How Raptors' salary-cap picture looks after Scottie Barnes' contract extension

What has long been implied is now on paper: The Toronto Raptors are Scottie Barnes’s team for the foreseeable future.

Barnes and the Raptors will sign a maximum extension to Barnes’ rookie-scale contract once they are allowed to do so on July 6, as first reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski on Monday. That new contract will pay Barnes an estimated $224.9 million over five years in its basic construction, beginning in 2025-26, and up to $269.9 million if Barnes hits certain escalators in the 2024-25 season. More on the contract details, which are important but not the headline item, in a moment.

In inking Barnes to this maximum allowable extension, the Raptors are confirming what they’ve shown more or less since they selected Barnes with the No. 4 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft: That they believe he can be a franchise cornerstone for the team in their next contending era.

The realities of the NBA collective bargaining agreement are such that Barnes was always extremely likely to re-sign with the Raptors once his initial four-year deal was done, but Barnes securing the designated player exception — which allows the Raptors to sign him for longer, with escalators beyond the typical maximum for a player of his age — is an important signal of how far he’s grown, and how quickly.

Initially, Barnes could have been looked at as a connective piece between eras, a karmic find as a reward for the awfulness of the Tampa Tank experience (on- and off-court) who could help the Raptors connect the 2019 championship era to their next one.

The Raptors underperformed in 2022-23, leading to a somewhat staggered decision to look toward the future; rather than connect two eras, Barnes’ potential as a star player was an argument in favour of reorienting the team-building around him. Whether the Raptors could have executed the strategy better — reading the tea leaves on Fred VanVleet’s exit, dealing Pascal Siakam earlier — is more open for debate than their investment in Barnes, who reached All-Star status in his breakout third season and took on more responsibility as a leader during a late-season injury stint.

Each successive move and shift in the team’s timeline for contending again has been further evidence that they see Barnes as the new face of the franchise and the cornerstone of its next great team. Monday’s news felt inevitable, with the exception of some finer points of negotiation, and Barnes is now the highest-paid player in Raptors history. No pressure.

(An aside: Most successful high-lottery picks eventually sign rookie-scale extensions, both because that’s good team-building and because players don’t have a ton of options. If Barnes and the Raptors couldn’t come to an agreement on an extension this summer, for example, he would have been a restricted free agent after the season, and the Raptors could have matched any offer sheet he signed elsewhere, offer sheets that could not have paid him as much as the Raptors could have. Barnes could have played out 2025-26 on a one-year contract and become an unrestricted free agent after, like Jimmy Butler did in 2014-15, but that is extremely risky given the size of the potential contracts at play here. Even demanding a trade is difficult with so many years of team control left and little recourse for the player. The NBA’s player empowerment era largely doesn’t apply until a player is on their second contract. Now the clock to keep a player happy begins ticking.)

In most cases, players coming off of their rookie deal are eligible to earn up to 25 per cent of the salary cap on four-year extensions, with eight-per cent non-compounding annual raises. The Raptors are signing Barnes to what’s called a designated rookie extension, allowing them to add one additional year to the deal and allow Barnes to earn up to 30 per cent of the salary cap, instead.

That designated player escalator puts significant pressure on the 2024-25 season for Barnes.

If he is named to the All-NBA First, Second, or Third team, wins Defensive Player of the Year, or wins the NBA Most Valuable Player award this year, he could earn up to 30 per cent of the cap instead of 25 per cent. (This only applies to this coming season, before the contract kicks in. Making All-NBA or winning MVP in 2027, for example, is cool but it won’t impact his contract.) Based on the current salary cap estimates, that’s a difference of about $45 million over the life of the contract.

(Note: We don't know the exact contract specifics yet. As an example, Pascal Siakam's rookie-scale extension contained different escalators for each All-NBA level, and as Second-Team All-NBA, he earned 28 percent of the cap. Barnes could earn 30 percent for any of these achievements or different percentages for each successive accomplishment level. We will know sometime after July 6.)

In other words, making All-NBA this year could be worth $45 million to Barnes. Even with $225 million now secured, an extra $45 million is pretty damn good motivation for the off-season ahead.

