Woj: Nuggets sign Kenneth Faried to a contract worth five years at $60 million

According to Yahoo Sports Adrian Wojnarowski, the Nuggets reached an early extension agreement with their forward Kenneth Faried early Monday morning to the tune of 5 years, $60 million (roughly $12 million per season).

Denver Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried has reached agreement on a five-year, $60 million contract extension, league sources told Yahoo Sports.

Faried is part of the 2011 NBA draft class eligible for extensions until Oct. 31.

The deal includes a partial guarantee in the fifth year that assures Faried he will make no less than $52 million over the life of the contract, sources said.

That last sentence is important, insofar as it keeps the Nuggets eligibility for the five year supermax contract intact. A partial guarantee on the fifth season means the Nuggets can still give a fifth year extension to a designated player. You can only use that designation once. And that supermax contract looks like this: five-years, $89 million under the current CBA. With the NBA set to announce on Monday a new TV deal that could triple the amount of revenue the league has available, there is a chance that Faried's new deal could look very reasonable in the next few seasons. Faried has one year left on his rookie deal, his extension will kick in during the 2015-16 season.

Congratulations to Kenneth Faried and the Nuggets for managing to reach an early extension.

Update from Nate Timmons:

CBA verbiage on 5 years for rookie ext. less than max is ambiguous, at best. Denver talking w/ NBA on Faried now, could turn to 4-year deal.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) October 6, 2014

According to Larry Coon's Salary Cap FAQ:

Only Designated Players can receive rookie scale extensions adding five new seasons.

And from Dan Feldman of ProBasketballTalk.com:

Kenneth Faried didn't sign a five-year, $60 million contract extension.

He couldn't have.

Despite Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports reporting the contrary, extensions to rookie-scale contracts - with one exception - can be for just four seasons. The exception is when a team makes someone its designated player by giving him a five-year extension to a rookie-scale deal, but designated players must receive a max salary and 7.5 percent annual raises.

For Faried to be the Nuggets' designated player, based on the NBA's projected 2015-16 salary cap, his five-year extension would be worth about $89 million - far more than the reported $60 million.

Hang tight, we'll see if the Nuggets can do the five-year extension or if this turns into a four-year, more expensive (around $14 million per season) extension. If the Nuggets found a loophole here, very well done.