Kings and Barnes agree to 3-year extension: Source

He sacramento kings and forward Harrison Barnes have agreed to a three-year, $54 million contract extension, a team source confirmed to the athletic Thursday. ESPN was the first to report the news. Here’s what you need to know:

• Barnes’ contract has a 10 percent trade, which means he’ll get that part of his salary as a bonus if he’s traded.
• The 2015 NBA champion started all 82 regular season games for the Kings last season, averaging 15 points and 4.5 rebounds per game on 37.4 percent on 3.
• Barnes will enter his sixth year in Sacramento after being traded from the dallas mavericks during the 2018-19 season.
• The Kings finished 48-34 last season, third in the Western Conference. They were eliminated in the first round of the postseason by the warriors of the golden state.

the athleticInstant analysis of:

What this means for the Kings

They are lined up to recapture their entire starting lineup from the 48-win team that clinched the third seed last season. That is De’Aaron Fox, kevin huerterBarnes, keegan murray and Domantas Sabonis. That group was a plus-56 in 900 minutes together, the most in the league.

No other five-man lineup played more than 738 minutes together. Continuity is huge in this league. Look what the long established denver nuggets core could only do it in these last playoffs. When there is a higher level of comfort with your teammates, there is an additional intangible advantage.

Barnes may not have been the most spectacular wing option on the market. Sacramento clearly sniffed around in kyle kuzma and some other bigger names. But Barnes is as stable as they come. He was one of only three players to start all 82 games last season.

You can score him for 15 points, five rebounds and a sub-40 percent mark of 3 on decent volume almost every season. He fell in the playoffs. Certainly, an argument could be made that an upgrade was needed in place for Sacramento to advance to true title contender status. But Barnes is a proven two-way ticket eater on the wing and this is a Kings team that is extremely thin in that exact spot.

If an update wasn’t on the way, they needed it back to at least repeat the success of last season. — Slater

What this signals for Sacramento

The Kings opened up the possibility of creating about $34 million in cap space with a nightly draft dump of Richaun Holmes. That made some wonder if a big fish was on the way: Kuzma, Jerami Grant, dramond green. But this Barnes deal would seem to cut them out of that glitzy market.

It now seems more likely that the Kings will use some of their remaining cap space to renegotiate and extend Sabonis, try to bring back Trey Lyles and possibly lure Sasha Vezenkov from Greece. — Slater

Background

Barnes was selected by the Golden State Warriors with the No. 7 pick in the 2012 NBA Draft. Through seven postseason games against his former team last season, Barnes averaged 10.7 points, 3.4 rebounds and 0.7 assists per game. , shooting 24 percent from behind the arc.

The former North Carolina Tar Heel has career averages of 14.2 points, 5.0 rebounds and 1.8 assists on 37.8 percent shooting from 3-point range.

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(Photo: Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images)