NBA free agency live updates: Kyrie Irving re-signs with Nets, John Wall plans to join Clippers

RJ Barrett becomes eligible for an extension on July 1. He and the Knicks have until the day before the 2022-23 season begins to reach an agreement. If they don’t, he’ll hit restricted free agency next summer.

Until then, the big question looms: Should the Knicks give Barrett a max contract, worth a projected $185 million over five years? The deal would kick in for the 2023-24 season with a $32 million starting salary.

(Photo: Kim Klement / USA Today)

John Wall and the Houston Rockets have agreed to a buyout, which will make him an unrestricted free agent, sources confirmed to The Athletic. Wall will give back $6.5 million of his $47.3 million salary for 2022-23 in his buyout with the Rockets.

Wall was held out all of last season as the Rockets were focused on developing younger players. Wall, a five-time All-Star, has played in just 40 games since the 2018-19 season. He missed the entire the 2019-20 season recovering from a ruptured Achilles and infection. He appeared in 40 games with the Rockets in 2021.

Wall was the first pick in the 2010 NBA Draft and has career averages of 19.1 points, 9.1 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 1.7 steals.

(Photo: Troy Taormina / USA Today)

Washington Wizards executive Tommy Sheppard will enter NBA free agency with two overriding priorities.

The primary goal, as the entire league knows, involves Bradley Beal. Monumental Sports & Entertainment principal owner Ted Leonsis and Sheppard want to re-sign Beal to a long-term contract.

The second objective revolves around what Sheppard, in a moment of ironic understatement immediately following the draft, referred to as “one little wide-open spot.” That wide-open spot happens to be a critical one. Washington needs a starting-caliber point guard in the most desperate way.

(Photo: Brad Mills / USA Today)

The center market is usually relatively quiet, but not this year. While we again have the typical heap of minimum-caliber bigs looking to hang on for another year (seriously, scroll down: it’s an amazing list), this time around, the league’s most gettable restricted free agent plays this position, along with several other players who are interesting enough to command at least the midlevel exception.

(Photo: Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)

A group of the Warriors’ lead front office decision-makers, including Bob Myers, Kirk Lacob, Mike Dunleavy and Larry Harris, will set up shop in Los Angeles later this week. That’s where so much of the NBA’s free-agency business is settled.

The Warriors aren’t expected to dip into high-profile waters. Their big-ticket core is cemented. But, if you’re outlining the various personnel decisions that could shape the 2023 title chase, the Warriors’ week is among the most important. They are trying to regather the second layer of a championship core. Kevon Looney, Gary Payton II, Otto Porter Jr. and Nemanja Bjelica — sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth in playoff minutes for the Warriors — are all unrestricted free agents.

Based on what he has said publicly, Brad Stevens would like to add more offensive punch without altering his team’s big, defensive-minded identity. It’s tough to find those types of players on a tight budget. Please keep that in mind while reading this list of possible Boston midlevel exception targets, which is loaded with veterans surrounded by question marks. This free-agent big board, based on my own opinions, includes players who could reasonably be available to the Celtics at a price they can afford. If you think I’m crazy for failing to put someone on this list, I probably excluded that player because of a high likelihood he accepts more money elsewhere (or, in Patty Mills’ case, because he doesn’t offer what the Celtics want on one side of the court).

(Photo: Trevor Ruszkowski / USA Today)

Leave it to the New York Knicks to create maximum drama without making a pick.

In one night, they pulled off three trades. Six first-rounders and four second-rounders passed through them. They dealt a former All-NBA player, and they came a little closer to creating significant cap space this summer

The NBA Draft is done. Let’s break it all down.

Brooklyn Nets All-Star guard Kyrie Irving has received permission from the organization to seek a sign-and-trade, sources confirmed to The Athletic Monday. Irving has a Wednesday deadline to pick up his $36.9 million player option for next season.

Read more here.

(Photo: Brad Penner / USA Today)

Kyrie Irving and the Nets appear deadlocked in contract talks with his June 29 player option deadline approaching. At the draft, Rich Kleiman, Kevin Durant’s agent and longtime business partner, even made an appearance before NBA Commissioner Adam Silver started introducing the league’s next generation.

With so much at stake entering a crucial week of option decisions and free agency, Alex Schiffer, The Athletic’s Nets writer, recruited national writers Sam Amick and Joe Vardon to sift through what’s leverage and what’s legitimate about the constant talk surrounding the organization.

(Photo: David Butler II / USA Today)

Unrestricted free-agent shooting guard Malik Monk is open to accepting less money to return to the Los Angeles Lakers, he told The Athletic in an exclusive interview.

“They might not be able to pay me as much as I want,” Monk said. “But I could be here and be way more comfortable as a Laker than going to any other team and they’re paying me $5 million more. So it’s just me trying to figure out what team would really want me.”

The most the Lakers can offer Monk is their taxpayer midlevel exception, which is worth approximately $6.3 million. That figure could be a discount for Monk, as he could command a multi-year deal worth $10 to $12 million annually on the open market, according to multiple league sources.

Read more here.

(Photo: Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)

My goodness, if they’re all healthy, the Warriors’ potential Summer League second-timeline unit is outrageously interesting — James Wiseman, Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody and let’s add in the new NBA champion’s top two draft picks this week, Patrick Baldwin Jr. and Ryan Rollins.

None of them are older than 21 (Wiseman) and, in fact, Kuminga, Baldwin and Rollins are all 19. Moody is 20. All of them have enough size and ability to easily imagine the entire youth brigade jumping into key rotation roles alongside Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins someday. But also, who knows. It’s possible that none of them will turn into anything important for the Warriors and relatively likely that two or three of the group will fizzle out pretty swiftly.

That’s the fascinating part. The variance level on all of these guys is quite high.

(Photo: Darren Yamashita / USA Today)