Thomas Unnecessarily Lowballed Into Accepting Nets’ Qualifying Offer

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A market isn’t always fair, but it is incontrovertible.

Barring illegal machinations like fraud and collusion, a value is the price someone will pay for it. Often, timing is everything. Can you imagine getting in on Apple after its stock halved during the 2008 financial crisis?

If you’re an NBA player, the last time and place you’d want to be a restricted free agent is during the 2025 offseason. Unfortunately, four pretty good ones, including Nets guard Cam Thomas, found themselves pitching their services to relative darkness this summer, with Brooklyn the only club holding the necessary salary cap space to fund offers over exceptions. Many other teams are sniffing unbreachable aprons, thereby taking them out of the market equation.

The Nets, who have been known to do favors for agents, used this opportunity to instead play hardball with Thomas, who reportedly caved on Thursday. ESPN’s Shams Charania posted that Thomas will be signing Brooklyn’s $6 million qualifying offer. As such, Thomas will be granted an implicit no-trade clause and have the right to enter unrestricted free agency next summer, when the cap spigots are slated to open up a bit.

Charania’s report also noted that the Nets put two offers in front of Thomas—one for two-years and $30 million, but with a team option for Year 2; or a 1-year deal for $9.5 million with incentives up to $11 million but would force Thomas to waive his no-trade clause.

From my perspective, those options were insulting to a player who possesses an elite NBA skill—the ability to get buckets on his own at any point in the shot clock. Though limited to 25 games last season mainly due to hamstring woes, Thomas averaged a career-high 24 points per game while dealing with constant double teams.

Of course, the nagging injuries (Thomas’ 67 games played as a rookie four seasons ago were his career high) likely factored into the league’s evaluation of this polarizing player who would also come with alarming issues regarding his defense. However, it’s not like Thomas, who turns 24 in October, is a finished product or isn’t a hard worker. For example, his assist totals, while still too low for my taste, have sluggishly increased over each of his pro seasons.

Thomas can use this season to combat the negative narratives that would impact his future market. Though the Nets will retain his Bird Rights for next offseason, I would quantify his retention odds as very low given what the organization just put him through.

Though under no obligation to keep their highest scorer happy, the Nets could have been more accommodative, even if the intent was a 1-year bridge to nowhere. Why not $15 million, which is at least a figure over the nontaxpayer midlevel exception, plus a player option to get to his UFA year? Again, Brooklyn wasn’t facing cap pressures—to the contrary, they will be on pace for a payroll below the $139.2 million cap floor when all training camp cuts are made, barring a major trade. Maintaining flexibility for a season where all signs point to Tank 2.0 isn’t much of an excuse.

I should take a moment to acknowledge that a $6 million salary isn’t a tragedy. Thomas will be paying taxes on income about 10 times the amount of the top 1% threshold.

Still, though Thomas technically got an extension for “market value”, it’s hard to say that what the Nets did was fair to him.