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Lauri Markkanen advances our trend of “Top free agents in 2025 who could be ripped off the market roughly one year before they ever hit it.”
As of this writing, he’s heading into the final season of his deal, valued at just over $18 million. The expectation for months has been that the Utah Jazz would renegotiate and extend his contract, giving him an immediate pay bump in 2024-25 while getting him under lock and key for the longer term.
Apparently, though, it may be time to adjust our priors.
Utah is reportedly listening to trade offers for the 27-year-old All-Star, a clear departure from everything we’ve heard over the past two seasons. To be sure, nothing out there currently intimates a deal is close. And the Jazz still have the cap space remaining to complete a renegotiate-and-extend that nudges Markkanen’s 2024-25 salary all the way up to his max ($42.2 million).
Still, the longer we go without news of a contract getting done, the more you have to wonder: What’s going on here?
The very existence of this question is a boon for trade suitors. It does even more for next summer’s crop of free agents. Markkanen may not be a caps-lock star, but he soaks up defensive reps against both forward spots and blends offensive volume and efficiency in a manner that puts him inside the record books.
Last year was the second season in which he averaged north of 23 points per game while knocking down more than 55 percent of his twos and 39 percent of his threes. Across league history, just five other players have spit out more than one of these campaigns: Kevin Durant (five), Stephen Curry (four), Kawhi Leonard (three), Karl-Anthony Towns (3) and LeBron James (two).
