No matter what kind of pay bump DeMar DeRozan is looking for, the question remains the same: is he a top-two man on a championship, or at least an NBA Finals team?
First up, it doesn’t matter what a player makes, it’s what percentage of the cap that they’re using. Assuming MLSE’s a pretty rich organization that’ll stay above the cap and close to the tax, it’s best to think of resource allocation in relative than in absolute terms. Everyone in the NBA is about to get pay increases so there’s no point moaning about why a guy like Goran Dragic could make $20M a season in his next contract, it’s whether Goran Dragic is the highest paid (and thus implying the best) player on his team that is the question. Or in our case, DeMar DeRozan.
DeRozan is currently due to make $10.1M next season and assuming the cap stays what it is at $63.1M, it accounts to 16% of the cap. By comparison, LeBron James makes $20.6M which is 39% of the cap. This is a world I understand, because James is probably four times the player DeRozan is and this reflects that valuation.
This is all in the current world. The rumour from yesterday had it that in the new world of an increased cap, DeMar DeRozan’s agent might be taking a crack at getting him the max at $25.3M. In a world where the cap is projected to be at $108M (at least), this accounts to 23% of the cap. Hmm, not as ridiculous as it sounds, does it? If you’re of the belief (and many fans are) that DeRozan is currently a steal at $10M a year, then you can’t possibly be upset about him taking up 7% more of the cap than he is now, assuming even marginal increases in his game. He just happens to get the benefit of a raise after being “underpaid”, and the NBA ushering a new salary cap at the same time. That’s all.
Assuming that this isn’t just an agent negotiating tactic and they do in fact seek the max, the $25.3M number only sounds huge in context of the current cap because that would make him the most expensive player in the league…in today’s salary cap, which is a false comparison.
Currently, Tier 1 players take about 30-35% of the cap on their respective teams, and if DeRozan even gets the $25.3M he’s supposedly asking for, the 23% that it would amount to is still pretty low if you consider him a Tier 2 player. It’s if he’s a Tier 3 player that you start questioning whether that’s how much you want to pay him, and whether it reduces your overall flexibility.
And that’s the question – what tier of NBA talent does DeMar DeRozan fit in? His limitations and strengths have been talked about ad nauseum on this site, so there’s no point diving deeper into that. The point to ponder here is that whether Masai Ujiri can pull another Bryan Colangelo, and sign DeRozan to a deal that can prove a bargain in the long-term relative to his protected skill-set. If he’s able to give DeRozan a $6M pay raise to $16M, and sign him to a 4 year contract, you would have to consider that a great deal for the Raptors under the new salary cap. I can feel you cringing at the idea of paying DeRozan, a severely limited player, that kind of money but I’ll appeal to your mathematical sense and urge you to think of it in terms of cap percentage. This is a league where a guy like Doug Christie would’ve made $12M a year. I’d even argue that paying DeRozan $20M is a decent deal because that’s still only 18% of the new projected cap!
This conversation isn’t about how much DeRozan should make, it’s about whether he’s the type of player that could be a top two or three player on a championship team. That’s what’s going to drive Masai Ujiri’s decision on whether to ink him to a new deal or ship him and avoid another Chris Bosh situation. Either Ujiri believes that DeRozan is the guy that can up his three-point percentage to over 36%, become at least a 70th percentile defensive player, and is able to consistently adopt a play making role rather than be a black hole. He ended the season on a hot shooting streak, had stretches where his assist numbers were extremely impressive, and even had games where his defensive presence was the difference in winning and losing. It’s about consistency with him and though his effort is consistent, his game is not.
He’ll be starting his 7th NBA season in October, and will be 26 at the time. Players generally hit their prime between 27-30, so it’s not impossible to suggest that he’s got another couple gears in him that could see him hit an All-NBA level. To make that call, though, you have to look at the incremental improvements he’s made every summer, and that’s when you identify slightly improved ball-handling, a slightly improved mid-range game, slightly improved defense, and that’s the theme here: slightly.
He hasn’t made a real jump in his career yet, and Ujiri’s toughest analysis will be whether he sees DeRozan making a jump or two to justify his place in a lineup that hopes to compete for a championship, irrelevant of what he makes, because everyone including DeRozan knows he’s not a “30-40% of cap” player. It’s not like he’s asking to be paid like the best player on the team, it’s whether Ujiri even wants him on the team.
The fear of every Raptors fan right now is that we might be backing the wrong horse, and opening up the door for another Chris Bosh era, where we tirelessly fall short because our best player isn’t good enough and the GM is hell bent on pairing him with lesser talented players hoping the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. This is where I think the difference between Masai Ujiri and Bryan Colangelo lies, the former has the honest sense to call a spade a spade, and he has to believe that that even if he pays DeMar DeRozan his supposed asking rate, the buck doesn’t stop there and better players need to be acquired in order to be taken seriously, even in the East. Given the new salary cap and the numbers being bandied about, that’s still possible even if we pay DeRozan more than what he “deserves”.
