TORONTO – Of all the spinning lobs that Kyle Lowry struck when volleying back and forth about his past, present and future with the Toronto Raptors, the one he hit purest was this:
“Honestly, I wouldn’t BS you guys,” the all-star point guard said during what will very likely be his last public comments while still under contract with the team that has become his NBA home.
“I would [BS you], but not this time. Not this time.”
Which is very likely accurate on all counts.
Lowry is fully capable of “BSing” when the moment requires, but with the stakes this high and the ground shifting so fast, it’s not hard to accept that he doesn’t have any better handle on how the most pivotal summer of his career will shake out than he’s letting on.
Lowry was asked multiple ways about his plans for his pending free agency, and other than confirm what was obvious all along – that he would be opting out of the last year and $12 millon of his contract in pursuit of a deal that could conceivably pay him $36 million a year — he bobbed and weaved every time.
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“That’s a good question,” he said. “Haven’t thought about it though. I’ve said that three times already … that’ll be my fourth time. I’m gonna say it one more time: Only thing I’ve thought about is opting out. Which I will do. And getting better as a basketball player. Those two things. Wanna try again?”
He later added another critical criterion to his list of must-haves for the near future:
“A ring. Nothing else,” he said. “I just want a ring.”
It is on that last point that the Raptors and Lowry have the most in common. Four years of being in the playoffs and working their way up the ranks to quasi-contenders has only whetted Raptors president Masai Ujiri’s appetite for the ultimate prize and four years of unprecedented success under Ujiri’s watch has almost certainly given Ujiri a green light with ownership to proceed as he sees fit.
Go deep into the luxury tax to bring back Lowry and some collection of the other Raptors free agents?
Ujiri could likely make that fly if he wanted.
Tear it all up and get to the tank job that Ujiri was planning to commence before the Raptors – driven by Lowry – began to unexpectedly start winning midway through the 2013-14 season?
Ujiri could sell that plan too.
So in many ways Lowry’s decisions mirror those the organization will be making as a whole. Whether he returns or not, their fates are tied at the hip; they want the same thing and they’re trying to get it without the benefit of the kind of generational players that NBA titles seem to follow around.
“We don’t have LeBron,” said Lowry. “But I also said you have to do whatever it takes to beat the best. So whatever that takes. …
“That’s what I want to do, beat the best, whoever it is: the Warriors, the Cavs, whoever wins the championship this year, I want to do whatever it takes to beat them as a basketball player, to beat them.”
This coming summer will be a good test of exactly how important those goals are and what his timeline is to reach them. Since money, timing and winning don’t always line up perfectly as the parts keep moving, the variables changing, Lowry acknowledged the obvious:
“It’s stressful. Free agency is fun but it’s stressful at the same time,” he said. “It’s something I have been through before – this will be my third time – so it’s fun but it’s a little stressful too because you are making a decision on your family, a franchise, a new franchise, an old franchise, it’s always something that you are changing and it is a stressful decision.
“What adds to the stress is that you are a making a franchise-altering decision, period. New one, old one, you are making a decision for your family, you are altering your family. You have to do this or that. This is a real-life decision … everything that is kind of life changing becomes stressful because, you know, this is life changing.”
It doesn’t have to be that stressful, though. If Lowry decides Toronto offers him the best chance to reach all his goals and if the Raptors agree they can reach their goals with him, the negotiations this summer should be pretty straightforward.
They were with his running-mate DeMar DeRozan last summer, who ultimately took a slightly less-than-max deal to stay with the Raptors.
Lowry points out that he’s been traded twice in his career, so his version of loyalty is a little different than his friend’s but the idea of growing his roots deeper has an appeal too.
But in almost any scenario the Raptors are closer to being contenders with Lowry than without. And where can Lowry go where he can legitimately argue he’s got a chance to compete for a ring in near future?
The NBA is in the midst of a point guard Golden Age, the idea that Lowry can get the kind of money he wants – a max deal with a team other than the Raptors tops out to about $150 million over four years – on a team capable of winning now by merely snapping his fingers is far-fetched.
The Golden State Warriors are fine at point guard as are the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Houston Rockets and … well go down the list. And the further he fishes from top-tier teams, his age (31) and mileage become sticking points.
Sift through it and Lowry’s best chance to win and get paid probably come down to gambling that — with his hometown Philadelphia 76ers — Joel Embiid can stay healthy enough to play 75 games a year plus playoffs, or coming back to Toronto. But the latter choice would be at money and term well below the full five-year, $200-million max deal that he may have been dreaming on when he was tearing up the league in December but slipped further and further out of reach as struggled once again to be the difference-maker in the post-season.
Forget about what happened against Cleveland before he was injured; that Lowry came out in Game 1 against Milwaukee and put up a four-point stinker can only hurt his negotiating position as sound-of-mind NBA executives don’t pay $50 million per point.
Which doesn’t mean Lowry and the Raptors are bound to drift apart as the summer approaches.
As the disappointment of falling short against Cleveland fades it’s quite likely that the realization of what comes next will settle in and it could very much take on the kind of hard pragmatism required when you’re not operating with the luxury of an all-time great as a safety net.
In that scenario your best bet is to keep trying, keep knocking on the door, be good enough to give yourself as many chances as you can and hope that one year things line up your way.
Lowry’s best chance to win and get paid will likely involve committing the last, best, three years of his career to the Raptors and working alongside DeRozan, and trusting that Ujiri can shore up the missing pieces around them, an easier task than letting Lowry walk and trying to find another star to bolster DeRozan, or sending DeRozan on his way and starting from scratch.
“We’re close. But saying that, when you’re close, you still feel so far,” said DeRozan. “It’s kinda like being in traffic. You gotta go two blocks but if there’s traffic, it can take you an hour to get somewhere that’s two minutes away. I say that to say this: We’re close. It’s a matter of doing the one right thing the right way that makes everything else click.”
What that is remains an open question. Is it a change in coaching? Improving the role players around DeRozan and Lowry? Waiting for one of their young teammates to break through and become impact players?
Any one of those things, or more than likely a couple of them, will be needed if Lowry is going to reach his goals in Toronto or anywhere else.
There’s no BS in that.
