Darius the Free Agent?

[tetsuo916]

We keep talking as if Darius Songaila is definitely returning, but he has a player option for next year at 1.76m (unless im mistaken).

So if Darius doesn't exercise his option and opt out what options do we have? Can we re-sign him for more money without using our Mid-Level Exception?

Does anyone know how the cap will affect the situation (disregarding possible changes to the CBA)?

Thanks...

 

[hrdboild]

If he doesn't pick up his player option, he's a free agent. You have to be with a team for three years to get Bird rights (which would mean we could sign him for whatever we want regardless of the cap). But Early Bird rights only require you to play for a team for 2 seasons. So we could re-sign him for the average third year player salary or 175% of his current salary and that would not affect our MLE. If he gets a better deal than that elsewhere, we would have to cut into our MLE to sign him. That's how I understand it.