Do you have a retirement plan? A 401(k)? Is your portfolio properly diversified? Have you considered when you might retire, maybe leaving yourself time to walk into the sunset with some quality years still ahead of you? Or do you plan to cling to a job you enjoy for as long as you can, before AI pries it from your fingers, and maybe provide some mentorship to the younger generation?
Here’s what some famous old guys are up to. May you be so financially fortunate in your later years.
Klay Thompson is expected to sign with Miami after clearing waivers following a buyout with Dallas. NBA.com reports that he averaged 11.7 points last season and 12.9 points while shooting 39% from three across his two Mavericks seasons. If everything goes according to plan, Miami would be adding him specifically to improve the spacing around Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo.
James Harden has agreed to return to Cleveland on a reported three-year, $97 million deal. Harden averaged 20.5 points and 7.7 assists in 26 games after arriving from the Clippers in February.
DeMar DeRozan has agreed to join Denver on a one-year, $3.9 million deal after Sacramento waived him. He averaged 18.4 points in 77 games last season and remains 16th on the NBA’s all-time scoring list.
LeBron James signed a two-year, $8 million veteran-minimum contract with the Philadelphia 76ers, with a player option for the second year. Taking a historic pay cut after making nearly $53 million last season, the 41-year-old superstar joined the Sixers to chase another NBA title alongside Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Jaylen Brown.
Brown arrived in Philadelphia in another summer blockbuster, with the Boston Celtics acquiring Paul George and draft capital from the 76ers in return. George has two years remaining on his max contract, with a $54.1 million cap hit for 2026-27 and a $56.6 million player option for 2027-28.
George is 36. Thompson is 36. Harden turns 37 next week. DeRozan is 37. LeBron turns 42 in December. None qualifies as old in ordinary human terms, but by NBA standards these are some serious graybeards. Each has reached the point where a team is paying partly for the player who exists now and partly for what opponents remember about him.
We sometimes see guys defy Father Time and continue to perform at the highest level. Verlander and Scherzer are still hurling in the MLB, and Messi was the talk of the World Cup. I’d wet my pants to see Djokovic across the tennis court from me.
And sometimes there’s a strange temporal overlap, where reputation is more of an active force. You can see it on the court. Defenders do not react only to present ability, but also to accumulated memory. A shooter who once rained triples on the league may still produce a tingle of the old willies when he curls around a screen.
Imagine Klay standing motionless in the corner. He’s got some silver whiskers. He’s coming off an 11.7-point season. Everyone knows his Splash Brother-ing days are behind him. And yet the defender still thinks: Klay Thompson. For a fraction of a second, the defender’s body remembers something his CPU knows is old data. Can’t give him room. Chase him over the screen. Stay on his hip. That fraction of a second still has basketball value in today’s NBA.
More often, older NBA players are becoming specialists in pieces of the game they once dominated completely. It makes for a respectable second act, and it keeps them employed in an association with only 450 standard roster spots, 90 two-way spots, and a fresh flood of players arriving every summer who aren’t yet old enough to buy alcohol.
For Knicks fans of a certain vintage, seeing these older guys donning new jerseys might trigger some PTSD. There was a time when New York was more than willing to gamble on a risky player who might still contain enough of the old mojo to win a few more games, to pack a few more seats.
In February 2006, under Isiah Thomas, the Knicks acquired Steve Francis from the Orlando Magic for 20-year-old Trevor Ariza and the expiring contract of an aging, injured Penny Hardaway. Francis was 29, averaging a career-low 16.2 points amid declining athleticism and knee problems, and was still owed roughly $49 million over the following three seasons. He never regained his old form in New York, where injuries limited his effectiveness, and was traded little more than a year later. The Knicks had traded a younger asset in Ariza for a famous name whose best basketball had already been played.
Four years later, Donnie Walsh made a different calculation with another fading superstar. In February 2010, the Knicks acquired Tracy McGrady and Sergio Rodríguez in a three-team deal with Houston and Sacramento. New York sent Jordan Hill and Jared Jeffries to Houston along with a protected 2012 first-round pick and 2011 pick-swap rights, while Larry Hughes went to Sacramento. I, for one, was excited at the prospect of adding the former scoring champ and perennial All-Star, but McGrady was coming off major knee problems and a long absence from the Rockets. It became quickly apparent that he was no longer T-Mac in anything but name.
Truth be told, that deal was more about finance than talent, and McGrady’s enormous expiring contract was the point. Moving Jeffries helped clear more than $9 million in additional cap space and positioned the Knicks to chase LeBron and the much ballyhooed 2010 free-agent class (which also included Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Amar’e Stoudemire, Dirk Nowitzki, and Carlos Boozer). McGrady played only 24 games for New York, averaging 9.4 points, but his basketball production was almost incidental to the transaction.
Then came Andrea Bargnani. In July 2013, the Knicks traded Marcus Camby, Steve Novak, Quentin Richardson, a 2016 first-round pick and second-round picks in 2014 and 2017 to Toronto for the former number one overall selection. Bargs was only 27, so he hardly qualified as a graybeard, but the melody line was similar. He was injury-prone, pricey, and several years removed from the promise attached to his draft pedigree. New York nevertheless paid future assets for the possibility that the recognizable name might become the recognizable player again.
He didn’t. Bargs spent two injury-plagued seasons in New York and was gone by 2015. Toronto eventually used the Knicks’ 2016 first-rounder to select Jakob Poeltl, who later became part of the package that brought Kawhi Leonard to the Raptors. (BTW, Leonard turned 35 this summer and is coming off arguably his best season yet. Go figure.)
The history lesson helps explain why this summer’s parade of distinguished thirty-somethings (and one forty-something) might feel eerily familiar. All that makes me appreciate the business acumen of Leon Rose & Co. all the more. The front office didn’t make a big swing for LeBron or Embiid and his shoddy knees when they were building a championship roster. Instead they made a series of shrewd moves and careful decisions, step by step, to bring just the right arrangement of Avengers together.
We’ll see if the aforementioned players on the move this summer will pan out for their new teams. With measured expectations, the odds are favorable. Miami is not paying Klay Thompson to become the gunslinger of 2016. Denver does not need DeRozan to become a 27-point scorer again. Philadelphia certainly is not paying LeBron as though he were 28. These teams don’t need the whole ghost, they just need a respected face to haunt the defense for a few possessions at a time.
Knicks in five.
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