Raptors, Trent Jr. stuck in a no-win situation

The Toronto Raptors and Gary Trent Jr. aren’t exactly in the most enviable of positions right now.

With NBA free agency officially opening later this week — but unofficially opening on June 30, when teams were able to negotiate with players — there hasn’t been much action with Canada’s lone NBA team. And there’s been one staple of the franchise in Trent Jr. that has yet to come to terms on a new deal, in Toronto or elsewhere.

Toronto has never been much of a free agent destination anyway, and hardly much of a place a star player would look to join should they be competing for NBA championships these days. Their only move so far has been signing veteran forward Garrett Temple to a league-minimum deal in more of a glorified assistant coach role.

Trent isn’t the only big decision looming for the team after picking up Bruce Brown’s contract option last week, who is still likely expected to be traded prior to the start of the season.

Playing 28.1 minutes a night, he averaged 13.7 points, 2.6 rebounds, and 1.7 assists in 71 games this past season. It’s a dip from his first three years in Toronto, where he averaged 17.7 points, 2.8 rebounds, and 1.8 assists in 153 games, playing no less than 31.8 minutes a night each season.

There doesn’t seem to be much of an immediate market for Trent Jr. outside of Toronto, but it’s hard to tell if the team is interested in bringing him back either. At 25, he should be right in the prime of his NBA career, but it seems like nobody’s rushing to get him locked down on a new deal. It’d be a tough look for the Raptors to lose another player to free agency after seeing Fred VanVleet walk in 2023, while also trading away OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam this past season.

“You want to be strategic about what’s tradable, what’s not tradable,” Raptors general manager Bobby Webster said of Trent Jr.’s future following the NBA Draft. “We have some big contracts coming up in the future, so it’ll just have to be something that makes sense for everyone.”

For Trent Jr., it’d be disappointing if he couldn’t land a big deal in the NBA, with the Raptors or elsewhere. A year ago, Trent Jr. found himself in a similar position before deciding to pick up the $18.6 million player option for the final year of his contract, which was originally a three-year deal.

A report surfaced last summer from Bleacher Report’s Chris B. Haynes that Trent Jr. was working on a “lucrative” contract extension that would’ve kicked in for the 2024-25 season, though that never came to fruition.

Only time will tell if Trent Jr.’s days in Toronto are over or if another contract is just around the corner.

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