Harkless talks 3PT contract incentive with Quick

Moe Harkless has an interesting wrinkle to the 4-year, $42M contract he signed with the Blazers in the summer of 2016.

If Harkless hits 35% of his threes in any given season, he makes an extra $500,000.

Not bad for a bonus. But it also affected his willingness to shoot from deep down the stretch of last year.

Harkless’ Contract

The website Spotrac.com breaks down Moe’s contract like this. He makes a base salary that, over four years, would add up to $40M. However, he has a $500,000 “incentive” for each year. That makes his contract worth a possible $42M if he shoots 35% or better from deep every year.

It took some clever book balancing from Neil Olshey to ensure Harkless’ contract wouldn’t bump into the cap, as reported by NBA salary cap wizard Bobby Marks:

Incentive Hesitation

Jason Quick of NBC Sports Northwest sat down with Harkless for a wide-ranging conversation about Moe being moody, his impressions of Portland as he’s spent time here, and other topics, including his contract.

Harkless admitted the incentive affected his three-point shooting near the end of the season:

"“I wasn’t thinking about it last year at all until everybody starting talking about it and it kind of came to my attention, and obviously the last game I knew I didn’t need to shoot, so I didn’t shoot. And I mean, we already clinched the playoffs… why would I?”"

While understandable, there are a few things to consider.

• Harkless only shot a single three over the last four games of last year, and none in the last three games he played. This came after Harkless was shooting 2.6 threes per game until that point, and his 3PT average hovering at 35.2%
• He shot just 2-12 from deep in the playoffs last year. It’s impossible to know what caused the sudden slump, among his worst four-game stretches from deep all season. But it’s not out of the question to think it may have had to do with his unwillingness to shoot during the end of the regular season.
• It could happen again. The same incentive could produce the same outcome if he’s shooting right around 35%. And maybe this time the Blazers could really need Harkless to be a threat from deep to secure playoff positioning.

To be fair, contract incentives like this aren’t unheard of in the NBA. In fact, Marks reported that there were 33 such contracts in the NBA last season. These ranged from incentives for minutes played (Solomon Hill), for playing a certain number of games (Luis Scola), or making an All-Defensive team (Bismack Biyombo).

And while it’s also fair to ask whether this incentive negatively affected Harkless last year, and whether it could affect his play again this season and beyond, we’re confident that if the team needs him, Moe’s gonna step up and shoot. Even if a half million dollars are on the line.