So this is a very good point and I wanted to take a look at this more closely, looking at comparable players and contracts. I picked 4 other players in the league known to be strong defense-first players and wanted to see what kind of contracts that they got after their first rookie contract.
Per 100 possessions:
Jeremy Sochan:
21.5p/13r/5a/1.6st/1.5bl on 56% eFG
Jaden McDaniels: 18.7/6/2.9/1.5/1.5 on 58%
OG Anunoby 16.9/8/2.5/2.2/1 on 58.4%
Jonathan Isaac 20/11.5/2.4/2.6/3.9 on 51.8%
Herb Jones: 17/8.4/2.5/2.2/1 with 58.4%
| Name |
Contract |
Average Cap hit |
3P/100 |
| Jeremy Sochan |
|
|
0.9 |
| Jonathan Isaac |
4 years, 69 million |
14.10% |
1.6 |
| Herb Jones |
4 years, 54 million |
8.96% |
2.4 |
| Jaden McDaniels |
5 years, 131 million |
15.63% |
2.1 |
| OG Anunoby |
4 years, 72 million |
? |
2 |
So these numbers tell us a few things:
1. Sochan's still really really young. 21 is just a baby and he's got a long runway ahead of him. Right now his impact at the same age compares favorably to OG Anunoby and Jaden McDaniels at the same age. Herb Jones was drafted when he was much older while Jonathan Isaac has always been more impactful although his career has been marred by injury.
2. I use 3p made/100 possessions as my own personal catch-all metric of a shooter's gravity.

It works reasonably well I think, as it takes into account both shooting percentage and volume of 3 pointers and normalizes them by rate. Generally I've found that anything above 4 is a very good to excellent shooter (Dame, Luka, Kennard, Isaiah Joe), 3-4 is good (Wemby, Vassell), 2-3 is average (Kuzma, Franz, SGA, Jaylen Brown, Caruso), and below 2 is poor to non-shooter (Butler, Smart, Thompson twins). What's enlightening is that most of the guys he comps too weren't exactly deadeye shooters but at least "average". On the other hand, Sochan is really not too far away from his comps when it comes to shooting gravity - it really comes down to about 1 extra 3 pointer made per 100 possessions.
3. These numbers suggest that Sochan would be well within reason to ask for 20 million a year based on the rising cap. Isaac, McDaniels, and OG were all above 10% of the cap per year as was Okongwu, as you mentioned. His per 100 stats are better than similar players at the same age while his impact metrics are similar.
4. That being said, it is important to note that the prior contracts were all handed out prior to second apron rules - it will be interesting to see how much of a penalty these rules and his shooting deficiencies play on his next contract.