Cavaliers center Jarrett Allen and Heat guard Kendrick Nunn both met the starter criteria as a result of being included in their respective teams’ starting lineups on Monday night.
The starter criteria applies to players who will be eligible for restricted free agency at season’s end. Typically, a player is required to start a total of 82 games during the two seasons prior to his free agency to meet the criteria, but that threshold has been adjusted and varies from player to player this year, since each of the last two NBA seasons have been shortened.
Based on the number of games their teams played prior to the hiatus last season, Allen needed a total of 68 starts over two seasons (not counting the summer bubble), while Nunn required 69. Allen had 58 pre-hiatus starts last season and recorded his 10th of this season on Monday, while Nunn had 62 last season and now has seven this year.
In order to make a player a restricted free agent, a team must issue him a qualifying offer, which is essentially a guaranteed one-year contract offer that gives the team the right of first refusal on a rival offer sheet. Meeting the starter criteria makes a player eligible for a larger qualifying offer than he would have been if he’d fallen short of that criteria.
By meeting the starter criteria, Allen boosts the value of his qualifying offer from $5,661,538 to $7,705,447, while Nunn’s QO increases from $2,122,822 to $4,736,102, the same figure that applies to his teammate Duncan Robinson.
Of course, a team has the option of forgoing a qualifying offer and making a player an unrestricted free agent rather than an RFA, but that seems unlikely to happen for Nunn and extremely unlikely for Allen, who is expected to be Cleveland’s long-term center.
Allen and Nunn are the fourth and fifth RFAs-to-be to meet the starter criteria this season, joining Robinson, Lonzo Ball, and Devonte’ Graham. Barring an injury or another unexpected development, Hawks big man John Collins, who needs just two more starts, will be the next to reach that threshold.
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