Justise Winslow agrees to extension with Miami Heat

Heat forward Justise Winslow has agreed to a three-year, $39 million extension, a league source confirmed to the Miami Herald, with a team option in the third year.

The contract is not yet signed.

Winslow, 22, and the Heat had until Monday to agree to the contract extension. If an agreement had not been reached before next week’s deadline, he would have become a restricted free agent on July 1, with the Heat having the right to match outside offers.

“I’m going to be in this league for a long time and make a lot of money,” Winslow said to the Miami Herald earlier this week. “The number is going to be a number that I feel is my value. Whether it’s within the next week or so or next summer, I’m going to get what I feel I deserve.”

With Winslow set to make $3.4 million this season in the final year of his rookie-scale contract, his new deal won’t begin until the start of the 2019-20 season. The extension runs through the 2021-22 season.

Winslow, who was drafted by the Heat with the 10th overall pick in 2015, averaged 7.8 points, 5.4 rebounds and 2.2 assists while shooting 42.4 percent from the field and 38 percent on threes last season.

Offensively, his three-point shooting improved markedly last season (from 20 percent to 38 percent) but his finishing skills still need work; he shot 55.8 percent on shots at the rim last season (106 for 190) and said he’s focusing on that, plus scoring “at all levels, midrange, floaters, pull ups.”

The extension will make it difficult for the Heat to include Winslow in any trade over the next year.

Why? First-round picks (Winslow was a first-round pick in 2015) who receive extensions before their fourth NBA seasons are subject to the “Poison Pill Provision,” which would make it difficult to include Winslow in a trade until July 1.

This provision means when that player is traded between the date the extension is signed and the date it takes effect, the player’s trade value for the receiving team is the average of the salaries in the last year of the rookie scale contract and each year of the extension.

With Winslow’s $39 million extension over three years, the acquiring team would take him at $10.6 million and Miami would send him out at his current salary of $3.4 million until his extension take effect on July 1.

If Goran Dragic and Hassan Whiteside opt in next summer, the Heat already had $119 million committed to players for the 2019-20 season even before the Winslow extension. That figure now would approach $130 million with the Winslow extension, well above the projected $109 million salary cap for 2019-20. And that doesn’t include Wayne Ellington and Rodney McGruder, who are eligible for free agency next summer.

Meanwhile, Winslow’s extension also eats into the Heat’s salary cap space in the summer of 2020, when Dragic and Whiteside come off Miami’s books.

For the 2020-21 season, the Heat now has about $72 million in commitments – to Winslow, James Johnson, Dion Waiters, Josh Richardson, Kelly Olynyk and Bam Adebayo. The cap is projected to be $118 million for the 2020-21 season, giving Miami substantial space to add free agents in the summer of 2020 but not enough to add two max players (only one), barring clearing of additional cap space.

Winslow is the third member of the 2015 draft class to agree to a rookie extension. Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns (five-year, $190 million) and Phoenix’s Devin Booker (five-year, $158 million) signed max extensions.

Over the first three seasons of his NBA career, Winslow averaged 7.5 points on 41 percent shooting from the field and 31.4 shooting from three-point range to go with 5.3 rebounds and 2.0 assists in 164 regular-season games (48 starts).

Surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder limited Winslow to just 18 games in 2016-17.

Winslow played some of the best basketball of his career in the playoffs last season. He shined in a point-forward role, averaging 9.8 points, 6.6 rebounds and 2.6 assists in the Heat’s first-round playoff series against the Philadelphia 76ers.

Winslow averaged 10.0 points, 5.3 rebounds and 1.5 assists in four preseason games this year. He sat Friday’s preseason finale against the Hawks to rest.

“Everything with Justise is about that evolution, taking on more responsibility, earning more responsibility, exploring the versatility in more ways that will help us,” coach Erik Spoelstra said last month regarding Winslow’s abilities as a point guard. “So I’m open to all of it while he has a balance also of trying to make the game easier and better for other people and playing within the confines of what we’re trying to do offensively. It’s a fine balance. He’s getting it. We have a pretty good vision of what direction it was going last year and we want to build on that and see if we can take it another few steps.”