Bring him back.
The NBA’s free agency period doesn’t begin officially until Aug. 2 and there will be a lot of maneuvering, posturing and strategizing between now and then.
But the Toronto Raptors don’t have to get caught up in that.
Their best player – still – is a pending free agent and he’s opening to staying with the franchise where he’s blossomed into a Hall of Famer and earned icon status.
That’s all it should take for Raptors president Masai Ujiri – himself a free agent, granted – to make an offer that Kyle Lowry won’t refuse.
The Raptors point guard spoke at length on Tuesday to wrap up a season that he described as the “most difficult” of his career. He touched on things he values, things he’s learned, things he holds dear and things he still firmly believes — like that he’s got a plenty of premium gas in his 35-year-old tank.
“I’ll be honest you guys, I would tell you if I feel old,” said Lowry, who doesn’t turn 36 until next March, well into what would be his 16th season. “I feel great, I feel great, right? So I still amaze myself like I’m still a young spring chicken. Yeah, my age may not say that, but I still move and shake like young spring chicken, I still can do this thing at a high level.”
As usual, Lowry is correct.
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He’s not putting up the kind of monster seasons he did at his peak, granted, but that’s why they call it a peak. Just to review: from 2013-14 through 2017-18, Lowry is one of eight players in the league to accumulate at least 50 WinShares and average at least 100 made-threes per season. The list includes five MVPs along with Damian Lillard, Chris Paul and Lowry.
At his best Lowry was elite, but it was the following season where Lowry helped lead the Raptors to a championship. He followed up in 2019-20 by sparking a team that lost Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green to a franchise-record regular season for winning percentage, while joining LeBron James, James Harden and Luka Doncic as the only players in the league who averaged at least 19 points, five rebounds and 7.5 assists.
This past year? Lowry was the only player in the NBA to average at least 17 points, seven assists and five rebounds while shooting 39 per cent from deep. His 4.1 WinShares narrowly trailed Fred VanVleet (4.3) and Pascal Siakam (4.2) even though he played 10 less games than Siakam and 14 less than VanVleet as Toronto began sitting him out for tanking purposes.
And while Lowry spoke for 45 minutes, you didn’t need to sift through too much extraneous stuff to get to the heart of the matter.
He wants to win, he wants to get paid and he believes it can happen in Toronto, but he’s not going to play for below what he’s worth, and why should he?
Even though he’s earned an average of $22 million per season in his nine years with the Raptors, he’s constantly outperformed his contract. Chances are this will be his last significant deal, so why sell himself short now?
“I’m kinda BS-ing around your question because I don’t have an answer for you,” Lowry said when asked about where he saw his future.
“[But] my family will be a major factor in this,” he continued, noting that he’ll be seeking stability for his sons, Karter and Kameron, who are now nine and six, respectively. “And also, money talks and years talk, and all that stuff.
“Let’s be real. I play this game for the love of the game but at the end of the day, I want to make sure my family is still taken care of for generations and the time to come,” said Lowry, who has earned $190 million so far in his career. “Even though they are now, I wanna continue to be able to do that for my family, and when I pass away, my family is going to be able to give back to the communities that I support and give back to the things that I love.”
It’s not only money, though. A few minutes later he added: “I want more championships, that’s always been the goal. Yeah, the money comes with that and you’ll get paid, but championships are a big key into why I play this game.”
Taken together, those two comments should be music to the ears of Raptors fans and a big, fat, obvious, flashing neon signal to the Raptors; they can keep him if they want to.
If Lowry was determined to go ring hunting and let the league know he would play for the mid-level exception – contracts that start in the $10 million a year range and can be offered by teams already over the salary cap — the list of contending teams that would rush to sign him would include virtually all of them.
But presuming Lowry is looking for a deal at least somewhat in the vicinity of the $31-million he was making this past season, the list of teams that can make a serious offer gets a lot shorter.
He’s been linked to the Miami Heat since he was a free agent the last time, back in 2017, and the Heat were his preferred destination had the Raptors moved him at the trade deadline. But Miami didn’t exactly move heaven and earth to grab Lowry in March and the likely cap space they can generate for a deal this summer would start in the $20 million range.
