The Wizards entered this summer knowing they would not have much salary cap space in the next few offseasons. A big new contract for Bradley Beal and a handful of other deals would keep the Wizards’ books full for the future. If they were going to improve through free agency, 2016 was the year to do it.

The Wizards had the money to sign Kevin Durant or Al Horford. They ended up with Ian Mahinmi and Andrew Nicholson. Now they sit at 4-9 with a season already mired in locker-room strife. They have a roster of talented role players, but their cap situation makes improving that group difficult. Moreover, their star point guard may not be happy knowing that the Wizards could have locked him in for the future with a well-deserved extension.

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John Wall came into the NBA a few years too early. While 2012 draftees like Beal were able to take advantage of this offseason’s exploding salary cap to lock in massive deals, Wall entered the league two years earlier, as the No. 1 pick in the 2010 NBA Draft. That timeline meant that it was unreasonable for him to do much in 2013 other than take the max contract extension the Wizards offered. That contract will pay him more than $80 million over five years, a gamble on the Wizards’ part as Wall had never made the playoffs or an All-Star Game and was coming off a season that began with a serious knee injury.

Three All-Star and two postseason appearances later, that timing opened a door for Wall and the Wizards. The specifics of Wall’s second contract put him in the same situation as Russell Westbrook and James Harden: eligible for an immediate extension during his existing contract that would come with a big raise. Westbrook and Harden both took that path to bump their 2016-17 pay up about $10 million over their previous contracts.

The specifics of Wall’s case make it even more interesting. The current collective bargaining agreement uses a tier structure to determine how much a player’s maximum contract can be worth: Players with 10 or more years in the league are in the top tier, while players with seven to nine are next, followed by those with six or fewer. Wall only had played six seasons as of this offseason, so the most he could have renegotiated for this offseason was a starting salary of $22,116,750 — the same as Beal’s. The Wizards’ plan to spend long-term money this offseason created a sense that if Wall’s extension could not be worked out now, it probably would be impossible in the future.

MORE: Beal can be great but — he'll need Wall's help

It would be easy to understand why a Wall extension was not on anyone’s radar. He is under contract through 2019 and has been the one rock on a roster of shifting parts for years. Even now, figuring out how to keep emergent forward Otto Porter after this season is a bigger priority, as is coming up with low-cost ways to rebuild a weak bench.

However, Wall was acrimonious about being paid less than Pistons point guard Reggie Jackson last year, which led to reports that he is similarly upset to be making less than Beal or not getting the same treatment as Harden and Westbrook. Wall quickly denied those reports and responded with his best scoring season, though his turnovers also are up and his assists down for the struggling Wizards.

The tricky part here is that the Wizards could have offered him an extension, and it might have been good for both sides. Even after signing Mahinmi and Nicholson, the Wizards still had enough space to give Wall his raise. A max extension would have given Wall $16.6 million more over the next three years, to go along with an additional season beyond the current contract.

BIRDSONG: Wall doesn't need to worry about Beal's money

Wall could have increased his salary substantially for the next three seasons, though not as much as Westbrook and Harden did because they were in the second max tier. The Wizards, meanwhile, could have made their best player happy and secured his services for even longer.

That never happened.

Whether the stopping point was Wall or the Wizards, the renegotiation and extension never came to pass. Instead, Washington spent almost exactly the same amount of money on Jason Smith, their third center who is currently posting a 1.7 Player Efficiency Rating as Mahinmi recovers from a partially torn medial meniscus.

While it made sense for the Wizards to begin the offseason with more lofty aspirations, they missed a serendipitous opportunity to keep their best player happy and on a longer contract without sacrificing much of anything.