Five must-watch players when NBA free agency opens Thursday night

Big-name, game-changing players are about to become NBA free agents: James Harden, Zach LaVine, Bradley Beal.

Boring.

All three will quickly re-sign with their current teams (Beal and LaVine for the max, the only interesting question about Harden is how much of a discount he takes to stay in Philly). The action is elsewhere in 2022 NBA free agency, which opens at 6 p.m. Eastern on June 30 (Thursday).

Here are five players that are must watch as free agency opens — not all are free agents, but all could be on the move to new teams. All five are the unknown, the wild cards, not situations that are predetermined long before free agency opens. Check them out.

Former No. 1 picks almost always get a max contract extension off their rookie deal — since 2008, only two have not (Anthony Bennett, Markelle Fultz).

Deandre Ayton is about to be the third — despite him averaging 17.2 points and 10.2 rebounds a game last season as the starting center on a team that had the best record in the NBA, a team that went to the NBA Finals the year before. The Suns don’t want to pay him the max. They didn’t last summer when they didn’t put a max extension offer on the table, and they didn’t after this season ended with a frustrated coach Monte Williams playing Ayton just 17 minutes in a close-out game and when asked why said, “it’s internal.” It looked like Ayton was done in Phoenix.

However, the market has not been kind to Ayton. There have not been teams falling over themselves to offer Ayton the max. The Suns would be open to a sign-and-trade (it would keep Phoenix out of the luxury tax, and never forget Robert Sarver still owns this team) but that has yet to materialize either. There was a time Detroit was thought to be the frontrunner to