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Summary
Sampson has bounced around the league, playing for five teams in six years, and has never really found his place or established himself as an NBA player. He's undersized for a big at 6'9", and hasn't developed an outside shot, so he's a bit of a tweener between the power forward and center position. He isn't able to provide rim protection on defense, and offensively his lack of an outside shot makes it difficult to play him at power forward. His field goal percentage at the rim has generally been above-average for his career, but he has really struggled this season, finishing in the bottom 4th percentile amongst bigs, according to Cleaning the Glass. He also has pretty poor rebounding rates. I would be surprised if Sampson got a fully-guaranteed contract this summer.
 
Cap Considerations
Sampson will be an unrestricted free agent with a $1.7 million cap hold and Early Bird rights. Since the Pacers will most likely be operating over the salary cap, they will retain Sampson's Early Bird rights until he is re-signed or signs elsewhere. The Pacers could offer Sampson a starting salary of up to 5% more than the average salary (likely around $10 million) using the Early Bird exception, which should be more than enough should they wish to bring him back.

Other teams will have multiple ways to sign Sampson as even teams without cap space could possibly use any of the Non-Taxpayer MLE, Taxpayer MLE, or possibly even the Room MLE or Bi-Annual Exception to sign him. Since he signed a minimum contract last offseason, teams will hope to get him at the minimum this summer too.

Potential Teams: Nuggets, Pacers, Rockets, Bucks, Grizzlies

Predicted Contract: 1-year, $2.1 million (non-guaranteed) with the Nuggets

Last updated: 7/19/2021

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