When tomorrow never comes
The Raptors keep their window to compete open with the returns of Lowry, Ibaka.
The Raptors have kept the window open.
By retaining the services of two key free agents — Kyle Lowry on a threeyear, $100-million contract (all figures in U.S. dollars) and Serge Ibaka on a three-year deal worth $65 million — team president Masai Ujiri made a clear commitment to the present while avoiding the pitfalls of trying to bottom out before rebuilding.
The deals — Lowry announced his return on a self-penned item on The Players’ Tribune website, while Ibaka simply posted “6” on his Twitter feed — end a hectic start to NBA free agency for Toronto and signal the Raptors want to remain immediately relevant.
Lowry, who will enter his sixth season with the Raptors, cited a sense of being at home in Toronto as the prime driving force behind the 31year-old’s decision to come back.
“It’s telling me that, if you’re looking for people to believe in — choose the people who believed in you first,” he wrote. “And if you start something? Man, you finish it.”
Of significance are the team-friendly terms of the two deals.
Lowry might have got a little more money than some expected, while Ibaka agreed to what many figured he’d get the day he was acquired in February, but getting each to agree to three years without even an option for a fourth was team president Masai Ujiri’s masterstroke.
With questions about the longterm dominance of the Cleveland Cavaliers in doubt past LeBron James’s final contract year this season, the Raptors now have their allstar backcourt of Lowry and DeMar DeRozan locked up along with Ibaka for the same amount of time.
And if things go south, it’s easier to deal players with a year or a yearand-a-half left on their contracts than players with two or more highpriced seasons to go.
Keeping intact a team that has posted back-to-back seasons of at least 50 wins gives Lowry a sense of optimism.
“We ended our season this past year with some disappointment,” he wrote. “And that’s a couple of years, now, where — as exciting as it’s been around here — I don’t think we’ve reached our true potential.”
Lowry’s announcement — it will become official sometime after the NBA lifts its signing moratorium on Thursday morning — capped a whirlwind, watershed day for the franchise. While Ibaka also decided to return, P.J. Tucker accepted a fouryear, $32-million contract with the Houston Rockets, leaving a void in Toronto’s defence.
But Ujiri’s job is not done and several vital financial moves are likely coming. The NBA’s luxury tax payments are not calculated until the final day of the regular season so the president has until next April to lighten the financial load. But the reality is he’d like to do it sooner.
If he can shed salary this week he can time the official signings of Lowry and Ibaka to keep the full midlevel exception of about $8.4 million available to find a replacement for Tucker or other roster improvements. If he can’t, the Raptors will be limited to spending a smaller exception and still have the void left by Tucker’s departure to fill.
League sources have said Ujiri has been trying to divest the roster of the substantial salaries of Jonas Valanciunas (about $50 million for the next three years, the last a player option) and DeMarre Carroll (two years and about $30 million left) since before the NBA draft last month.
He has found no takers — he will almost certainly have to entice takers with either draft picks or cheap, good young players — and had discussions this weekend about trading backup point guard Cory Joseph to Indiana in a salary dump.
Moving Joseph, a solid veteran guard on a relatively minuscule contract might be easiest with Delon Wright ready to challenge for backup minutes to Lowry. The Raptors may need Carroll if they can’t find a suitable replacement for Tucker.
Valanciunas is another story. He’s hardly a bad player and, in this day and age, his contract is not terribly onerous. But Ibaka is seen as most effective as a centre — it’s where he prefers to play — and having both he and Valanciunas on the same roster might be untenable.