Free agency is a good time for teams to upgrade their rosters, bring in some new energy, and perhaps find the missing pieces to their puzzle as well as for players to chase lucrative contracts. For fans, this is also an exciting time, with plenty of predictions, hopes, and insights for the upcoming season.
This year’s free agency category doesn’t feature many stars but there are a lot of (potentially) interesting names hitting the market. Nowadays, almost every team is looking for a capable winger or striker to boost their rotation, so let’s have a look at the top 10 young free agent strikers.
10. Kenyon Martin Jr.
Kenyon Martin Jr. is part of a very small group of Rockets players who could go into free agency. This summer, the Rockets have a choice to make regarding Martin’s team option. The 22-year-old quickly established himself as one of the main rotational pieces when he came to Houston, but it looks like he may not want to be there anymore.
Longing for more minutes and concerned that the arrival of new lottery picks would negatively affect his time on the court, Martin issued a commercial last summer. That trade never happened, and Martin still averaged 28 minutes throughout the 2022-23 season. However, there is still the possibility that the Rockets may decide to move on from Martin and focus on Jalen Green, Kevin Porter Jr., Jabari Smith and Alperin Sengon as the building blocks for the future.
If that’s the case, Martin could totally attract attention in free agency. He’s young, explosive, great in transition, and a capable defender with room to grow. While he was shooting efficiently on field goals at 56.9 percent – meIncluding 72.7 percent of field goals made very late on the shot clock and 58.4 percent against very strong defense – The question still remains about what it would look like in a more structured system with a lower margin of error.