According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Clippers forward Nicolas Batum is going to decline his player option in order to become a free agent this summer. It’s an expected move for the 33-year-old veteran, who can get significantly more than the $3.3M salary he opted out of by signing a new deal with the Clippers or soliciting offers from other teams.
Batum has a rather unique financial situation. After never quite living up to a 5-year, $120M deal signed with Charlotte, he found himself out of the Hornets’ rotation in 2019-20 (the fourth year of that contract) and then released before the beginning of the 2020-21 season, despite being owed a bit over $27M that year. That $27M was “stretched,” meaning the Hornets paid Batum $9,043,478 to play for the Clippers each of the last two years, and will pay him the final $9M due on that contract this upcoming season. That subsidization from Charlotte makes it a little easier for Nico to be flexible and take paycuts–which is exactly what happened last summer.
After playing just one year with the Clippers on a minimum-salary deal, Batum hit free agency in 2021, but the team only had what are called his “non-bird rights,” meaning the biggest contract they could offer him was 120% of the minimum salary. Despite playing at a level that would have priced a new deal somewhere between $8M and $12M, Batum took a paycut to return to the Clippers on a one-year deal worth $2.6M with a player option for $3.3M in 2022-23. Now, after a similarly successful second season as a Clipper, the team has Batum’s “early bird rights,” which allow them to offer him a more lucrative contract–up to around $10.9M starting salary. That should easily be enough to keep Nico, whose free agent market would cut off at the non-taxpayer mid-level exception, worth $10,349,000 this summer.
Remember that Batum will still get that final $9M from the Hornets this year as well, which would presumably make maximizing his salary this off-season less of a priority. However, at 33 years old he could look to leverage these two good seasons with the Clippers into what is likely his last shot at a lucrative, multi-year deal. Would LAC put up a 3-year, $34M offer to retain Batum’s services? The team already owes veteran power forward Marcus Morris $33.5M over the next two years and just gave veteran power forward Robert Covington a 2-year, $24M extension, and even the high-spending Steve Ballmer has to have a tipping point on green-lighting luxury tax expenses. Still, in this case, I would expect that Batum will be back on a 2 or 3-year deal. He seems to have very little interest in playing elsewhere and has been one of the team’s most versatile and valuable role players in the last two seasons.
