Don't you think Boras gets paid annually (or something close) as his players get paid? The only way he doesn't care about NPV is if he gets his entire cut day 1. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that his fees are paid as the players are paid, so NPV is just as relevant to agent as it is to player.
They aren't because he gets a percentage, and what matters to him is
driving the market up and he'll sacrifice NPV to do it, this is well known among GMs. Without heavy deferrals, the Nats don't sign Scherzer or extend Strasburg. He knows without them he's taking one buyer out of the demand pool, which is a big deal when over half the teams don't spend or won't deal with him. He did this with Chris Davis as well, where he took heavy deferrals in order to keep the Orioles in the game as a buyer. He needs to be able to tell teams "others are interested". If you look at the Soto negotiations, he got the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, Dodgers, even Blue Jays out to the media. If the Nats were just spending like the Expos, and everyone knew that, this leak all interested parties to the media wouldn't work. He also needs to spread dollars across as many teams as possible to keep this going. When the Rangers had their payroll drop he pounced on them with Corey Seager and Marcus Semien. His calculation is that the extra value of bringing teams like the Nats drives up contract value and that he'd get less overall if the option to defer wasn't out there to bring in buyers. He's not altruistic or stupid, he's just using it as a way to push up demand. He's actually clashed with Tony Clark from the MLBPA on this because the union is less excited about them.
