In today’s Grantland piece, Zach Lowe suggested that Jonas Valanciunas is a lock to demand a max-level contract. Some excerpts:
Valanciunas is a lock to demand a max-level extension. Large humans get paid, and this large human shot 51 percent on post-ups as a 22-year-old banging against the world’s toughest bigs, per Synergy Sports. He’s a beast on the offensive glass, shoots almost 80 percent from the line, and should develop as a pick-and-roll finisher — both at the rim, and with a soft midrange jumper.
An early max extension would also eat into Toronto’s cap flexibility for next summer. Valanciunas would go on the 2016-17 books at a salary around $21 million. If the Raptors wait, Valanciunas would count as only an $11 million “cap hold” when free agency kicks off.
They could still make room to do that, even with Valanciunas at a big number, by letting both DeRozan and Ross walk. Would the Raptors dare venture as high as four years, $80 million — below the projected four-year, $93 million max — to keep Valanciunas in the fold? That may be too rich for Masai Ujiri’s blood, and if it is, expect Valanciunas to hit the market next summer.
Valanciunas is currently making $4.6M and has a qualifying offer of $6.2M next summer.
As mentioned in the article, the nuance here is what your cap looks like in the first few days of free-agency next summer. If you sign him to a big deal this summer, he’s counting at $21M, but if you sign him next summer, his cap-hold is only $11M, which is a big difference. In either case, you can go over the cap to sign him since you have his Bird rights.
I believe that you should defer decisions to the latest responsible moment, and signing Valanciunas to a big money contract this year prohibits you from entering any sort of big free-agency sweepstakes next year. Sure, you might end up overpaying him next summer because you waited, but if that even buys you a 10% chance at landing a free-agent like Kevin Durant, or someone close to that caliber, you simply bite the bullet.
Bryan Colangelo found himself in a similar situation with DeMar DeRozan and inked him to a $10M/year deal, which at the time sounded like over-payment, but in hindsight was a bargain. The chances of Masai Ujiri pulling a similar sort of deal with Jonas Valanciunas this summer is simply too low, because the market is that much inflated and Valanciunas is a 7-footer with skill. Even though Valanciunas hasn’t exactly had over-powering seasons, he’s still got enough in him to entice teams to throw money at him. Whereas we extended DeRozan in his ‘low’ period, Valanciunas, despite Dwane Casey’s best efforts, still has relatively high stock in the league.
