Heading into the 2025 NBA offseason, Brooklyn Nets guard Cam Thomas was inevitably going to be handcuffed by the vehicle of restricted free agency. But he surely did not expect to be as stuck as he has been.
Still without a contract, short of suitors. and seemingly also very short of offers, Thomas remains a free agent as the calendar ticks around to August. It was said that re-signing him would be a priority, yet even if he was, the impasse in contract negotiations has been too great to overcome. And it is an impasse that works in the Nets’ favor.
Thomas Stymied By Restrictions
Heading into this summer, the Nets had the right to extend Thomas a qualifying offer, which gives them control over whether or not Thomas could leave the team – and they did so.
A qualifying offer is a base contract that an NBA team gives to a free agent whilst negotiations for a larger contract take place. Not many players are eligible, but some younger ones can be.
When a first round draft pick is signed to his rookie contract, he gets two guaranteed years of salary, plus two years available at the teamâs option. If the team takes out both options, after the fourth year of the contract, the players enters restricted free agency if the team extends a qualifying offer by June 30th. This is what happened with Thomas and the Nets, and is also applicable in other prominent ongoing free agency cases (such as Josh Giddey with the Chicago Bulls and the particularly sticky situation of Jonathan Kuminga and the Golden State Warriors).
Restricted free agents are still able to sign contracts (in the form of “offer sheets”) with other teams. But in restricted free agency, the playerâs incumbent team retains the right to match that deal, which in turn disincentivizes other teams from signing those offer sheets, and from using up precious salary cap resources on what will not be a successful strategy, unless they have some reason for a realistic belief that the offer sheet will not be matched.
Seemingly, Thomas has not come closer to an offer sheet. Thomas – whose confident playing style on the court is seemingly backed up by his belief in his market value – is said to have sought a $30 million per season contract, in line with what has also been sought by fellow restricted free agents Giddey and Kuminga. But none of the three have come close to getting what they want, and while Giddey and Kuminga both at least have larger offers from their current teams – and Kuminga has sign-and-trade offers, albeit not particularly “pretty” ones – Thomas does not.
The QO, then, might be the only other option.
Odds Of Thomas Taking The QO
As above, qualifying offers are indeed just that â contract offers. They are therefore acceptable, and thus can quickly turn into contracts. Having not met the “Starter Criteria”, however, Thomas’s qualifying offer is smaller than it might have otherwise been.
“Starter criteria”, as the name suggests, increases the size of qualifying offers for restricted free agents coming off of rookie scale contracts if they were good enough to be starters heading into free agency. To qualify for the starter criteria, a player must start at least 41 games or play at least 2,000 regular season minutes, either in the final year of their contract alone or on average across the two seasons preceding free agency.
Although Thomas was a 24 points per game scorer last season, he missed the majority of it through injury. He started only 23 games last season and only 51 in 2023-24, leaving him short of meeting the starter criteria, and thus keeping his qualifying offer amount at $5,993,172, instead of the $8,741,209 it could have been.
Both, of course, are a far cry from the $30 million per annum that Thomas seeks. But with no market, no suitors, no other teams with cap space and an increasingly short amount of time before next season rolls around, the odds of Thomas being forced to come back to the Nets for whatever they choose to pay him get ever larger.
If no offer sheet is forthcoming, Thomas’s options are limited. If no other teams wants him enough to try and sign him, the Nets have much less incentive to pay him the money he desires. At this point, the great risk for the Nets is not Thomas’s departure, but the risk of outbidding themselves.
Still Time To Find A Compromise
What Thomas can do is accept that qualifying offer, and turn it into a binding contract. He can accept the $5,993,172 one-year offer, return to the Nets, score a billion more points and then return to free agency next summer – this time, unrestricted.
What Thomas can also do is separately negotiate a different one-year contract with the Nets, and try again in free agency next summer, this time unrestricted. This happened with David Lee and the New York Knicks in the summer of 2009; instead of signing his $2,682,049 qualifying offer, Lee re-signed to a one year, $7 million contract, and entered the lucrative free agency summer of 2010 instead. It worked out for him.
Either of those are on the table and will stay on the table for at least another two months (qualifying offers can be accepted up until 1st October). Thomas’s leverage has however dwindled to the point where any agreement to come back would likely be a reluctant one. The relationship will be harder to rebuild from here.
Without a contract to sign, Thomas has spent the summer defending himself online, to the point that he even got cross at the views of the notoriously conciliatory Zach Lowe. He, clearly, has not enjoyed the protracted nature of his negotiation. And nor should he. But for the Nets, the system is working as intended. And ultimately, an uneasy truce will prevail.
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