The Atlanta Hawks and Orlando Magic won’t be friends in 2025-26. Or, like, ever. The Southeast division foes both expect to make sizable leaps and potentially compete for Eastern Conference supremacy this year and for many years to come. But that shouldn’t stop the Hawks from looking at the Magic as a blueprint for the question, “How much money should we offer Dyson Daniels next summer?” Right as the 2024-25 season was about to kick off, the Magic signed their own defensive-minded guard, Jalen Suggs, to a 5-year, $150 million extension. <\/p>\n
Daniels’ and Suggs’ games aren’t exactly the same; Suggs is a more refined offensive player at this point in their careers, and Daniels might be a tad more disruptive as a defender. But they are certainly the same archetype: energetic, super-smart, switchable defenders with untapped upside on the offensive end. <\/p>\n
That’s why it makes sense to look at Suggs’ deal \u2014 which was fair for both sides, I believe \u2014 as the basis for Daniels’ future extension. I think we can expect Daniels to get a bit more than $150 million because of the salary cap bump that’s expected next season, but if he gets a five-year deal, anywhere in the $150 to $170 million range has to be on the table.<\/p>\n
Another player who is similar in style to Daniels and Suggs, Derrick White, got a similar AAV as Suggs did, signing a 4-year, $118 million extension last summer. If Daniels turns into Derrick White, that would be a monster win for the Hawks \u2014\u00a0and one that feels pretty realistic. Plus, since contracts are signed based on what a player is expected to do, not what they’ve already done, Daniels should see a similar payday to the 2024 NBA champion.<\/p>\n
Dyson Daniels is in for a huge payday <\/p>\n
Daniels being a restricted free agent next season is potentially great news for him, and nerve-wrecking news for the Hawks. More than half the league is expected to have cap space next summer and if Daniels balls out again in 2025-26, would it be crazy for another team to throw a huge offer sheet at him and hope the Hawks don’t match? I don’t think that’s out of the question, especially because the Hawks have the Trae Young situation<\/a> to deal with \u2014 the situation being that Young has a player option and could end up being an unrestricted free agent a year from now.<\/p>\n But even if an opposing team tries to throw the bag at Daniels, the Hawks will have a chance to match, and should be willing to go well over that $150 million that Suggs got in order to retain their young defensive stud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Atlanta Hawks and Orlando Magic won’t be friends in 2025-26. Or, like, ever. The Southeast division foes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-146954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}