The Toronto Raptors have just a few days left to wait to see if the ideal free agent falls right into their lap. Will Nic Batum be available for the Raps to sign?
The deadline for NBA players to enter the buyout market and be playoff eligible is March 1st. If they are not waived by their current team by that date, they cannot sign with a new team and play in the playoffs.
The Raptors currently have their 15th roster spot open and no obvious candidate to fill it. Converting A.J. Lawson makes little sense given his lack of development and limited skillset, while Chucky Hepburn and Alijah Martin should stay on two-way deals.
Of the players already available to sign, Chris Boucher makes a lot of sense as a returning free agent, but that bridge may have been burned this past summer when Toronto elected not to bring him back. Other players, such as Georges Niang or Lonzo Ball, make some amount of sense for a flier.
The white whale, however, is not currently on the buyout market. There is no player currently out there who would be the perfect fit for what the Raptors need. What kind of player would that be? A deadeye shooter with real postseason experience and positional size.
Those kinds of players are obviously not easy to find, but there are a few who could hit the buyout market. Khris Middleton might be bought out from the retooling Dallas Mavericks, but he will likely have a robust market and duplicates a lot of what Brandon Ingram brings to the roster already.
The Raptors should sign Nic Batum
The ideal candidate is Nicolas Batum from the Los Angeles Clippers. On the one hand, the Clippers are 21-9 in their last 30 games and have fought their way into the Play-In Tournament. Yet they also traded a fringe All-Star in James Harden for an injured, 10-year-younger guard at the deadline, then followed that up by trading Ivica Zubac away for draft picks and a young guard in Bennedict Mathurin.
The Clippers are playing the long game, and that could mean a full pivot into the future. If Nic Batum would like to make a real run in the postseason before he retires, then a buyout would make a lot of sense for both sides.
Would Batum choose the Raptors? It's an unknown; the French wing may prefer to team up with a countryman like Victor Wembanyama on the San Antonio Spurs or Rudy Gobert in Minnesota. Yet Toronto is an international city with plenty of French influences, it's closer to France by plane, and -- perhaps most importantly -- it would likely offer him a real rotation role from the jump.
Batum is 37 years old, but he is still shooting 39 percent from deep and brings secondary playmaking and defense. He's not a surefire starter anymore, but he is absolutely the type of veteran role player whom good teams need when heading into the playoffs.
The Raptors should sign a veteran player to plug in and help shepherd them into the postseason. And the best option, should he come available, is Nic Batum.