LeBron’s options limited
Superstar banks on free agency while Raptors face tough test
By far the biggest catch in NBA free agency is on the market. Or is he? LeBron James elected Friday not to opt into the final year of his contract worth $35.6 million (all figures U.S.) with the Cleveland Cavaliers, making the most dominant player in the game a free agent starting Sunday, but it also severely limits the possible landing spots for him.
Realistically, James will now have to choose between rejoining the Cavaliers or joining either the Los Angeles Lakers or Philadelphia 76ers when the moratorium on free-agent signings is lifted. Opting in would have left open the possibility of trades, but the restrictions of the NBA’s complex salary cap and sign-and-trade deals make that a virtual impossibility.
The Lakers are still interested in pairing James with either San Antonio’s Kawhi Leonard, through a trade, or Oklahoma City free-agent Paul George, while the Sixers have enough cap room to add James to a promising young duo of Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons.
Team can start negotiating with free agents at 12:01 a.m. ET Sunday, but contracts cannot be signed until July 6, when the league officially sets the salary cap and luxury-tax limits. It’s expected the cap will come in between $101 million and $102 million, with the tax level somewhere around $123 million.
The Raptors, meanwhile, aren’t likely to be participants in any major freeagent moves and will have to step out of character to improve a team that won a franchise-record 59 regular-season games before bowing meekly — for the third straight season — to James and the Cavaliers in the playoffs.
Toronto has no significant money to spend — a mid-level exception of just over $8 million isn’t going to attract any coveted free agent to tangibly improve the team — and isn’t in danger of losing a free agent on the market.
Of the Raptors’ top 10 rotation players, only Fred VanVleet could leave of his own volition as a restricted free agent. The Raptors would have the right to match any offer he gets.
League and team sources have suggested throughout the process that they will match. That would leave team president Masai Ujiri and general manager Bobby Webster in the unfamiliar summer situation of having to pull off major trades if they want to substantially change the roster. It won’t be easy, though. The team’s four key starters — DeMar DeRozan, Kyle Lowry, Jonas Valanciunas and Serge Ibaka — are all on bigmoney contracts and Ujiri may have to sweeten a trade offer if he wants to move any of them.
The Raptors do have all of their draft picks in coming years to offer, and also a group of relatively cheap young players. But whether Ujiri and Webster would want to sacrifice long-term prospects for short-term change is debatable. League-wide, there are a handful of big-name free agents who join James in fighting for dollars in a market that’s almost void of teams with significant cash to spend.
George, who spent one getacquainted season with the Thunder, is seen as the most likely to move. He’s reportedly been eyeing the Lakers for a year. Chris Paul seems to be locked into returning to the Houston Rockets, while DeMarcus Cousins of the New Orleans Pelicans is still rehabbing a torn Achilles tendon that will limit his options.