In addition to individual achievement, that puts a heavier focus on the Raptors’ performance as a team this year. They won’t make a decision to buy or sell, contend or tank, based on Barnes’s status alone, but a late-season mail-in like we saw this past season might ruffle some feathers, as most voters tend to weigh team performance in All-NBA voting. (Disclosure: I do not have a vote.)

In 60 games last season, Barnes averaged 19.9 points, 8.2 rebounds, 6.1 assists, 1.3 steals, and 1.5 blocks, with a 56.6-percent true-shooting percentage and very good, versatile defence. Add a bit more scoring, and that’s the statistical profile of a potential All-NBA player … on a good team. Only 13 players in the last 15 years have made an All-NBA team while playing on a sub-.500 team, and they all averaged at least 24 points per-game.

Then again, this may work itself out. If Barnes continues his growth toward All-NBA status, the Raptors may end up too solid to truly tank; if he plateaus, the path toward a high pick and a co-star becomes more reasonable. As the Raptors' most important player, Barnes' play will have a lot of say in the 2024-25 outlook and ultimate direction.

The Raptors' task now becomes constructing the ideal roster around Barnes. RJ Barrett, Gradey Dick, Jakob Poeltl, Kelly Olynyk, and Ochai Agbaji are under contract beyond next season, and Immanuel Quickley should be retained as a restricted free agent in July. The Raptors also have the Nos. 19 and 31 picks in this year’s draft, all their own picks moving forward except a 2025 second-rounder, an extra first from Indiana in 2026, and a few different paths in free agency this summer to continue supplementing the roster. They now know for certain who they’ll be building that piece around, and if they search for a true co-star at some point, who they’ll be starring alongside.

Barnes’ extension has no direct impact on Toronto’s 2024 summer. Not much has changed from this post-deadline off-season primer for the Raptors in free agency.

Quickley’s restricted free agency is the most important factor, and a relatively small cap hold for him will allow them to do other shopping and then re-sign him. The statuses of Bruce Brown — who has a team option the Raptors will have to pick up if they intend to trade or keep him — and Gary Trent Jr. will dictate how much cap space they’ll have available to them, and what cap exceptions. Trades are also, of course, always a possibility.

What Barnes’ extension does do, from a cap perspective, is give the Raptors long-term clarity in a rising cap environment. This year’s salary cap is estimated to be $141 million, and current league estimate’s, thanks to the new TV contracts, see the cap rising the maximum allowable 10 percent in future years. That means Barnes’ contract will actually take up a smaller percentage of the cap as it goes, a small but not insignificant detail.

This does cast into light a small awkwardness about the Raptors' rebuild: A lot of their young players will already earning good money on their second contracts by the time the team is truly competitive again. 

That could create some relative inflexibility moving forward, or at least necessitate the Raptors do their roster-building through the draft and through trade. That’s how they built their 2019 team — the Raptors have only operated with actual cap space once in Masai Ujiri’s tenure — and it is a more traditional approach in the modern NBA landscape. Still, the Raptors will have to be wary of things like the luxury tax and what salary cap exceptions are available to them as soon as next summer.

That example assumes Barnes earns the full 30-per cent escalator by earning All-NBA, DPOY, or MVP this year. Adding only their first-round picks and one mid-level signing to the current Raptors under contract, the Raptors would already be pushing over the cap line for 10 players in 2025-26. Re-sign Trent or flip Brown for a player with term, or sign a free agent with cap space this off-season, and it gets even tighter. 

This is mostly fine; good teams have good players who make good money, and cap manoeuvrability is a necessary skill for any front office. Barnes may also not earn his 30-percent escalator, which give an additional $8-10 million in breathing room each year. It just warrants mentioning, as this summer is potentially the Raptors' last chance as true free-agent players in the Barners era.

There are a lot of questions to be answered from here. Who fits best with Barnes? Who complements Barnes, Quickley, Barrett, and Dick? Is Barnes ready for All-NBA already? What’s the market for Brown, or Trent, or Free Agent Backup Point Guard X? Who slips to No. 19? All of those are a bit easier to answer with the knowledge that Barnes is around for the long haul, an inevitability that it’s still nice to have secured before a pivotal offseason begins.

This is Barnes’ team. Now, how do you get to work building a Scottie Barnes team?