The Magic have exercised their fourth-year team option on center Mohamed Bamba‘s rookie scale contract, the team announced today in a press release.
Bamba’s $5.97MM salary for the coming season had already been fully guaranteed. Today’s move will ensure that his $7.57MM salary for the 2021/22 campaign is guaranteed as well. He’s now on track to become eligible for a rookie scale extension during the 2021 offseason — if he doesn’t sign a new deal then, he’d head to restricted free agency in ’22.
Bamba, 22, missed time in each of his two NBA seasons due to health issues. Most recently, he was sidelined for the summer restart after contracting COVID-19.
Although he says he’s no longer dealing with any coronavirus symptoms or after-effects, he’s still working on getting his conditioning back to 100%. He was cleared today to participate in full-contact work, tweets Josh Robbins of The Orlando Sentinel.
In his 109 NBA regular season games so far, Bamba has averaged 5.7 PPG, 4.9 RPG, and 1.4 BPG in 15.1 minutes per contest.
Our tracker for 2021/22 rookie scale option decisions can be found right here.
I thought he had more game when he was drafted than he has shown. Granted, he has a hoss in front of him in O-town.