June 22, 2015
We can file this bit of news under the category of “not surprising,” but it is still news. According to ESPN’s Chad Ford, Dario Saric’s agent Jeff Schwartz (not the Giants lineman, apparently) said his client wouldn’t play in the NBA in 2015-16:
Saric is under a three-year contract with Turkish powerhouse Anadolu Efes. The Sixers reportedly have attempted to negotiate a buyout over the past month, but Saric's buyout is too expensive to make the move practical, according to sources.
Of course, such a decision was to be expected. Just a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post called, “The top ten reasons Dario Saric won’t be in Philadelphia next year.” It’s not like I was the only one to express that sentiment, either.
As Ford wrote, working out a buyout with Efes simply wasn’t practical. This is mostly because the Turkish club has the right of refusal and Saric would’ve likely been forced to pay some of the money out of his own pocket. The CBA is not the Sixers’ friend in this case.
The choice to stay over in Europe next season may only be the first shoe to drop in Saric’s situation. As we’ve noted before, delaying his NBA debut until 2017-18 is potentially where things are heading. If Saric waits three years after he was drafted in 2014, he is no longer bound by the rookie scale and can earn a lot more money right away when he jumps to the NBA. The Chicago Bulls’ Nikola Mirotic benefitted from the stipulation just this year, and he didn’t have the benefit of the cap making a major jump, which Saric presumably will.
Unless he’s dying to play in the NBA as soon as possible and finds his situation in Turkey untenable, it makes quite a bit of financial sense for Saric to not work out a buyout after the 2015-16 season and play the full length of his three-year contract with Efes. In this case, the player has most of the leverage.
We’ll see how all of this goes. The Sixers obviously wanted Saric, but in this case, they couldn’t get him. The good news is that he had a pretty solid year in Europe, so it’s unlikely his trade value went down. That may come into play, because the longer Saric stays over in Europe, you would think the greater chance he gets dealt before ever playing for the Sixers.
Any trade speculation is only a hunch and not anything reported, but just as it was with Saric’s contract situation, the math adds up.
Follow Rich on Twitter: @rich_hofmann
