Through the first day of free agency, three is the magic number.
There has been a noticeable uptick in three-year deals. And that’s a good development for players.
Once a deal moves past the guaranteed years of the contract, the contract becomes a one-way deal. The team will tear it up if the player isn’t playing well enough to justify the ongoing investment. If the player is outperforming the deal, the team will resist re-doing it.
So why not go back to the market in three years? It’s far better than the risk of being tied to the back-end years that don’t fairly compensate the player.
At a time when there’s a periodic push for fully-guaranteed contracts, the next best thing is shorter deals. For players, the goal should be truly and fully committed to the team only for as long as the team is truly and fully committed to the player.
There’s been no indication that anyone made it a priority to push for more three-year deals. It just sort of happened. As more and more are done, it becomes baked into the precedent, making it harder for teams to insist on four- and five-year deals in free agency.
Quietly, it’s a big win for players to have the industry normalize three-year deals.
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