Former NBA player John Salley doesn’t shy away from speaking his mind, and he made some intriguing comments during an appearance on The Rich Eisen Show. When discussing his decision to join the Chicago Bulls in 1996, Salley used quite an analogy to describe the nature of his exit from the Toronto Raptors.
“When I got out of my deal in Toronto, and this may be a controversial the way I say it, I was the only free slave in the NBA,” Salley said. “And what I mean by that is, I bought my rights back. So I had my waivers, and I could choose where I wanted to go.”
Salley paid the Raptors out of his own pocket so that he could control his future. It helped matters that Isiah Thomas, his former Detroit Pistons teammate, was part-owner and executive vice president of the team.
Salley once shared his conversations with Thomas at that time during an interview with Vlad TV.
“I literally paid to get out so I can own my rights,” Salley stated. “And then I begged Isiah. I said, ‘Come on, man. This is not happening, this is not me.’ And he was like, ‘Sal, you got a lot of money left on the contract. We got to pay you this if you leave.’ I was like, ‘I won’t hold you to that.’ It was like $750,000, but I get on [the] Chicago Bulls.”
The Raptors had selected Salley with the 25th pick in the 1995 NBA expansion draft. With the team unsurprisingly struggling in their first season (finished 21-61), he wanted out, and he managed to get out in February 1996.
Salley averaged 6.0 points, 3.9 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 0.4 steals, and 0.5 blocks per game in his brief stint with the Raptors. He was delighted to get out of town and was over the moon when Bulls GM Jerry Krause called him. The team signed him to two 10-day contracts before eventually giving him a standard deal.
Salley enjoyed his time with the Bulls, and that 1995-96 team famously went 72-10 in the regular season. They went 14-3 when he played, and funnily enough, one of the losses came at the hands of the Raptors.
While that would have been a bit disappointing, the Bulls did go on to win the championship. It was Salley’s third, after he had won back-to-back titles with the Pistons in 1989 and 1990. He would win another title with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2000, and walked away from the game as a four-time NBA champion.
