It would be reasonable for you to have forgotten about Khem Birch, even if you are a Toronto Raptors fan.
The Raptors traded him to the Spurs of Saint Anthony as the corresponding salary in the Jacob Poeltl trade. He never played a game for the Spurs. His last NBA At that point, Birch would not play until December 29, 2022, before a right knee injury ended his year. The Spurs waived Birch in October, and in February 2024, he signed with Bàsquet Girona of the Spanish league founded by Marc Gasol. He played in 12 games, averaging 8.8 points and 5.6 rebounds per game.
In a fun twist, Birch could make the Canadian Olympic team, especially after… Zach Edey On Sunday, Canada withdrew its name from the list. It will need more size than the rest. Kelly Olynyk, Dwight Powell and Trey LylesHe worked his way up the league after going undrafted and spending three years overseas. This is no dig at Birch. If he ends up in France, he will have earned it. That said, while Birch was trying to resurrect his career in Spain last year, he was in the final year of his NBA contract, earning nearly $7 million for not playing. A pretty good gig.
That brings us to the Raptors, who have done little in free agency other than extend the contracts of their core players, Scottie Barnes and Immanuel Quickley. At the time they picked him up Bruce BrownMaple Leaf’s player option for 2024-25, which will pay him $23 million, would likely do very little. It meant they would have less than the full non-taxable mid-level exception to spend while staying under the salary cap, and Raptors president Masai Ujiri isn’t going to suggest Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment spend tax dollars on a team that is projected to win more than the 25 games it won last year, but fewer than 40.
They are in that position, in part, because of how they have handled players like Birch, veterans who have filled limited roles ably but have never seemed essential pieces on winning teams. Now, it is the third year of Chris BoucherJackson’s contract is what prevents the Raptors from having more room to maneuver.
The Raptors chose this route. When they traded Jalen McDaniels for Davion Mitchell, Sasha Vezenkov and two second-round picks, took on roughly $8 million in extra salary. That helped the Kings of Sacramento fall below the tax threshold, hence the incentive for two selections.
It was also the difference between the Raptors having around $18 million to fill out their roster, enough to use the full MLE and sign second-round picks, Jonathan Mogbo and Jamal Sheadusing exceptions and staying under the tax, and having around $10 million, which isn’t enough to do all that. As a result, not only is Gary Trent Jr. likely leaving in free agency, but they couldn’t spend the full MLE on any one player, even if they wanted to balance their roster. (They’re short on big men and bigger forwards.) The Raptors likely completed their roster Monday night when they agreed to terms with Garrett TempleA team source confirmed to The athleticIf Mogbo and Shead are signed using the second-year exception, the Raptors will have 15 players on fully guaranteed deals.
Assuming the veteran minimum, Temple will make $3.3 million, but it will only count as $2.1 million against the salary cap.
— (((Eric Koreen))) (@ekoreen) July 1, 2024
Maybe you (and the Raptors) aren’t all that sad about losing Trent. His likely departure will go down in history as just another case of the Raptors losing a rotation-level player for nothing in return, but allowing him to leave allowed the Raptors to make the trade for Sacramento. Then again, adding Trent alongside the players leaving that team makes it less of a steal.
If they had been more stingy with Boucher, they wouldn’t be in this position. When the Raptors signed him to a three-year, $37 million deal in 2022, Boucher was coming off his two best seasons, with more than six win shares in both. It was a good price, but the contract started above the MLE and went down as it went on. Because of his slender frame, Boucher is an odd fit in the NBA. At that point, he’d been an above-average three-point shooter just once in four seasons. He can’t reliably guard bigger centers, meaning he typically has to play with another center, which creates spacing issues. His strengths are the offensive glass and running the floor. In other words, he’s a depth forward.
Guaranteeing that type of player three years (Boucher was 29 when he signed the contract) for a non-contending team is a dangerous game. The Raptors thought they were on an upward trajectory at the time, which was surely part of the math. We can argue about that judgment for a while (and we have), but it’s important context. Still, the contract raised an obvious question: Who were they bidding against?
The same can be said for Birch, who came in at the end of Tampa’s season and was in working order after Aron Baynes and Alex Len made a crater at the central point. Orlando Magic He had just fired Birch. Any team could have signed him. Why was a three-year contract worth it a few months later?
At roughly $20 million total, it wasn’t a huge cap hit, but the Raptors ended up giving up a first-round pick and two second-round picks along with Birch to get Poeltl. The Raptors got the far more valuable player in that deal, but they might keep one of the two second-round picks they gave to the Spurs if Birch’s contract had expired in 2023 instead of 2024. You could argue that second-round picks generally don’t pay off much, and you’d be right. But you can’t applaud Sacramento’s smart trade while saying the picks that went to San Antonio didn’t matter.
The Raptors have made the same mistake with players who came to Toronto from outside the organization, such as when they gave Stanley Johnson, Svi Mykhailiuk and McDaniels two-year deals. Those deals were all minor, risks worth taking when the payoff was a good rotation player. The fact that the Raptors haven’t gotten those deals done is disappointing, but they’ve been grounded in realism. The Birch and Boucher deals seemed a year too long at the time.
They’re not huge mistakes. Every dollar you spend represents an opportunity cost in any economy that limits spending, but these didn’t derail the Raptors in the big picture. They were small mistakes, and they ended up hurting the Raptors in small ways. Maybe this one didn’t even hurt them: multiyear MLE contracts usually end up being bad for teams. The extra year on Boucher’s contract could prevent them from making another mistake.
However, those little losses add up. After the NBA Draft concluded on Thursday, Raptors general manager Bobby Webster made an interesting comment.
“One of the other general managers told me, ‘Bobby, the nice thing is there’s no emotion associated with draft picks,’” Webster said.
The implication is that it’s easier to make cold calculations when it comes to draft picks (inanimate objects of debatable value) than it is to players (real human beings you know and often like). That’s the way it should be. It’s also the management’s job to do the best it can to separate that affection from those calculations.
The Raptors have been criticized, often rightly so, for retaining players like Kyle Lowry, Fred Van Vleet and Pascal Siakam for a long timeThe Raptors pride themselves on doing right by their players, but that has to end at some point (it appears to have ended with Trent, who was eligible for an extension for the final year). The Raptors have not held the line in certain situations. Rewarding your own players when team goals have not been met cannot be an operating principle.
Grades
• By using only the minimum to re-sign Temple instead of more MLE money, the Raptors will have room to take on money in a trade during the season and stay under the tax, if they choose. They could also waive a player on a guaranteed contract and sign another player for the tax-free minimum.
• Below is a rough attempt at a position chart. In the modern NBA, positions are very flexible.
Guard point: Quickley, Mitchell, Shead, Javon Freeman-Liberty (not guaranteed), DJ box (two-way)
Shooting guard: Gradey’s CockBrown, Ja’Kobe Walter
Small forward: RJ Barrett, broken blackTemple
Power Forward: Barnes, Vezenkov, Boucher and Mogbo
Center: Poeltl, Olynyk, Branden Carlson (two-way), Ulrich Chomche (probably bidirectional)
(Photo by Chris Boucher: Cole Burston/Getty Images)