Summary

Knight will be finishing the five-year, $70 million contract he signed back in 2015 this summer, and will certainly be taking a huge paycut in free agency. Knight has dealt with injuries since signing that large contract, missing the entire '17-'18 season and only playing in 65 games combined in the past two seasons.

 

Knight began his career as a score-first point guard that could create shots for himself, and had his best year in '14-'15, when he averaged 17 points per game and shot 39% from three. At this point in his career,

 

Knight no longer has the explosiveness to get to the rim, and has been unable to consistently hit shots from outside. I would not be surprised if Knight's time in the NBA is over, but if he returns it will almost certainly be on a minimum contract.

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Cap Considerations

Knight will be an unrestricted free agent with full Bird rights. As his cap hold ($23.5 million) greatly exceeds the salary he will get in free agency, his cap hold is not really relevant. The Pistons will almost certainly go into the summer prepared to renounce Knight and remove his cap hold in order to maximize their cap space.

 

If the Pistons want to bring Knight back, they can certainly do so with the potential $38 million in cap space (not including their first round pick) they will have available. If Knight is brought back by the Pistons on a multi-year contract (which is unlikely), they should frontload his contract as much as possible, given they have the excess cap space now.

 

Teams other than the Pistons will have multiple ways to sign Knight as even teams without cap space could possibly use any of the Non-Taxpayer, Taxpayer, or Room Mid-Level Exceptions to sign him. There's also the possibility that Knight does not get any offers above the minimum this offseason.