Report: Faried Signs 5-Year, $60 Millon Extension, But It Doesn’t Work Under CBA?

After an exciting summer that saw Nuggets PF Kenneth Faried earn All-Tournament honors as Team USA captured the gold at the 2014 FIBA World Cup, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports reports the Nuggets have signed the 24-year-old to a five-year, $60 million extension. Except, under the league’s current collective bargaining agreement (CBA), the fifth year of the extension requires a 7.5 percent raise from his rookie-scale deal.

As Dan Feldman notes at Pro Basketball Talk, a team can only offer a fifth year after a rookie-scale deal by including annual raises of 7.5 percent, making Faried Denver’s designated player.

[RELATED: Dime Q&A: Kenneth Faried on extension, USA Basketball & the “Manimal” wrestling]

The deal includes a partial guarantee in that final, disputed, fifth year, and it assures Faried will make no less than $52 million over the life of the contract, according to Wojnarowski’s source.

As a member of the 2011 NBA Draft class, Faried and his agent, Thad Foucher of Wasserman Media Group, had until October 31 to sign the extension or Faried would become an unrestricted free agent this summer.

We spoke with Faried a week ago and when we asked him about the extension — specifically whether it would hang over his head as preseason games tipped off this weekend — he was honest about trying to block it out and focus on the business at hand while letting his agent handle the negotiations:

“Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. And I’m gonna try my best not to let it just effect me, like it did last year with the whole trade talk. It’s tough when you’re a player and you don’t know where, or who wants to lock you down. And if the team that drafted you doesn’t really want you, it seems like it’s a waste of time even wanting to play for that team.

[…]

I believe my agent — Thad Foucher — is one of the best in the world…and he’s doing a great job, so I’m fine and not really stressing about it.”

The extension would go into effect starting with the 2015-16 season, even though we’re still not sure at the dollar amounts, since there is a disconnect between Wojnarowski’s report and the current CBA.

Under the estimated $66.3 million salary cap expected for the 2015-16 season, a five-year extension with the 7.5 percent annual raises called for under the CBA would pay Faried 89 million over five years. So it’s still not clear what the final terms will be, especially with that fifth year only partially guaranteed and the disconnect with the designated player tag necessary to offer a player a five-year extension after their rookie deal ends.

As Feldman guesses and Chuck Myron at HoopsRumors.com alludes to, Wojnarowski might be including the final year of Faried’s rookie deal for the 2014-15 season into the extension time, so the extension itself would only be for an additional four seasons. If this was the case, Faried would be signing a four-year, $57.75 million extension, which translates to about $14.4 million per year.

That being said, the $12 million a year extension Wojnarowsi first reported was a little under the terms many prognosticators were throwing around, with Faried making somewhere between $8-10 million per year before his excellent summer. After his FIBA performance, many thought he’d jump to the $13.5 or $14 million range Al Jefferson makes with the Bobcats and which aligns with the the guess that Woj was including the final season of Faried’s rookie contract into the extension’s length.

We’ll update as more information is revealed about the deal.

UPDATE: Faried’s five-year deal could be get shortened to four as the Nuggets talk with the NBA, but Woj believes the verbiage in the CBA on a five-year rookie extension isn’t clear on the points mentioned above:

Does Faried deserve the extension?

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