A note on certainty before the details: both moves are reported from unnamed sources rather than announced by the clubs. Nothing below is official.
Klay Thompson is reported to be joining the Miami Heat on a two-year deal worth close to $13 million, with a player option in the second year, after the Dallas Mavericks bought out the $17.5 million remaining on his contract. DeMar DeRozan is reported to be signing with the Denver Nuggets for one year at $3.9 million.
What a buyout is
For readers unfamiliar with the mechanics: a buyout is a negotiated exit. A team owes a player money it would rather not pay for a player it would rather not have, and the player wants to leave for somewhere he might win. They agree that the club pays out some portion of the contract and releases him, and he is then free to sign elsewhere, usually for far less.
Dallas finished 26-56 last season, which is the context for Thompson's request to move. The buyout means Dallas pays for a player who will now line up against them, which teams accept because the alternative is paying the same money for a player who does not want to be there.
Thompson at 36
He is a four-time champion and five-time All-Star, and sits fourth on the all-time list for three-pointers made with 2,899. Last season he averaged 12.9 points and shot 38.7 percent from three.
That is a useful player rather than a star, and it is roughly what a shooter looks like in his mid-thirties after two catastrophic leg injuries. What he retains is the thing Miami wants: he still has to be guarded beyond the arc, and a defender who cannot leave him creates space for everyone else. ESPN reports Miami went after him after completing a trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo, which explains the priority: a player of that kind needs shooting around him more than he needs another ball-handler.
DeRozan at 37
DeRozan is a six-time All-Star who averaged 18.4 points last season, which for most players would be a career year and for him counted as a decline.
He is the last prominent practitioner of the mid-range game, a shot the analytics era spent fifteen years trying to eliminate as inefficient, and he has scored twenty-odd points a night doing almost nothing else. On a Denver team built around Nikola Jokic, that skill has a specific use: someone who can create a shot on his own when possessions break down, in the minutes when Jokic sits.
Why the deals are so small
Both of these figures are a fraction of what the players once earned, and that is not a judgment on their ability. The NBA's collective bargaining rules impose steep penalties on teams above certain payroll thresholds, and contending teams are usually above them, so the money available to a veteran joining a good roster is limited by rule rather than by valuation.
The result is a familiar late-summer market in which players who want to win take what the contenders can offer. Whether either club confirms remains to be seen.
