The X-Factor Tim Hardaway Jr.: DAL to give long term extension?

[SleepingHero]

Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Lebron James, Blake Griffin, and Chris Paul all have player options that year.

We already went through this excercise. You have Blake and Paul on max player list!?

Out of all the players you mentioned - Kawhi and George are max players but something will have to go terribly wrong in LA for them to actually take it. Davis will be 99,99 % off the market. 

Gobert and Oladipo are perhaps max players. All the rest mentioned will be far from max 2 years from now!

I'd put all those players at around max/max level players. Chris Paul is having an arguably MVP level season and is making OKC over perform to an insane level. So yes, he's still a max level player. There's no way he opts out of his contract, but if he did I'm sure there'd be teams lining up to have Paul do what he did in OKC to their team. Blake Griffin last year had his best season as a pro, and this year he's been plagued with injuries. Would I want the Mavs to give Blake Griffin a max contract? No. But could a desperate team that never gets free agents, like Orlando, throw money at him? I wouldn't rule it out. 

Without going through every single player and their potential scenarios, I'd put all those players at around that level. Who's to say that LA blows up and Lebron decides to leave? Or AD takes a 1+1 to get to that 10 year vet level for his max contract and Lebron then declines significantly and he wants out in 2021? What if PG and Kawhi fall short in the playoffs and PG wants to go form a superteam somewhere else? There are so many factors, it's hard to make predictions a year out. This time last year there would have been a negative 0% chance I would've said that OKC would trade Westbrook to the Rockets, and the Clips will form a super team with Kawhi and PG. 

And the whole idea of "he's not a max level player" is kind of moot because all it takes is 1 team to drive up the market for a player. We saw that last summer with Al Horford. If 1 team decides to throw a max contract at Jared Dudley, then he's a max player, regardless of whether or not he deserves it. And summer of 2021 is next year, not 2 years from now.