By the NBA Draft, the Toronto Raptors will have to make a major decision. According to the most recent rumour, they will deal Bruce Brown.
The majority of the decisions that NBA teams must make are concentrated into a single summer stretch that lasts for two or three weeks. This period begins with the NBA Draft, which takes place this year on June 26 and 27, and ends with the opening of NBA Free Agency on July 1 and the first few weeks of July. During that period, teams will select every draft choice, sign most of their unrestricted free agents, and decide on a plethora of trades, contract extensions, and option decisions.
This year, the Toronto Raptors place a lot of emphasis on that final category. Two days following the draft and two days prior to the start of free agency, on June 29th, the Raptors must determine whether to exercise veteran wing Bruce Brown’s $23 million team option. If they use it, they have to give him the money back or trade him to another team. If you reject it, he’s free to leave without doing anything.
It’s a decision that will have plenty of shockwaves for the rest of their summer plans. If they decline his option, keep the 19th pick, hold onto Immanuel Quickley’s $12 million cap hold and renounce the rest of their free agents (Gary Trent Jr., Garrett Temple, Jordan Nwora, etc) they will have around $27 million in cap space. If they exercise the option, that disappears in a flash, and they will be better off staying over the cap next year and not using cap space at all.
Do the Raptors bring Bruce Brown back?
In general, keeping a valued veteran player and trying to trade him for value is the route to go rather than letting him sign with another team for nothing in free agency. The difficulty the Raptors will face if they go that route is finding the right trade suitor, especially when Brown is making $23 million and teams over the tax apron can no longer aggregate salaries to match an incoming player.
Exercise the option without a trade lined up, and the Raptors could be on the hook for that full $23 million for a player who was a terrible fit with the team down the stretch last season. Hold onto him through the start of the season and Toronto risks not finding a suitor by the 2025 Trade Deadline, at which point they’ll have ended up paying him a premium to play this year and then walk away.
The latest reporting suggests that while the Raptors do expect to pick up his option, they will do so with a plan in place to trade Bruce Brown — not at the deadline or even the end of the offseason, but right away at the start of the offseason. If it’s not the NBA Draft, it will be the first days of free agency. If Toronto picks up the option, it’s because they have a trade lined up.
That’s the report from Doug Smith of The Toronto Star, and it fits well with what the Raptors are likely to do. Trading him quickly eliminates the risk of waiting it out and adds a player or players who can start building chemistry with the young core right away. It also eliminates their plan to use cap space, but the list of realistic free agent targets is likely slim anyway.
If news reaches the Raptors that a prominent free agent is interested in Toronto, then it’s possible they go in a different direction. Right now, however, the Raptors seem poised to do what they could not at the Trade Deadline and find a trade partner for Bruce Brown. Once they do, the offseason will begin in earnest.
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