Once free agency opens at 6 p.m. ET, Brook Lopez is planning to agree to sign a four-year, $52 million deal to stay with the Milwaukee Bucks, league sources told ESPN.
It’s possible that no single player changed his future more over the course of the past 12 months than Lopez did by signing with the Bucks.
After the 2015-16 season — Lopez’s eighth in the NBA — he had gone a combined 3-for-21 from 3-point range. Since then, though, he’s shot a staggering 1,224 triples — including taking almost twice as many 3s (512) than 2s (274) this past season with the Bucks.
And after signing with the Bucks for their biannual exception last year, worth $3.4 million, Lopez became an essential part of Milwaukee’s remarkable turnaround this season and its elite units at both ends of the court.
That allowed Lopez, 31, to enter free agency this summer as one of the top free-agent centers on the market, alongside Al Horford and Nikola Vucevic, and putting him back in line for the kind of payday he received on his prior contract — a three-year, $60 million deal with the Brooklyn Nets in 2015.
In addition to setting career highs in 3-point makes, attempts and percentage (36.5) this past season in Milwaukee, Lopez also averaged 12.5 points and a career-high 2.2 blocks per game.
NBA free-agent contracts can’t be officially signed until July 6.
Information from ESPN’s Tim Bontemps was used in this report.