Raptors, Jared Sullinger agree to 1-year contract

Jared Sullinger is leaving Boston. The fifth-year big man signed a one-year, $6 million deal with the Toronto Raptors. Sullinger announced the news on his Twitter account:

Sullinger will join a Toronto front court that lost Bismack Biyombo and added rookie Jakob Poeltl this summer. Sullinger agreed to the deal with the Raptors after Boston made him an unrestricted free agent by pulling his qualifying offer last week.

Sullinger is coming off a bit of a down season in which his scoring and court time decreased, but the 24-year-old still offers an intriguing mix of potential and production. While his offensive game can be an inefficient mess, his underrated defense and ability to end possessions on the glass made him a valuable asset for the Celtics. He notched 25 double-doubles last winter despite playing fewer than 24 minutes per game. That established him as one of the league’s top rebounders thanks in part to a rebound rate that places him among the NBA’s top 15 big men.

However, he’ll have to overcome a horrible postseason in which his Celtics were bounced from the first round by the Hawks. Sullinger cratered against Atlanta, posting a woeful 5.7 PER and shooting just .310 from the field. While those lines aren’t endemic of his playoff performances -- he had a solid showing in the team’s sweep at Cleveland’s hands the year prior -- they still present a major hurdle for him to clear if he’s going to earn this new contract.

The 6’9 Sullinger is built like a power forward, but he most often found himself playing center for Boston’s small-ball lineups. At 260 pounds, he has the bulk to move opposing big men out of the paint, but that extra size has raised concerns about his conditioning. In 2015, those concerns grew so loud the Celtics coaching staff had to hold an intervention for the young forward to implore him to shed extra weight in the offseason.

While he still locked down the paint in the team’s most used lineup this past season, he also ceded minutes to a stuffed big man rotation that included players like Amir Johnson, Kelly Olynyk, Jonas Jerebko and Tyler Zeller.

Sullinger was considered a lottery talent after leaving Ohio State after only two seasons in 2012, but a back injury scared teams from investing a top pick on him. The Celtics snapped him up at No. 21, but shut him down 45 games into his rookie season when doctors ruled he needed lumbar disk surgery. He came back strong in 2013-14 with 22 double-doubles, but his following season was cut short by a foot injury. While the big forward played in 81 contests this past season, he’s missed at least a quarter of his team’s games in two of his four years in the NBA.

Brad Stevens worked hard to convert Sullinger into a floor-stretching big man, but his shooting makes that an unrealistic option. He’s never made more than 28.3 percent of his three-pointers in a season, and has been generally ineffective outside of the paint. Now, it’s up to Toronto to find a way to maximize his still-growing talent and prove there’s a place for throwback forwards like Sullinger in the league.