Dario Saric is expected to sign with the 76ers on Friday, and coach Brett Brown expects him to play both small forward and power forward.
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“We are very excited to add a proven veteran and skilled combination guard like Jerryd Bayless to the Sixers’ family”, 76ers president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo said in a statement. He has to pay the balance.
Convincing Saric to pay roughly $460,000 out of pocket to join a team that won 10 games last season is a coup in and of itself. The team was unable to deal either Jahlil Okafor or Nerlens Noel around Draft time, which means that those two will stay entrenched in their starting spots, while the addition of point forward Ben Simmons, the returning Joel Embiid, and now Saric will create a bit of depth for a team that isn’t exactly used to having such a luxury. A league source said he believes Saric would receive about $6 million a season if he waited until next year.
But Saric told reporters upon his arrival Thursday that he couldn’t care less about pitching in for his buyout and losing money.
The CBA dictates that a team can only sign a player under the terms of the rookie scale within three years after he’s drafted, meaning Saric will be bound to his scale amount for the next four seasons. There was also a large media contingent there.
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The 30-year-old Rodriguez, a native of Tenerife, Spain, has spent the last six seasons playing for Real Madrid in the Spanish Liga ACB. Staying one more year in Europe would have meant less money (was playing for $1.2 million a season in Turkey) in 2016-2017, but he could have compensated for it once he came to the National Basketball Association. He was drafted 12th overall by the Orlando Magic in 2014, but was immediately traded to the Sixers for Elfrid Payton. “I’m happy with that promise”.
