“Raptors push back Bruno Fernando’s guarantee date”

The non-guaranteed minimum wage contract Bruno Fernando signed with the Raptors in August initially included language stating that it would be fully guaranteed if the big man was not 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 modify his one-year contract when he was added to the opening night roster. The contract is not guaranteed but will remain unguaranteed until the league-wide salary guarantee period expires in January.

If the terms of the contract had remained unchanged, Fernando would have secured a salary of $2,425,403 while Toronto would have to pay his full cap hit of $2,087,519.

Instead, the 26-year-old will earn $13,939 for each day he is on the roster, with his full salary and cap guaranteed if he remains under contract through at least Jan. 7.

The Raptors had some leverage as they could have waived Fernando if he hadn’t agreed to a contract modification so he wouldn’t have even a partial guarantee. Now, with this 15th roster spot, the team will have some flexibility in the first half.

This type of agreement is nothing new for Fernando, who began the offseason with Atlanta with a deal that stipulated that his salary for 2024-25 would be guaranteed if he did not waive it by June 29. He and the Hawks agreed to push back the date to July 10, then pushed it back to August 1. Atlanta waived him on July 30.

Fernando served as Jakob Pöltlwas the primary backup center in Toronto’s first game of the season on Wednesday, scoring six points and seven rebounds in 15 minutes of play.

As our list of early salary guarantee dates shows, Fernando was the only player with a contract that stipulated that his salary would be fully guaranteed if he were added to the regular season roster. However, Dalano Banton (Trailblazer), Keon Johnson (networks), And Jalen Wilson (Nets) had contracts in place that gave them partial guarantees that they would remain under contract until opening night.

We’ll wait another day or two before updating our tracker to see if any reports come in suggesting that one or more of these players have changed their contracts like Fernando did, but for now we’ll assume so that Banton, Johnson and Wilson have recorded their respective partial guarantees.