Who’s to say they even want to use all that money on Lowry as they head into a season in which they’ll have extended Jimmy Butler, will have Bam Adebayo’s max extension kick in and likely had to throw some serious money at restricted free agent Duncan Robinson.
After that? The New York Knicks and Dallas Mavericks can each create enough room for a max-type salary. The Knicks could convince themselves that Lowry could do for their young team what Paul did for the Suns this year, but there’s no guarantee they would want to go that route. The Knicks chose not to bid on VanVleet – a younger version of Lowry – this past summer and might be planning to keep the powder dry for the summer of 2022, when the free-agent market is deeper with the kind of A-List names that might be up for the challenge of taking the Knicks over the top. The Mavericks have needs, but between Doncic and Jalen Brunson, ball-handling isn’t likely a high enough priority to use their cap space on, but we’re speculating.
The key here is the Raptors can shut all that noise down in a hurry by doing what the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement provides for: allowing incumbent teams to go over the cap to sign their own players and to pay them more to stay than other teams can entice them to leave.
The Raptors can also wait to sign Lowry and use the roughly $15-$20 million in cap space they should have to sign or trade another rotation player, ideally a quality veteran big man.
It could get expensive. Adding, say a two-year $50 million deal, to commitments the team already has to Siakam, VanVleet and OG Anunoby, plus rounding out the rest of the roster and Toronto would be a tax team for years to come.
Seeking assurances Raptors ownership has an appetite for that coming out of a revenue-damaging pandemic will be high on Ujiri’s list of speaking points when he meets with MLSE to discuss his new deal.
But does Lowry sound like a player who’s in a hurry to leave? He wasn’t even in a rush to finish his press conference.
He says one of the reasons he didn’t ask to be traded to a contender at the deadline was because he didn’t want to bail on a team that he felt could still be competitive in the East before COVID-19 struck and saw them go 1-13 in March.
Righting the ship he’s captained for the past nine years holds some appeal.
“It does play a factor in it because I enjoy the challenge of people counting me out, counting the team out,” he said. “I enjoy that competitive nature, and I wanna challenge myself and see what I can continue to build. But a lot of things will be factored into this summer and this free agency. The unfinished business thing is part of it, a little bit, but we’ll see what happens.”
And: “Of course Toronto’s always gonna be home to me. It’s a situation I would love to be in, and if it works out, it works out. If not, then we make choices [based]on what’s best for myself and my family.”
Lowry is an NBA insider now. No one is more plugged into the league and which organizations have things figured out and which are fumbling around in the dark.
He knows he’s got it good here. He knows Ujiri has been a big part of the club’s success dating back to 2013-14 and – presuming Ujiri is back – can be confident the franchise will continue to prosper.
“He is the best out there. He should be the No. 1-rated president/general manager/president of basketball operations. He is that. He will get his payday and it is well-deserved and well-earned. He has put together great teams,” Lowry. said. “He put together one of the franchise’s greatest runs there has been [and]… he has helped me become a better person, a better basketball player.”
Lowry has made the Raptors better, too. He’s proven himself as leader and a culture builder.
At this stage of his career, he deserves to test the market as he looks for one last payday.
But if the plan is to return to being one of the top teams in the East; to compete for titles, the Raptors don’t get better by letting Lowry leave.
With a bit of luck, Toronto could have a top-four draft pick this summer and maybe select the kind of talent an organization can build around for years to come.
Wouldn’t it be worth have Lowry on hand as a living, competing, winning example?
Lowry was asked what does Raptors culture mean towards the end of his session.
“I think the Raptors’ way is ‘continue to work.’ Always work,” he said. “And keep [your priorities]— get your player development in and take care of your body. One thing about our team is we keep things tight. We want to see everybody successful. And when you have a winning organization and winning franchise, you want to continue to keep that going. And that’s hard work. That’s dedication on, you know, your craft. That’s being able to be taught, being able to be coached.”
That’s leadership.
Lowry can still play and he has value, tangible and otherwise.
The Raptors would be foolish if they don’t do all they can to keep him.
