Five players with their next big contract on the line this season

Nothing motivates like a contract year.

With shorter contracts and player or team options at the end of many deals, more players than ever are entering free agency each summer. Players come into free agency with big dreams, but often we know the range a player will be in — “he’s a near max player” or “he’s going to get around the mid-level exception” — and the player doesn’t have as many choices as hoped.

Sometimes, however, a player enters a contract year that will have a big say in their next deal — did they make a giant leap forward, or hold off father time for another year? Here are five players in that boat, five players whose seasons will go a long way to determining their next contract.

Westbrook is going to take a haircut next summer — nobody is paying him near the ballpark of the $47 million he will make this season.

How much he gets paid will depend on how much he follows the advice of his former agent Thad Foucher, who said on his way out the door that Westbrook’s “best option is to stay with the Lakers, embrace the starting role and support that Darvin Ham publicly offered.” At the time, Westbrook was privately pushing for a trade away from LeBron James and company, what Westbrook found was a cold market that saw him more as a contract than a player. There wasn’t interest in him as a true No.1 option on a team anymore, the teams willing to take him just wanted Los Angeles’ picks, not the player (most would have waived him).

Westbrook is back in Los Angeles and, at least so far in camp, embracing Ham’s role for him — putting in more energy on defense, setting picks at times, shooting corner threes at times, and picking his spots to be the old, aggressive Westbrook. How that goes this season will color how