How A.J. Terrell’s Fifth-Year Option Works

All these numbers are beginning to sound a little like Monopoly money, but the gist is that both the owners and players wanted to reduce the size of the piece of pie going to rookies. For owners, it meant investing less in the volatile draft market; for the players, it meant a larger slice going to proven veterans. The rookies didn’t get left out in the cold though. The 2011 CBA set the standard first-round contracts that we have today, four years with a team option for a fifth year, which would, in theory, allow players to hit free agency a year earlier than under the traditional six-year agreements of the previous generation.