NBA Rumors: Trail Blazers Must Put Nicolas Batum on Back Burner

The Portland Trail Blazers have a ton of rebuilding to do, and they cannot let themselves be forced into re-signing Nicolas Batum and eat up their cap space. 

The Blazers hold the Bird rights to the three-year pro Batum. This means he is a restricted free agent, and the Blazers can match any offer he receives in the open market. However, if Batum accepts an offer, they have to match within three days of the offer, or they'll lose him. 

Chris Haynes, of CSNNW.com, had previously reported that he heard from a few league sources that Batum would get between $10-11 million on the open market. 

In a different article, Haynes reported that the Blazers were hoping to have $15-20 million in cap space to sign free agents. 

Now, if the Blazers spend that cap money before re-signing Batum, they could go over the cap to re-sign him. If they sign him before using that cap space, his salary will take away an equal amount of space.

So, the ideal situation for the Blazers would be to use their cap space and then lockup Batum, but he is reportedly not interested in helping the Blazers find their ideal situation.

Haynes passed along this quote from Batum's agent, Bouna Ndiaye, in the second of his above linked articles. 

"The first good offer we get, we're going with that. We're not waiting for anything."

You can't blame Batum and his agent for this strategy. Batum has no obligation to pass up on a deal he likes to help the Blazers. And the Blazers can't allow this to force them into using their cap space on Batum. 

This is a Blazer team that completely fell apart from the inside out last season. They are in need of a mass culture change. 

Batum is coming off of a nice season, where he averaged 13.9 points and 4.6 rebounds per game, but he certainly is not irreplaceable.

The Blazers must look outside their team first to make improvements for next season. If they have identified specific free agents they want to make a run at, they have to go after those guys first without worrying about losing Batum.