The band effective mass is determined by the second derivative of the dispersion relation:
With the stated sign convention and , the band minimum is at . Expanding the cosine, or differentiating twice, gives
Comparison with a free Electron's kinetic energy therefore requires
The hopping integral has units of energy. A negative would move the minimum to the edge of the Brillouin zone and give the same positive bottom-of-band effective mass with in this expression.

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