Purpose of the Smart trade: renegotiate and extend Jaren

Seeing a bunch of questions on the why for the smart trade, so posting this here.

The grizzlies currently could only extend Jaren at 140% of his current salary (comes out to ~30-35 mil/year), setting him up to enter unrestricted free agency after next season so he can get paid what he’s worth (the max).

But, if we have the cap space this offseason, we can renegotiate his 25-26 salary higher and then extend him at the max off of that. This is what the Jazz did for Lauri and the Kings did for Sabonis. The smart trade gives us that cap space and allows us to go into next season without the fear of Jaren leaving hanging over the team.

Not saying you have to agree with the trade, but this makes it make a whole lot more sense.