Raptors Notebook: Where Toronto stands after off-season moves

Gary Trent Jr. agreeing to a one-year, minimum contract with the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday did not signal the end of the NBA off-season. It did, however, signal the most official acceptance yet of the 2024 reality: A confluence of factors from the new collective bargaining agreement have had an outsized impact on the 2024 free agent group’s middle class.

To make things simpler than they are, let’s call it three primary factors acting on the market for players like Trent right now.

The first is the introduction of a second luxury tax apron, beyond which the highest-spending teams face even larger tax penalties and, more importantly, serious limitations to how they’re allowed to build their roster. Teams at the highest echelons of spending don’t have as many exceptions and accounting tricks as in prior years to keep adding to a contending core; teams in the moderately-high spending tiers don’t want to risk reaching that second apron and being similarly restricted.

The second is a dearth of cap space, generally, for teams to chase free agents. More and more over the last decade, teams have decided to operate above the salary cap, eschewing real cap space to keep Bird rights on their own players and open up the mid-level exception. The Raptors are a great example — only once in Masai Ujiri’s tenure have they actually operated as a cap-space team (signing DeMarre Carroll), instead deciding it’s more valuable to, say, take on salary from the Kings in a trade to pick up assets and pick up the team option on Bruce Brown, rather than see what’s out there on the market. There just isn’t nearly as much real cap space out there as the size of contracts suggests, and most of it is hoarded by teams who aren’t exactly competitive.

A third factor is that teams can now save their mid-level exception to use as a trade exception in-season. There is an opportunity cost to using the mid-level now that wasn’t there before.

Those factors may not be permanent. Teams will learn how to better build around the looming threat of punitive tax charges and roster-building restrictions, or they’ll eventually get desperate enough to accept them. Players could prioritize money-in-hand via veteran extensions, which have had maximum allowable raises increased, over what looks like riskier free agency for non-star players, a trend that materialized early this free agent season. Teams may realize that using the mid-level as a trade chip isn’t worth missing out on a player in the offseason, given how many other ways there are to create trade exceptions (like turning Josh Okogie into a walking one, for example).

For this summer, though, Trent and players like him were left to navigate one of the most uncertain off-seasons in memory. The Toronto Raptors were no longer interested in retaining Trent, and with so few teams operating with cap space or even the full mid-level exception ($12.8 million in Year 1), Trent was left to make a difficult choice. In the end, he opted to reunite with Damian Lillard and contend for a championship on a one-year minimum ($2.6 million) rather than taking multi-year offers at the smaller mid-level ($5.2 million in Year 1) that were on the table, according to league sources.

What follows is a notebook on other contract and market details as it pertains to the Raptors off-season.

Scottie Barnes contract details

When the Raptors signed Pascal Siakam to a maximum rookie-scale extension before the 2019-20 season, his actual “maximum” could have been a few different maximums, depending on which criteria he met that season. When he made All-NBA Second Team, he jumped from making 25 per cent of the 2020-21 salary cap to 28 per cent. Had he made All-NBA First Team, that would have been 29 per cent. Had he won MVP, it would have been 30 per cent. It meant that each successive Siakam achievement in 2019-20 would impact his salary for  the next four years.

The maximum rookie-scale extension for Barnes is much simpler.

His 2025-26 salary will be 25 per cent of the 2025-26 salary cap but will jump to 30 per cent if he makes any All-NBA team or wins MVP or Defensive Player of the Year this season. There are no successive levels of achievement and different percentages; it’s 25 per cent or 30, a projected difference of about $50 million based on current cap estimates. It also doesn’t matter if he achieves those accolades in future years; his 2024-25 performance solely dictates what the five-year extension looks like.

Barnes’ contract also contains a 15 per cent trade kicker. If he is dealt at any point during the contract, he’ll receive a 15 per cent bonus — payable by the Raptors, not his new team — though that can’t push him past the maximum salary. (Functionally, this just means hey, if you trade me and the cap has gone up a lot, I get topped up to the new max.)

Immanuel Quickley contract details

There are a few small details about Quickley’s massive new deal that lessen the sticker shock slightly, though not enough to change your thinking on the big-picture decisions. The first is that the deal is flat, meaning he earns the same every season, so with the cap projected to rise 10 per cent annually for the foreseeable future, the share of the cap Quickley takes up will decrease each year. In addition, while reported as a five-year, $175-million contract, Quickley’s deal is actually for $162.5 million, with the ability to earn another $12.5 million in “unlikely incentives.”

