Can Toronto Raptors afford to keep Fred VanVleet?
Fred VanVleet is having a breakout season with the Toronto Raptors. Unfortunately, he’s set to be a free agent this summer.
How come members of the Toronto Raptors only go off during contract years?
Last year, Kawhi Leonard earned Finals MVP honors and delivered the first NBA championship to Toronto before departing for the LA Clippers in free agency. Fred VanVleet may be following a similar trajectory this year, albeit on a slightly lesser scale.
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VanVleet has always operated from the shadows, a member of the Raptors’ vaunted bench unit for a number of years. This year, he’s stepped into the starting lineup, a status he doesn’t look ready to cede anytime soon.
The guard is averaging 36.6 minutes per game and making the most of it. VanVleet is scoring 18.0 points per game on 39.5 percent shooting from 3-point range. The former is a career-high for the 25-year old, as are his 7.0 assists, 3.8 rebounds and 2.0 steals per game.
Logically, VanVleet’s name is scattered all over various season leaderboards in 2019-20. He’s 11th in assists per game and third in steals per game. According to Basketball-Reference, he ranks in the top 20 total win shares.
Naturally, his usage is much higher than ever before with an assured spot in the starting lineup. His usage rate is at 21.3 percent, which is also a career-high. There’s a chance that the increased workload will lead to burnout towards the end of the season and postseason, but with no comparable season to speak to in VanVleet’s career, it’s difficult to say.
It’s also difficult to say whether or not the Raptors will be able to retain their blossoming star when the season comes to a close.
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VanVleet is not terribly young in terms of his basketball life. The Illinois native will turn 26 years old during the 2019-20 regular season. This is only his fourth NBA season, but he’s the rare NBA player to utilize all four of his years of collegiate eligibility (at Wichita State).
It’s also hard to find a recent comparable for VanVleet. There are certainly plenty of players who take awhile to come into their own — teammate Kyle Lowry is a perfect example. The point guard didn’t make his first All-Star team until 2015 — in the midst of his ninth season — when he was 28 years old.
But that comparison is even further muddied by Lowry being on his third team by then, while VanVleet is still with his first.
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FiveThirtyEight’s player projections — which came out before the season — listed the likes of Yogi Ferrell and Chris Quinn as VanVleet’s best comparables. Another name the projection throws out, however, was Malcolm Brogdon. Brogdon recently hit free agency for the first time, defecting from the Milwaukee Bucks to the Indiana Pacers.
He signed a four-year, $85 million deal with the Pacers following a sign-and-trade.
A yearly salary of approximately $21 million would be the third-highest salary on Toronto next year, trailing Lowry (in his last year) and Pascal Siakam.
In other words, keeping VanVleet is a possibility, albeit at the expense of any other big free agent signings. The Lowry extension doesn’t help in this regard, though.
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Fred VanVleet is finally coming into his own as a good, even great NBA player. Hopefully he can continue his development under the tutelage of Nick Nurse and the Raptors.