Raptors Sign Jonas Valanciunas to Long Term Extension

By Thomas Mooney

• A Few Good Mics

Aug. 17, 2015

Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

Big news for Toronto Raptors fans coming out of Lithuania today. The Head Coach of the Lithuanian national team revealed why Jonas didn't play in their most recent friendly game before the Eurobasket tournament this summer.

Valanciunas was going into the final year of his rookie contract before hitting free agency next summer and resigning him was seen as a top priority. I always thought he would wait it out until the end of the season, just to make sure he actually saw 4th quarter minutes this season, but it seems like he wants to stay with Toronto for the long term. It is unsure what the details of the contract are as of now, but it's likely the numbers will come out in the coming days.

As for what it means for the Raptors future, they needed to lock up Valanciunas. He's only 23 years old, and looks to be getting better every season in the league. Set a career high in points last year, and was close to his yearly average in rebounds per game, he seems to be getting a better feel for the NBA game. He's got a great post game already, the challenge for him now is working on his defense. His slow feet on defense have hurt him on his rotations on help defense, but his post defense is solid already. I think a lot of what hurt him this past season on the defensive end was the play of the guards on the perimeter. Greivis Vasquez and Lou Williams were both terrible keeping their man in front of them and that caused a ripple effect with the rest of the defense and was part of the reason why the Raptors defense collapsed in the 2nd half of the season. 

But in the end of the overall message is that the Raptors needed to extend Jonas. He's a big time talent with a bright future, he's only going to get better from here, and his extension is a no-brainer.

UPDATE:

Looks like numbers are coming out already of the Valanciunas extension. ESPN's Marc Stein is reporting that the deal will be for 4 years in excess of $60 million. Kind of surprising that he's only going to get $15 million per season with the expansion of the salary cap next summer. Initial reports were expecting that Jonas would get a salary close to what Enes Kanter got from the thunder this past summer which was around $17 million per season.

UPDATE 2:

The Raptors have made it official and announced the extension of Jonas Valanciunas. According to Yahoo Sports and ESPN the deal is 4 years $64 million that could reach $70 million with incentives, as well as a player option for the 4th year.

As mentioned above, signing Jonas was one of the top priorities for Masai Ujiri this off-season, as he's viewed as one of the Raptors centerpieces of the future.

It's no surprise that Jonas is viewed that way by Raptors staff and management. He's only 23 years old and has gotten better every season he's been in the league. Signing him at this rate now may be high, but like most deals with young players, they're paying him for what he's going to do in the future. Much like the deals the Raptors have made in the past with their young players such as Amir Johnson (5 years $35 million) and DeMar DeRozan (4 years $40 million), both deals ended up being huge bargains by the end of their respective deals. Also with the salary cap rising up to $90 million next off-season and more than 20 teams likely to have max cap room, Valanciunas could have very well commanded a max offer sheet. So signing him for an average of $15 million per season turned out to be a huge steal for Masai Ujiri and the Raptors.

NBA

Raptors

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Written by

Thomas Mooney

A Few Good Mics

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