I don't always consider it bidding against yourself by extending a player early. Sometimes it's about keeping a player happy/keeping goodwill with them versus making them "find an offer" that you'll then match. My main concern with allowing both to go to RFA in '26 is there's supposed to be a decent amount of teams with cap space. Puts us in to a potential situation where we have to match a bigger deal than we would prefer to keep our guys.
The nice thing is he would have a tiny cap hold, so holding off on extending him to be able to use cap space in whatever fashion, and then offering him a deal could work out favorably.
Camara is limited to about $90m extension max, there is no way Sharpe's representation takes this deal - so that seems very unreasonable to me. My guess is that if extensions are offered, Camara is offered the max the team can afford to give him - and the Blazers will not antagonize Sharpe's representation by offering a much smaller extension than the max he can get - so they will offer him more.
Cap gurus on this site have explained timing, dollars, years, current contracts, league $$$ expectations … it’s a lot. Arguments have been made on when to make those extensions to potentially maximize free agent cap space after next season. About not bidding against oneself as well. About who if any of the Grant + EC’s to keep and/or re-up. In a simplistic way, I’d like Camara’s extension to get taken care of so that he’s got next year’s money, then ditch the next year salary to start his dollars on what could be in the ballpark of 4 and $88M. [I’m also a fan of the declining dollars for guys to get more up front.]. Including growth to his O, Camara is a safe bet to earn that contract. If he wants to wait, that’s one thing. Toumani and Deni and Clingan as long-term dudes is the place to start. It’s hard to reason through paying previous starters to stick around and be paid more than the next generation.
