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Summary

Leonard had some big moments for the Trailblazers in last year's playoffs, hitting shots and making plays in the pick-and-roll. Unfortunately for Leonard, those moments have been few and far between during his career. Leonard has had a nice season for the Heat, starting in each game he has played, and fit in nicely as the stretch big to play alongside Bam Adebayo. However, Leonard fell completely out of the rotation in the playoffs, as the Heat went smaller with Crowder at the four and gave all the backup center minutes to Kelly Olynyk.

 

While Leonard has shot great 42% or better from three each of the last three seasons, he did so on a low number of attempts, and has often been a little gun-shy to let it fly from deep. Leonard has some really defensive limitations, as he is very slow-footed and does not provide rim protection either, but has looked improved on that end for the Heat. 

 

Cap Considerations

Leonard will be an unrestricted free agent with a $16.9 million cap hold and full Bird rights. If the Heat remain over the cap next summer, they could use the full $9.3 million Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception to sign free agents, and use Bird Rights to re-sign Leonard. If the Heat renounce Leonard (and all their other free agents) to remove his cap hold and operate under the salary cap, they could only bring him back using that cap space (virtually certain to not happen since the whole point of renouncing him would be to use that cap space to sign another free agent), the $4.8 million Room MLE, or on a minimum contract.

 

Other teams will have multiple ways to sign Leonard as even teams without cap space could possibly use any of the Non-Taxpayer, Taxpayer, or Room Mid-Level Exceptions to sign him.

Potential Teams: Nets, Heat, Celtics, 76ers, Rockets

Predicted Contract: 2-year, $9 million with the Nets

Actual Contract: 2-year, $19.6 million (team option) with the Heat

Even though the Heat have a team option on the second year, Leonard got over double what I expected. Many have speculated Leonard getting this deal was partly due to making it easier to aggregate salary in a trade for a star, so good for Leonard to get several extra million to be a human trade exception.

Last updated: 12/31/2020

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