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2025 Free Agents - Vlatko Cancar

Cancar has not shown much during his early years in the league, playing just over 350 total minutes of non-garbage time during his first three seasons, according to Cleaning the Glass. However, he played over 800 minutes of non-garbage time in '22-'23, although he was unable to get off the bench during the playoffs. He then tore his ACL playing in the World Cup and missed the entire '23-'24 season. He has shot well from two thanks to solid finishing at the rim, but has been slightly below-average from three at 35%. The sample size is still pretty small, and he has shot better in the G-League, so there's a chance he could be closer to the high-30s going forward. Defensively, Cancar has decent size for a forward but isn't the quickest when it comes to lateral movement, and isn't big enough to provide rim protection either. His block rate is poor and he doesn't rebound well on either side of the court. Overall it's hard to see how Cancar provides value. He isn't the most athletic player, and doesn't do much else other than shoot, so his inability to hit shots at a high rate is even more discouraging. If he gets healthy and is in the regular rotation for the Nuggets in '24-'25, he could be an interesting free agent in 2025.

Summary

Cancar will be an unrestricted free agent with a $2.3 million cap hold and Full Bird rights, meaning the Nuggets will have no restrictions on re-signing him. If a player has a smaller cap hold than his starting salary, his team can use cap space to sign-free agents before using Bird Rights to re-sign its own free agents. Since the Nuggets will most likely be operating over the cap, they won't be able to take advantage of Cancar's low cap hold, and he may not demand a salary above the minimum anyway. Other teams will have multiple ways to sign Cancar as even teams without cap space could use any of the Non-Taxpayer MLE, Room MLE, Taxpayer MLE, or Bi-Annual Exception to sign him. It's also likely that Cancar only gets minimum offers, and may not even get fully-guaranteed offers.

Cap Considerations

Justin Holiday (1 year minimum, 2023) Svi Mykhailiuk (4-3 year, $15 million, 2024) Amir Coffey (3 years, $11 million, 2022)

Player/Contract Comparison

Potential Teams: Nuggets, 76ers, Clippers, Bucks, Celtics

Predicted Contract: 1-year, $2.9 million ($2.3 million cap hit) with the Nuggets

Last updated: 8/11/2024

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