Even if he leaves Toronto, Chris Bosh says that he plans to stay in contact with Bryan Colangelo throughout the free agency process.

“No matter what happens, me and Bryan agreed to work together,” Bosh said. “I think that’s important. I respect him as a GM and he respects me as a player. No matter what you do, you always want to do good business in this league. We’re always going to talk.”

Colangelo had similar things to say.

“There are certain things we’ll be pursuing in the coming months that might address things on our team with or without Chris. We remain Chris Bosh’s best option to maximize his contract potential” (referring to sign-and-trade)

“We have agreed that regardless of whether or not he stays, we’ll be working together and talking. We’ll be assessing what options we have but it’s not often that a young athlete walks away from a significant amount of money and that’s the difference between him working for us and…doing a sign-and-trade.

This has been the fallback option for Raptor fans who liked the idea of the team keeping Bosh through last February’s trade deadline. It does make some sense for him because Toronto can sign him to an extra year which means more long-term security and bigger raises over the life of the contract. Conversely, if he agrees to a sign-and-trade, it needs to be with a team that has assets that would be deemed expendable given his arrival (i.e. Miami trading Michael Beasley because they play the same position, or the Knicks executing a sign-and-trade with David Lee, whom they wouldn’t re-sign if Bosh were headed to New York). Otherwise, why would Bosh agree to fleece his new team of most of its good, young assets when he can sign with the team outright?

If Bosh does execute a sign-and-trade with a team like Miami that has the cap space to sign him free and clear, one would have to question Bosh’s sincerity when he says he just wants to win. If that were the case and he were headed to Miami anyway, he should sign a five-year deal (instead of a six-year deal) and allow the franchise to keep the rights to Beasley which then could potentially be flipped for another good player. (The Lee scenario is different because he would be a free agent anyway and wouldn’t be back if the team were to sign Bosh outright, so they’re not really losing anything asset-wise.)

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