The Thunder rescinded the qualifying offer guard of Dion Waiters in an attempt to free enough salary cap space to renegotiate-and-extend the contract of Russell Westbrook, The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported.
Westbrook will be a free agent next summer, but the Thunder would like to prevent that from happening since there's a chance he'd bounce like Kevin Durant did. If Westbrook were to renegotiate his contract, he’d stay under control through the 2017-18 season. Wojnarowski cites league sources who theorize that the Thunder would do this with the intent of targeting Blake Griffin, who will be a free agent in 2017.
That'd throw a monkey wrench into the big plans of the Celtics, who could be targeting both Westbrook and Griffin.
“Westbrook and his agent, Thad Foucher of Wasserman Media Group, have been in regular contact with Thunder general manager Sam Presti since Kevin Durant’s departure on July 4,” Wojnarowski writes, “but Westbrook has yet to make a commitment to renegotiate his contract and forgo free agency in 2017, league sources said.”
If Oklahoma City really is the team Westbrook intends on playing for in the future, it’s a major risk for him to extend his contract now. He’d make more roughly $8 million more over the next two seasons, but he’d lose out on an additional four years. If he waits, he'd be locked up with five years of security. The difference is far less significant if he renegotiates-and-extends with another team, like the Celtics, though still not an ideal situation.
To make matters worse for the Celtics, Wojnarowski reports that teams reaching out to the Thunder have been told that Westbrook isn’t available.