Gary Trent Jr. is arguably the best player still available on the free-agent market, and he might have already passed on the best offer he will get. Before they made several other transactions, the Toronto Raptors would have re-signed him on a deal that would have paid him an annual salary of around $15 million, but that offer is no longer on the table, according to TSN’s Josh Lewenberg.
That would have represented a pay cut for Trent, who made $18.6 million last season. The 25-year-old guard declined, as he was seeking about $25 million annually, per TSN. And now both TSN and Sportsnet’s Michael Grange are reporting that he might not even get the $12.8 million non-taxpayer mid-level exception. (Only one player, De’Anthony Melton, has signed a deal for the full MLE this offseason. Melton took a one-year deal with the Golden State Warriors.)
Last season, Trent averaged 13.7 points in 28.1 minutes for the Raptors and made 43.1% of his pull-up 3s. It wasn’t a career year or anything — his minutes and usage both dropped — but it’s not like he scared all his potential suitors off with his play, either. What’s happening to him reflects the market at large: As a result of several factors, most notably the new collective-bargaining agreement, many teams are being conservative about how they spend their money. Generally speaking, if you’re a non-star free agent in this environment, you must find a deal quickly or risk getting squeezed.
In this case, it sounds like Toronto was happy to bring Trent back, provided that he signed a team-friendly deal that it could potentially trade for positive value down the road. “You want to be strategic about what’s tradable, what’s not tradable,” Raptors general manager Bobby Webster told reporters on June 27. “You know, we have some big contracts coming up in the future, so it’ll just have to be something that makes sense for everyone.” By that point, though, the front office had already added Davion Mitchell and Sasha Vezenkov’s salaries to the payroll in a deal with the Sacramento Kings, and the next day it picked up Bruce Brown’s $23 million player option. Toronto is now less than $300,000 below the luxury-tax line, per capsheets.com.
While the Raptors weren’t offering as much money as the Miami Heat reportedly offered Caleb Martin, Trent now finds himself in a similar position to the one Martin was in before the forward signed with the Philadelphia 76ers. Before hitting free agency, the Heat offered him an extension contingent on him picking up his $7.3 million player option, according to Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel. That deal would have reportedly paid him $65 million over the next five seasons; instead, Martin signed a four-year deal with the Sixers worth $35 million, plus $5 million in potential bonuses, with a fourth-year player option, per HoopsHype’s Michael Scotto.
Toronto will meet with Trent’s representatives this week in Las Vegas, according to TSN, but it has not been acting like a team that plans to bring him back. At this point, Trent might have to consider going wherever he feels he has the best basketball opportunity on a one-year deal, then play the free-agency game again next summer.
