Barça announced this Tuesday the termination of the contract of Cory Higgins, who still had one more year signed with the blaugrana. The Catalan club has made this decision to comply with the economic feasibility plan presented to LaLiga, which involves a substantial reduction in the entity’s salary mass, both for the first soccer team and for the rest of the sections.
The guard arrived at Barça in 2019 from CSKA Moscow and his participation in the team has been especially relevant until this last year, marked by injuries and specifically by his lower back problems. Higgins was unable to play the final four in Kaunas and was unable to help the team in the Endesa League playoffs that ended up crowning the Barcelona fans.
Higgins is leaving Barça after four seasons at Barça in which he has averaged 11.5 points in the Euroleague and 10.2 points in the Endesa League. His most remembered moment was the winning basket against Olimpia Milan in the 2020-21 season that allowed Barça to reach the Euroleague final, ending in defeat against Anadolu Efes.
The American follows the same path as Nikola Mirotic, whose contract, the highest in all of European basketball, was unilaterally terminated due to the impossibility of reaching an agreed exit. In this way, Barça releases two of the highest chips in last season’s squad along with that of former coach Sarunas Jasikevicius, who ended his contract.
Barça, which finished the previous year with a budget of almost 40 million euros, has proposed to reduce the wage bill by more than 20%, an objective that went through the departure of Mirotic and Higgins, among others. The departure of the American could finish balancing the accounts of a Barça that is still immersed in the planning of the next season.
Higgins joins the departures of Mirotic, Kyle Kuric, Mike Tobey, Sertac Sanli and Sergi Martinez. In the absence of a power forward to replace the loss of the Montenegrin, the new faces of Barça are Willy Hernangómez, Joel Parra and Darío Brizuela, also escort like the American.