In CBA terms, “unlikely” just means that the player didn’t achieve those incentives the year prior. However, sources indicated to Sportsnet that the incentives are, actually, unlikely. And so it’s better to proceed with Quickley’s contract as a flat $32.5 million on the books each year.

How unlikely incentives impact the tax sheet now, and the apron later

Each player effectively has three different salary numbers for cap, tax and apron purposes. Because this stuff wasn’t complicated enough.

If you were a team with cap space, you would care about the salary cap number, which in Quickley’s case is $32.5 million, as that is the number used to determine cap space. If you were a team pushing one of the luxury tax aprons, you would care about Quickley’s number under the apron, which is $35 million — because the aprons are supposed to be “hard caps,” they assume all players will hit every incentive. The third possibility is a team like the Raptors, that is above the cap and well below any aprons but wanting to avoid paying the luxury tax line. For tax payment purposes, Quickley’s number isn’t determined until the end of the season, based on whether or not he achieves those incentives. The Raptors, then, have to be aware of the possibility he’ll cost $2.5 million more under the tax, but they’re not hampered by that.

Because of that complication, I’d expect teams to limit the amount of unlikely incentives in contracts in the new CBA environment.

In Toronto’s situation, it’s fine. Jakob Poeltl ($500,000) and R.J. Barrett ($2.9 million) also have unlikely incentives in their deals, meaning Toronto’s luxury tax figure could swing $5.9 million higher than their salary cap figure if things go really, really well this year. (Poeltl’s are tied to team success, Barrett’s are tied to individual achievements like All-Star and All-NBA, and Quickley’s are currently unknown but believed to be stretch goals.)

The rookie contracts and 2-ways

Let’s do some rapid fire notes, for the sake of completion!

Ja’Kobe Walter signed at 120 per cent of the rookie scale for the No. 19 pick, as almost every pick does for their respective draft slots these days. He also has $100,000 in “likely incentives” based on participating in Summer League and the team’s summer conditioning programs, as is a common Raptors clause.

Jonathan Mogbo and Jamal Shead signed identical three-year deals under the new second-round pick exception. In the old CBA, teams would have to use a chunk of one of their exceptions if they wanted to sign second-round picks to contracts longer than two years. Now, teams are allowed to go three or even four years, and offer more than the rookie minimum in the first year. Mogbo and Shead are both getting $1.9 million in Year 1, the maximum allowable under this exception, and are fully guaranteed for 2024-25 and 2025-26. The Raptors hold a team option on both players for $2.3 million in 2026-27, and they will be restricted free agents after their contracts.

(That RFA status, by the way, is why some teams prefer a three-year deal to a four-year deal; while getting a fourth cheap year of either player would be nice, they’d be unrestricted at the end of the contract if so. There’s always the path to decline a fourth-year option to sign a new contract as an RFA, but in this case, the Raptors are keeping it more straightforward.)

Ulrich Chomche signed a two-year, two-way contract that’s especially notable for two reasons. The first is that there is no “second-round pick exception” benefit to this kind of contract; the Raptors could have given it to him as an undrafted free agent. This tells us it was important to Ujiri and the Raptors to draft the first player out of NBA Academy Africa and Basketball Africa League, as they paid cash considerations for the No. 57 pick. It’s a very nice moment and a great story, and only takes a small chunk of the $7.2 million in cash teams can send or receive in a league year.

The second reason it’s notable is that two-year, two-way deals are less common. This signals that there was good communication and buy-in about the team’s development plan for Chomche, who is a really exciting prospect but probably needs at least a full G League season before he’s on the NBA radar with any regularity. Locking in a multi-year deal allows the Raptors to be patient bringing Chomche along without the need to make a firm decision on him longer-term after his rookie Raptors 905 year.

D.J. Carton also signed a two-year, two-way last year, but that was late in the season, and that’s a bit more common as teams pre-empt the market for summer contracts. He’s looked solid in Summer League and should be a fixture for the 905 with a path to some backup NBA minutes this year.

Branden Carlson also signed a two-way contract (for one year in his case) as an undrafted free agent.

Carlson, Carton, and Chomche all have $77,500 guaranteed on their two-way deals, and that will increase to $289,000 if they are on the opening night roster as two-ways. The two-way salary is half the league minimum, so $579,000, but with so little guaranteed money and two-ways not counting against the salary cap or luxury tax, it’s very easy for teams to juggle those players if things don’t work out.

