I shouldn’t have to be writing about this, but here we are. Both because I have a problem, and because the early reaction I’m seeing means I’d be remiss if I didn’t get a few words out so I can at least say I tried to stem a wholly unnecessary tide that will hopefully be pulled back out by the magnetic forces of a Logic Moon sometime soon.
A report from Brian Lewis of the New York Post published early Thursday morning cites a source close to DeMar DeRozan in saying that DeRozan will opt out of his contract at the end of the season. The source doesn’t know how DeRozan feels about the Brooklyn Nets – who would obviously be interested given a roster full of holes and somewhere in the neighborhood of $45 million in cap space this summer – or any other team, though the source indicates that DeRozan “feels he’s been treated well by the Raptors” and “has a trait…called loyalty.”
There is absolutely nothing to react to here. I’ve seen some pretty over-the-top response already, and while it’s a small sample, I’m concerned it will grow. Now, Lewis was surely told those things, but they’re nothing new: DeRozan is underpaid, has a player option, will likely opt out, and Toronto, as a franchise that will both own his Bird rights and has treated him quite well, should have an edge in retaining him, should they so choose.
This…well, this is basically how things play out for every free agent with an underpriced option. In DeRozan’s case, his opting out doesn’t mean he’s disloyal, a traitor, greedy, or anything of the sort. His player option for next season is worth $10.05 million, far below his market value. He didn’t sign a contract extension because the rules around contract extensions are incredibly unfavorable to someone due a raise the degree to which DeRozan is. That doesn’t mean he’s disloyal or anything of the sort, either. It means he’s a rational economic agent.
This is something I’ve been writing about since at least as far back as the end of last season, and it’s always followed the same logic. DeRozan’s option year is a player option year that both sides negotiated; DeRozan has the write to decline it, and the team accepted him having that option. Nobody is doing anything wrong, and it would be borderline insane of DeRozan, barring a serious injury, to turn down a massive new contract to exercise the option year out of some idea of owing or being loyal to the franchise. Sure, the Raptors drafted and developed him and paid him pretty well while doing so, but 29 other teams would have done the same, and DeRozan’s been a bargain for several seasons now.
He’s likely to command a maximum salary starting in the neighborhood of $25.3 million annually – the Raptors can offer him the biggest contract at five years and an estimated $145.5 million – and no perceived amount of loyalty or ill-conceived notion that a player owes an organization anything would amount to a quantitative value of $15.25 million, let alone the risk of losing nine figures in the event of a bad injury. Maybe you hope DeRozan signs for a shade under the max as some sort of offering of flexibility and discount to put a number on loyalty, but even that’s somewhat unrealistically asking a player to leave money on the table. Pushing for that could leave the team susceptible to overtures from competing clubs, and while the Raptors will remain the favorite, players need to do what’s best for them.
For DeRozan’s part, he’s always maintained publicly that he wants to be in Toronto for the long-haul. As he told Sportsnet in early November:
Since I’ve been here – I’ve been here longer than everybody – and nobody has stressed being a Toronto Raptor more than me. With that, that speaks it for itself – the type of guy I am when it comes to this organization, especially sticking with these core guys. We have a chemistry that we’ll continue to build on and there’s no question about it that I want to be with these guys. Everybody knows that. That’s why I never get questioned in it – and they (the organization) never get questioned on it too much anyway – cause it’s a mutual thing.
You don’t have to take the player at his word on this, of course. He’s best suited saying something along those lines. But it’s long been his refrain, and the organization is highly invested in both the person and the player in this case. Asked to guess the odds of him staying back in a Dec. 15 mailbag, I put it at about 50/50, but I’d probably lean closer to 65/35 for him staying. It doesn’t hurt that he’s reeled off the best six-week stretch of his career, though his doing so may be eliminating any chance of him signing below the max.
There are probably going to be a lot of rumors that come out between now and the offseason about teams that are interested in DeRozan, his rumored interest elsewhere (keep in mind the Raptors as a team keep things incredibly tight-lipped and very few nuggets at the player-level have ever slipped out), and possible free agency scenarios. That speculation is fine and part of the fun, but a few points to remember:
- The option was negotiated, and DeRozan is fully within his rights to decline it.
- He should, because he stands to make a lot more money by doing so.
- Opting out to sign a bigger deal, with whatever team, tells you nothing about DeRozan except that he is like every other rational economic actor.
- Opting out doesn’t speak to disloyalty and is not a cause to trade the player (not that they’d do so this season, anyway, barring some unexpected blockbuster). If you think they should trade him, fine, you’re entitled to an opinion, but it should be for basketball reasons.
- The Raptors will have the upper hand in resigning him, all financials being equal, or close to it.
- We won’t have clarity on this situation until July 1 at the earliest.
The real debate is about whether DeRozan is a max player (he’s close, if not) and whether you think the team is better off giving him the max (or something close to it), or letting him walk. In the latter scenario, remember that the Raptors won’t have maximum cap space to offer someone else the max, and remember that sign-and-trades are somewhat less common and beneficial than in the previous CBA.
Anyway, this is about 1,000 words too many for this topic. Hopefully the reaction to future re-reports or DeRozan opting out don’t elicit the whole “disloyalty” angle.
