Klay Thompson has agreed to join the Miami Heat, pending one last trip through waivers, and the people trading his next-team market had it priced as the clear favorite before the people reporting it said a word. On Friday, August 21, the Dallas Mavericks agreed to buy out the final year of Thompson's contract, clearing the way for the five-time All-Star to sign a two-year deal worth roughly $13 million in Miami, per CBS Sports. Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated exchange that runs a yes/no contract on every plausible Thompson destination, had Miami trading at 44 cents, roughly a 44 percent chance, hours before any of that hit a headline. By Friday night the Miami contract was bid at 99 cents, meaning buyers stood ready to pay 99 for a dollar of settlement, and every rival team's contract was a penny or less.
The price is only half the story. The best number on this board is hiding in the volume column, and it says more about how these NBA next-team markets actually work than the 99 cents does. We will get there.
The Quick Answer
- Klay Thompson Has Agreed To Sign With The Miami Heat: Dallas bought out the final year of his deal on Friday, August 21, and reports say he will sign a two-year contract worth about $13 million once he clears waivers.
- Kalshi's Miami Leg Traded At 44 Cents Hours Before The Report Broke, then finished the night bid at 99 cents on the exchange's Thompson next-team market.
- The Lakers, Mavericks, And 76ers Legs All Collapsed To A Penny Or Less as the buyout news confirmed what the tape had already priced in.
How the losing legs died through the day, the one volume number that explains the whole market, and what a 99-cent contract still pays are all below.
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What Happened: A Dallas Buyout And A Two-Year Miami Deal
Thompson had one season left on the three-year, $50 million contract he signed with Dallas in July 2024, and it was due to pay him $17.5 million for 2026-27. The Mavericks are rebuilding around Cooper Flagg, the reigning Rookie of the Year, which left a 36-year-old shooting guard's minutes and role caught on the wrong side of a youth movement. Rather than carry that money into training camp, Dallas negotiated a buyout, and NBC Sports reports Thompson is expected to sign with Miami after clearing waivers, which means he can officially be signed as soon as Sunday at 5 p.m.: two years, roughly $13 million, with a player option on the second season.
None of this arrived from nowhere. Thompson had been named a buyout candidate for weeks, and as recently as August 9 the reporting said Dallas and Thompson were not yet discussing one, with the Heat "frequently mentioned in NBA circles" as the suitor hoping for exactly this outcome. Lakers interest was reportedly part of why Dallas resisted a buyout at all. Hold both details: they explain almost every price on Friday's board.
The basketball logic was sitting in the public record for anyone willing to read it. Miami was the suitor NBA circles kept naming, Dallas's timeline now belongs to Cooper Flagg, and a $17.5 million veteran salary had no place on a rebuild's books, while Thompson, four championships into his career, still profiles as exactly the proven shooting a contender pays for. The market logic is what this page is about, because the trade tape on Kalshi turned that public record into a price while Friday's news cycle was still quiet.
The Tape: Miami At 44 Cents Before The News Broke
Kalshi's Thompson market (ticker KXNBANEXTTEAM-26KTHOMPSON31) works like every market in the exchange's next-team family: one yes/no contract per destination, each trading between 1 cent and 99 cents, with the winning leg settling at $1.00. If you are new to the format, our walkthrough of how Kalshi's sports markets work covers the mechanics; the short version is that the price is the crowd's live probability estimate.
Here is what that crowd did on Friday, with prices as of 9:04 p.m. ET:
| Leg | Before the report | Friday night |
|---|---|---|
| Miami Heat | 44¢ | 99¢ bid |
| Los Angeles Lakers | 38¢ | 0-1¢ |
| Dallas Mavericks | 32¢ | 0-1¢ |
| Philadelphia 76ers | 11¢ | 0-1¢ |
Prices from Kalshi's Thompson next-team market, Friday, August 21, 2026. Dead legs show a penny ask with no real bid behind it.
The row worth sitting with is the Lakers at 38 cents. Before the report, this board read as a genuine three-way race, with Los Angeles priced close enough to Miami that a single beat-writer post could have flipped the order, and every price traces back to the pre-Friday record: Thompson reportedly wanted Los Angeles, the Heat were the circled suitor, and Dallas had not yet agreed to let him go. Traders were doing what prediction markets do well, converting scattered reporting, roster math, and cap logic into one number per team. The 44-cent Miami print was the crowd concluding, hours ahead of confirmation, that the Heat fit was the one the reporting kept pointing toward, no leak required.
Now the volume number I promised. The Miami leg traded 20,226 contracts in its final 24 hours, against 29,085 contracts of lifetime volume, with 22,741 contracts still open as of 9:04 p.m. ET.
Roughly 70 percent of every contract this market ever traded changed hands in one day. A next-team market can sit half-asleep for weeks, quoting stale mid prices on thin interest, then compress its entire life into the few hours when the answer arrives.
If you only remember one thing about how these boards behave, make it that.
Three Legs Went To Zero In One Day
Each dead leg died of a different cause, and the causes map cleanly onto the news. Dallas at 32 cents was, in effect, a bet that no buyout would get done and Thompson would simply report to camp a Maverick, so the buyout agreement alone was enough to kill it. The Lakers at 38 cents and Philadelphia at 11 cents were bets on where he would land once free, and those legs needed the Miami reporting to harden before they went from real quotes to a one-cent ask with no bid behind it. The 38-cent Lakers price was carrying the weight of that earlier reporting, his stated preference for Los Angeles, right up until the tape said the preference lost.
