Matt Barnes To Toronto? Not So Fast!

NBA News, News — By Tyler on July 20, 2010 at 8:05 am

If you were one of the Celtics fans hoping that Barnes would choose the Celtics, you have a ray of hope.

Last night Barnes announced on Twitter that he would be playing next season in Toronto. ESPN reported that the 30year old, 6’7 small forward had accepted a two year contract from the Raptors for around $10 million. This morning, it’s a different story. From ESPN’s Mark Stein:

Since Toronto recently spent the bulk of its $5.8 million mid-level exception to sign Linas Kleiza, it doesn’t have the available funds to sign Barnes outright to a deal that starts in the neighborhood of $4 million.

The Magic, though, are prevented by salary-cap rules from starting a sign-and-trade deal for Barnes at higher than $2 million, because Orlando doesn’t have Barnes’ full Bird rights after employing him for only one season. A sign-and-trade deal would also have to span at least three years, although only the first year is required to be guaranteed.

It looks like either Barnes will have to agree to new terms or start looking for another team again. For Toronto, this is a potential disaster since it could be the second off-season deal to fall through this month. Just last week it look like the Raptors had a deal with the Bobcats for Tyson Chandler and Boris Diaw only to see Chandler dealt to Dallas the next day after the Bobcats pulled out of the deal.

I don’t know about you, but I’m finding the Matt Barnes’ version of The Decision far more entertaining that the King James version.