Garrett Temple’s no-trade clause

Because Temple is on a one-year deal and the Raptors will hold his Early Bird rights after the season, he technically has an implied no-trade clause. He would have to consent to any deal. It’s great for veteran players that this exists, but it’s always slightly amusing when the list of players with no-trade clauses is, like, LeBron James, Bradley Beal, and five or six older vets on one-year contracts.

Sasha Vezenkov’s situation

There continue to be reports out of Greece that Olympiacos is after Vezenkov, and are just waiting for him to be let out of his NBA contract. Ujiri was even asked about this during a recent Summer League broadcast, tip-toeing by saying how much they like the player but conversations are ongoing about what the right decision is.

For clarity, quickly: Vezenkov can’t just leave. The NBA and FIBA have an agreement to prevent players from bailing on contracts to go overseas (or from overseas to the NBA). To be eligible to play in Europe this year, Vezenkov would have to be released from his NBA deal.

The Raptors don’t have a ton of incentive to do that … unless Vezenkov is willing to agree to a buyout, leaving a chunk (or all) of his salary on the table. He’s set to earn $6.7 million this year with a $7-million team option for next season, so walking away entirely leaves a lot of money on the table. If you’re the Raptors, buying him out – instead of playing him as a bench shooter, or even just holding him as a trade chip for salary-matching — probably isn’t attractive unless he leaves a fair chunk of that salary on the table.

If Vezenkov agrees to a buyout, the Raptors would only be on the hook for the buyout amount, not the full salary. That could open up enough wiggle room under the luxury tax to use a small part of their mid-level exception on another free agent, use small partial guarantees to attract players for training camp, or just provide extra flexibility to take on salary in a trade later.

Christian Koloko’s situation

We got some great news this week when Koloko’s representatives revealed he’d been working out with other NBA players in free agent showcases and that he’d received clearance from his doctors to play. To return to the NBA, Koloko still needs to be approved by the NBA’s fitness to play panel (and sign a risk waiver), so he’s not back yet. Still, it’s a great next step for a young player we’re all hoping the best for.

If Koloko gains NBA clearance, he is free to sign with any team. The Raptors waived him, so don’t have any right to him upon return. They can, however, try to sign him themselves; there’s no rule preventing a reunion. The Raptors cut Koloko because they needed the roster spot and he wasn’t cleared to play, not because they don’t believe in the player.

Other assorted notes

* As things currently stand, the Raptors are about $4.7 million below the luxury tax line, assuming unlikely incentives are not achieved. If Vezenkov is bought out, that number could grow. When looking at possible late additions to the roster, that’s the number to look at, even though the Raptors technically have their full mid-level (starting at $12.8 million) available to them. They won’t pay the tax in a non-contending year, not when the tax payouts league-wide are well into the eight-figures if you’re a non-tax team.

* The Raptors have 16 players under (non-two-way) contract, and Javon Freeman-Liberty is the only one of those without a full guarantee. He has $100,000 guaranteed, which will increase to $150,000 next week and $800,000 if he makes the opening night roster. His future could depend as much on the Vezenkov situation and the play of the team’s other young guards this summer. He’s a well-liked piece, but as currently constructed, there would have to be one cut made, and it’s usually the guy without the guarantee (especially if the team just drafted two backcourt players and you’re a combo-guard). He’d have immediate two-way interest around the NBA if let go.

* Canadian Quincy Guerrier is reported to have signed an Exhibit 10 contract with the Raptors, which would bring him into camp and give him a bonus to supplement the G League salary if he’s cut and joins Raptors 905. Among the unsigned players on Toronto’s Summer League roster, Jamison Battle seemed like a good bet to be offered an Exhibit 10, as well. A lot changes quickly once Summer League ends, with guys changing programs or being signed elsewhere and so on, but Battle’s stood out for his shooting ability at good size, and would be a worthwhile 905 piece.

* On that same note, the Raptors allowed Drew Timme to bow out of their Summer League roster to continue playing with the Kings after participating in the California Classic with them. He was replaced by Canadian Fardaws Aimaq, who they subsequently released so he could pursue a more sizeable opportunity with the Nuggets’ Summer League team. These things happen every year, during and after Vegas. It’s good business to be easy to do business with.