not built in a night, but data can build them in a single season.

On the other side, Cam Whitmore — a former first-round pick who averaged 12.3 points as a Houston rookie — signed a two-way deal with the Denver Nuggets. A blood clot in his shoulder limited him to 21 games for Washington last season, and he has never reached 60 games in any of his three NBA seasons. Lajae Jones, the No. 54 pick, played for Golden State's Summer League team and then signed with Pallacanestro Trieste in Italy, with the Warriors retaining his draft rights. All three Golden State two-way slots are full: Graham Ike, the former Gonzaga centre, plus Malevy Leons and L.J. Cryer.

Adem Bona was diagnosed with a sprained left foot while playing for Türkiye in FIBA World Cup qualifiers. Philadelphia will re-evaluate him when training camp opens at the end of the month; Bona is competing with Ariel Hukporti for the backup centre job.

Toronto, meanwhile, brought Kawhi Leonard back and is negotiating an extension. Batum closed 18 seasons; his most productive offensive year was 2026-17 with Charlotte at 15.1 points per game. He was the No. 25 pick in 2026, played for four franchises, most recently the Clippers, and never made an All-Defensive Team. His former team, the Clippers, is being discussed on The Dan Le Batard Show around an identity question: whether to drop the words Los Angeles and stop living in the Lakers' shadow.

What the market bought in the summer of 2026 is the ability to survive when the ball is not in your hands.

Thompson is the clearest case. A player who has never averaged more than 10 points a game is earning $31 million a year, and that price is not paying for current output. It pays for something that only appears across four playoff quarters: the capacity to switch assignments endlessly without the ball, without a play called for him, without needing a touch to matter. Detroit built the East's top seed on that foundation, and now it is paying to keep the foundation.

Larsson follows the same logic at a lower price tier: 54 starts in 70 games, 11.4 points, 3.5 rebounds, 3.4 assists. Miami just added Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Larsson's value lies in keeping rhythm for a roster whose star needs the ball, not in how much he scores. Four years and $60 million is the price of fit.

Bey is a different animal: buying back risk. He lost the entire 2026-25 season to a torn ACL, returned to start 64 of 72 games, and averaged 17.7 points, 5.6 rebounds, 2.5 assists on 45.1 percent from the field and 84.1 percent from the line. Three years and $55.5 million is what a team pays up front for a player who just proved his knee is intact.

George is the outlier at the top: 23.6 points, 3.7 rebounds, 6.1 assists, 1.1 steals and 2.5 threes, all career highs in the first three categories. Five years and $157.5 million is the price of a lead guard, after two uneven seasons.

Then Bradley. Toronto's conversion of his two-way into a four-year standard deal worth under $9.3 million came out of a constraint: the Raptors were limited in how much they could spend to fill their open standard contracts. Converting a two-way is the cheapest route to another eligible body, and it reopens a two-way slot for someone else. Roster spots in the NBA of 2026 are decided by salary architecture more than by talent ranking.

Denver did the opposite with Whitmore. Marc Stein called Denver a team to watch days earlier, and the two-way deal closed. For a player who has never logged 60 games in a season, a two-way is the cheapest, lowest-risk door for the team and still a real opportunity for the player. I followed Yuta Watanabe from his two-way days in Memphis, then Toronto, before he earned a standard contract and a Japan national team spot at the Olympics. That path exists; it is just narrow.

Golden State chose a third route with Jones: keep the rights, send the player to Italy, spend no roster spot. Philadelphia is solving a different equation entirely — Bona, with a sprained left foot, is the cushion for Joel Embiid, and every game he misses is a game Embiid has to carry more.

The popular read on this week is that young teams are locking up their cores. I read it differently. Those $155 million and $157.5 million figures are not praise for the player; they are the cost of replacing him. Detroit just calculated that finding a 6-foot-7 wing who can guard four positions in free agency costs far more than extending the one it already has.

But leaving that argument untouched would be fooling myself. George got $157.5 million for scoring 23.6 points a game, and Bey got $55.5 million for scoring 17.7. Offence still gets paid, and paid heavily. The real line does not run between defence and offence. The line runs through whether your production shrinks at the right rate when your touches drop. Bey's numbers arrived because other New Orleans wings were injured, opening chances a healthy roster would not offer him. George's numbers may fall with a healthy Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr., but his assists will likely rise. Same money, opposite scripts.

Then there is Batum. Eighteen seasons, career averages of 9.6 points, 4.7 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 0.9 steals and 1.5 threes, and not one All-Defensive Team selection. He did the exact job Thompson just got $155 million to do. The market only repriced that job after he left it. Data does not lie, but the people reading it do — and in Batum's case, the whole market read it wrong for fifteen years.

Denver and Whitmore are the other face of the same mirror. A big team that once held a first-round pick now acquires that player on a two-way deal and calls it depth. The fall of a giant is a gift to the observer. The notable part is not that Whitmore signed a two-way; the notable part is that nobody was willing to pay more for a player who averaged 12.3 points as a rookie.

The variables to watch over the next six months: whether Thompson lifts his offensive output, because $155 million is a bet that he will; whether Whitmore turns his Denver two-way into a standard contract, because that is the test of whether the market truly forgot him or is merely waiting for him to get healthy; whether Bradley's four-year, sub-$9.3 million deal becomes the template for picks 40 through 60; and whether Leonard's final number in Toronto clears the $126 million Jake Fischer mentioned. A league paying $31 million a year for a sub-10-point scorer is redefining value — and it is not turning back.