‘It’s a game now.
The professional basketball free agency race enters its second round. The battle for compensation after a ‘big fish’ move begins. The Korean Basketball League (KBL) announced on Friday that it had received less than one out of 13 letters of intent for free agents by 12 noon. The free agency market is now closed. Unsigned players will now have until 12 noon on the 30th to renegotiate with their original teams and decide their fate.
A separate secondary market will open. Compensation deals According to the KBL FA Rules, teams that sent away a free agent in the top 30 of the previous season’s salary rankings can choose either ‘1 compensatory player + 50% of the incoming free agent’s salary’ or ‘200% of the incoming free agent’s salary’.
In this year’s case, where there was a lot of ‘big fish’ movement, there are four players in the top 30 of the compensation rankings that the compensation player will follow: Choi Jun-yong (SK→KCC), Moon Sung-gon (KGC→KT), Yang Hong-seok (KT→LG), and Jung Hyo-geun (Korea Gas Corporation→KGC). Oh Se-geun (KGC→SK) is over the age of 35, so there is no compensation.
With a total of six teams in the mix, the first thing to watch out for is the designation of protected players. There are a total of three protected players (excluding free agents, rookies, and free agents in the top 30 in compensation, which are mandatory). Teams have until the 26th to submit their list of protected players and the 28th to exercise their right to designate compensatory players. The problem here is that even with the three mandatory players that teams must keep, there are a lot of “quasi-relatives” that they don’t want to lose.
For KCC, Heo Ung, Lee Seung-hyun, and Song Kyo-chang are the obvious candidates for protection, but there are plenty of other players they want to keep, including Jung Chang-young, Kim Ji-wan, Lee Geun-hwi, and free agent signing Lee Ho-hyun.
The rest of the teams are struggling with the question of who should be the other one of the three. KGC has Byun Joon-hyung Park Ji-hoon as a favorite and must also protect free agent Choi Sung-won. LG is torn between Lee Jae-do and Park Jung-hyun and Lee Seung-woo and Yoon Won-sang, while KT needs to protect Heo Hoon-hyun at all costs.
After nominating the protected players, each team will have to fight for ‘money’ and ‘power reinforcement’. It’s easy to steal money, but considering the competition for the championship next season, the practicality of filling the gap left by the FA cannot be overlooked. In particular, you can try to disrupt the power of the opposing team by taking away the ‘quasi-class’ of the team that took the FA.
SK and KGC are the two teams that are most in the spotlight here. SK is actually comfortable with ending up with 1.1 billion won in compensation to avoid going over the salary cap. However, after signing Oh Se-geun to win the championship, it could become a burden if they don’t fill the free agent leakage of Choi Sung-won and Choi Jun-yong.메이저놀이터
In the case of KGC, some people are predicting that ‘cash compensation is likely based on past behavior,’ but with a big hole left by Byun Joon-hyung who enlisted in the military, we can’t rule out bringing in KT’s guard resources. Since KT has to compensate KGC for the acquisition of Jung Hyo-geun, there is no telling if the player will leave again. It will also be interesting to see the cascade of unprotected ‘Altoran’ players, as KT will have to fill the gap from LG if they lose a player to KGC.