The Portland Trail Blazers weren’t bluffing about Nicolas Batum after all.

The Blazers matched Minnesota’s four-year offer sheet worth more than $45 million for the restricted free agent, keeping the 23-year-old swingman in Portland just like GM Neil Olshey said they would all along.

Olshey made the announcement on Wednesday in Las Vegas, where the Blazers were participating in the NBA’s Summer League. He said that some of the incentives in Minnesota’s offer sheet, which would have pushed the deal past $50 million, were denied by the league.

“The decision was made a long time ago,” Olshey told reporters in Las Vegas. “We were never not going to have Nicolas back. We did investigate certain things with Minnesota as a due diligence deal. We wanted to make sure we explored every option to improve our basketball team, but there was never a situation where there was a commensurate package offered back that was attractive enough to let Nicolas go.”

via The Associated Press