Enjoy this Bismack Biyombo playoff run. Soak it all in. Appreciate him now.
Because he probably won’t be here next year.
Rival executives believe Biyombo’s playoff surge has pushed him into the $16-17-million dollar range in free agency this summer, according to a report from Sean Deveney of The Sporting News. That’s a report that Zach Lowe can corroborate, or at least confirm that there’s chatter Biyombo could reach those levels on the open market.
Hearing same range. League clearly views him now as a legit starting center, will get paid as such. https://t.co/LtfNkEBPKX
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) May 26, 2016
The Biyombo free agency situation deserves a much longer analysis that doesn’t happen 10 minutes before the biggest game in franchise history, and that’s coming once the playoffs end. For now, here’s what you need to remember:
*Biyombo is an unrestricted free agent, so the Raptors don’t have the right to match offers he receives.
*The Raptors also don’t have Biyombo’s Bird Rights, which means they’ll have to use cap space rather than an exception to give him a significant raise.
*The Raptors won’t have the requisite cap space to pay Biyombo anywhere near that reported salary without renouncing the rights to DeMar DeRozan or unloading pieces (likely one of Terrence Ross, Jonas Valanciunas, or DeMarre Carroll).
Those points add up to this: If the Raptors are to retain Biyombo, doing so becomes their marquee offseason move. There are ways of retaining him – complicated cap machinations and ledger ballet, to be sure – and doing so would render the team less flexible and thinner. They’d be betting on a ton of further improvement from him, and that may be a reasonable bet, but it’s incredibly risky when losing DeRozan or Valanciunas is the cost.
It’s a major credit to Biyombo that these conversations are taking place. He’s been great in his backup role all season, and his play when thrust into larger opportunities clearly has rival teams looking at him like a starter. It’s a huge win for the Raptors that they found such a bargain and helped him develop his game so substantially (the Hornets didn’t even tender him a qualifying offer last summer).
Seeing him take the next step would hurt, but that’s the reality of being a great team. Sometimes, players are going to price themselves away, and when you find a complete stud for cheap on the market, it’s going to be really difficult to retain them long-term.
“Tyson Chandler, Ben Wallace, someone like that, that is what you hope he becomes next year,” an Eastern Conference general manager told Deveney. “He is never going to be a big-time offensive guy. But as much scoring that goes out to the perimeter, that would not matter on a lot of rosters. He can be a starter somewhere.”
Again, all of this requires a much thorough analysis when I’m not quite literally in my seat for Game 5. That’s coming after the playoff run, but at least now we can have these comment/twitter discussions with a real number in mind instead of hypotheticals.
But, yeah, maybe enjoy Biyombo over the next couple of weeks.
