The non-guaranteed minimum-salary contract that Bruno Fernando signed with the Raptors in August initially included language stating that it would become fully guaranteed if the big man wasn’t waived on or before the first day of the regular season.
However, according to Blake Murphy of Sportsnet.ca (Twitter links), the Raptors and Fernando agreed to amend his one-year deal when he made the opening-night roster. Rather than becoming guaranteed, the contract will remain non-guaranteed until the league-wide salary guarantee deadline in January.
If the terms of the deal had remained unchanged, Fernando would have locked in a $2,425,403 salary, while Toronto would have been on the hook for his full $2,087,519 cap hit.
Instead, the 26-year-old will earn $13,939 for every day he’s on the roster, with his full salary and cap hit becoming guaranteed if he remains under contract through at least January 7.
The Raptors had some leverage, since they could have waived Fernando if he hadn’t agreed to amend his contract, leaving him without even a partial guarantee. Now the team will have some flexibility in the first half with that 15th roster spot.
This sort of agreement is nothing new for Fernando, who began the offseason with Atlanta on a deal that called for his 2024/25 salary to become guaranteed if he wasn’t waived by June 29. He and the Hawks reached an agreement to move that date back to July 10, then pushed it back again to August 1. Atlanta waived him on July 30.
Fernando served as Jakob Poeltl‘s primary backup center in the first game of Toronto’s season on Wednesday, recording six points and seven rebounds in 15 minutes of action.
As our list of early salary guarantee dates shows, Fernando was the only player on a contract that called for his salary to become fully guaranteed if he made a regular season roster. However, Dalano Banton (Trail Blazers), Keon Johnson (Nets), and Jalen Wilson (Nets) had deals assuring them of partial guarantees for remaining under contract through opening night.
We’ll give it another day or two before updating our tracker to see if any reports trickle in indicating that one or more of those players amended their contracts like Fernando did, but for now our assumption is that Banton, Johnson, and Wilson locked in their respective partial guarantees.
It stinks Silver