A dead leg quoting 0-1 cents is worth being precise about: a penny ask with no bid is a displayed price, not a market. Nobody is paying you a penny for a Lakers contract that needs Klay Thompson to un-choose Miami. The board's losers do not go out with a bang; they just stop having buyers.
Miami At 44 Cents, Again: The LeBron Lesson In Reverse
If the 44-cent Miami favorite rings a bell, it should. Four weeks ago, Kalshi's LeBron James next-team market had Miami at, of all numbers, 44 cents the day before LeBron announced he was signing in Philadelphia. That 44-cent favorite went to zero, and the 9-cent Philadelphia leg paid $1.00. Our AI panel, models that score a board without ever seeing its prices, also faded another Miami-heavy market, where the crowd had the Heat near 40 cents on DeMar DeRozan's next team. Miami has been the market's default answer all summer, three boards running.
So why did the same price, on the same team, produce the opposite ending this time? Look at what sat underneath it. LeBron's 44 cents was built on a deleted YouTube link for a press conference that never happened, a single viral artifact the crowd over-read. Thompson's 44 cents was built on weeks of buyout reporting, a team with an obvious shooting need, and cap math that pointed one direction. The price on the screen was identical; the information behind it was not. A prediction market's number is an average of what its traders know, and the only way to judge it is to ask what they could know. Asking that question is the whole discipline, and it applies just as hard when you are comparing platforms, which is why our Kalshi vs. Polymarket breakdown spends more time on liquidity and resolution rules than on prices.
A Worked Example: What The 44-Cent Buy Actually Paid
Walk the arithmetic of the trade the tape was offering. One hundred Miami YES contracts at Friday afternoon's 44-cent price cost $44 before fees. Sold into Friday night's 99-cent bid, that position returns $99; held to settlement it pays $100, since the winning leg of a next-team market settles at $1.00 once the outcome is official. (Our NBA-on-Kalshi walkthrough covers fees and settlement timing in detail.)
The remaining penny is the market's honest accounting of what is left: Thompson still has to clear waivers before the Heat deal can be signed, and 99 cents is how an exchange prices an outcome with one paperwork step remaining. The market offers two exits, selling into the 99-cent bid now, or holding for settlement at $1.00, and the difference between them is a penny per contract, minus Kalshi's trading fees, plus however many days settlement takes. There is no move left on this board that changes anyone's outcome in a meaningful way; the trade was the 44 cents.
The only real caution belongs on a different timeline. Late money that bought 99 cents on Friday night tied up 99 cents to win a penny on a contract that, however things look, is not yet official. Event contracts are 18+ and CFTC-regulated, and the standing rule of every prediction market applies at both ends of the price range: run the arithmetic at the price you are actually offered, not the price in the story.
Where The Next Edge Shows Up
The Thompson market is finished as a trade, but it earned its place in the pattern file. A 44-cent read finished the night bid at 99, the losing legs emptied out as the reporting hardened, and 70 percent of the market's lifetime volume arrived on decision day. The mechanism behind that compression is worth naming: volume follows uncertainty getting resolved, because the day the answer arrives is the day early holders finally have someone paying full price for their position and late money decides a near-certainty is still worth the last few cents. The LeBron board never showed that shape; its answer arrived as an announcement, and the tape could only react. The lesson from the LeBron board still stands next to it: the market is early when its traders are reading real reporting, and confidently wrong when they are reading a deleted link. Telling those two apart, on the day it matters, is the entire skill.
The same skill transfers when this move gets priced again. The daily Kalshi board carries whatever the exchange lists next out of NBA free agency, and our free expert picks hub posts free picks across today's board every day. Come late October, the sportsbooks will hang Heat lines with Thompson's shooting priced into the number, and our live odds screen lets you shop that number across every major sportsbook the way Friday's traders shopped the 44 cents.
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FAQ
What team is Klay Thompson signing with? The Miami Heat, per multiple reports. Dallas agreed to buy out the final year of his contract on Friday, August 21, 2026, and Thompson is expected to sign a two-year deal worth roughly $13 million with a second-year player option; he can officially be signed as soon as Sunday at 5 p.m., after clearing waivers.
What were Klay Thompson's next team odds before the news broke? On Kalshi's next-team market, Miami traded at 44 cents hours before the buyout report, with the Lakers at 38 cents, Dallas at 32 cents, and Philadelphia at 11 cents. By Friday night Miami was bid at 99 cents and every other leg quoted a penny or less.
Why did the Dallas leg go to zero if Thompson was a Maverick all along? The Dallas contract effectively paid out only if Thompson stayed put, meaning no buyout and a return to camp. The buyout agreement itself sent that leg to a penny, before the Miami reporting emptied the rest of the board.
Does a 99-cent Kalshi contract still pay $1.00? Yes, if the market settles yes. The winning leg of a next-team market settles at $1.00 once the outcome is official, so a 99-cent holder collects the final penny, less trading fees, by waiting for settlement instead of selling into the bid.
Was the market really ahead of the news? The tape says so. Miami traded at 44 cents, the clear favorite, hours before the buyout and signing were reported, and about 70 percent of the market's 29,085 contracts of lifetime volume traded in the final 24 hours as the answer arrived.
