Door still open for Lowry return
Point guard has told Raptors president ‘he wants to come back’
Willing to take a man at his word after looking him in the eye to get a sense of what he feels, Raptors president Masai Ujiri feels convinced Kyle Lowry wants to remain in Toronto.
All that has to be done now is to figure out the money, the years, the direction of the franchise, and the other players on the roster. And, because of all of that, getting Lowry back in a Toronto uniform still may or may not happen.
Admitting — not surprisingly in the least — that there have been moments of mutual frustration between the team and its all-star point guard since the season ended, a series of chats between the president and the player have included mutual interest in a return.
“He’s been a part of our organization and he says he wants to come back,” Ujiri said.
“Listen . . . we all have ups and downs. There are times when he has been down and there are times when we are down. It happens to every team, every player. People go through it.
“I know what he has been telling me and I can only believe what he tells me, not the famous sources.”
But there is still much to do before that can possibly become reality.
How much to pay the 31-year-old Lowry, how many years to pay him for and the vagaries of the NBA market will all come into play. The Raptors could — but are unlikely to — give Lowry a full five-year deal and all he can get as a free agent is a four-year deal; Toronto can offer him larger annual salary increases than any other team, but Ujiri still has to deal with budgetary concerns, primarily with a first-year salary.
That Lowry wants to come back is one thing; if he eventually does can hardly be deemed a certainty so Ujiri is preparing for any eventuality.
“There’s probably like five different scenarios we’ve looked at and (we are) studying them very hard to see where they take us,” Ujiri said.
It’s not in dispute that the season that ended in May ended in disappointment. Lowry sat out the last two games of a four-game sweep administered by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the second round of the playoffs, and Ujiri called for a “culture reset” and a change in the team’s style of play a couple of days after the unceremonious departure from the post-season. There was the requisite hand-wringing about the future of Lowry and head coach Dwane Casey and the direction a team that has had its best three-season run in franchise history would take.
There have been internal meetings galore — Ujiri with Lowry, Casey with Ujiri, full staff sessions to discuss the “culture” and a Los Angeles dinner that included Casey, Lowry and his all-star backcourt mate DeMar DeRozan — since then as Ujiri plots the longer term future.
And against the backdrop of the free agency period that begins July 1, Ujiri is deep in preparing for Thursday’s NBA draft. Toronto has, today, just one pick — 23rd overall in the first round — and, as expected Ujiri is leaving all options open.
He’ll listen to trade talk, he’s not adverse to taking a European player and leaving him stashed for a year or two overseas, he doesn’t think another young player on the Raptors roster would necessarily be a bad thing.
He, like every general manager in the NBA, knows that whatever he thinks on the Tuesday before the draft may be altered dramatically before it comes time to make the selection.
“I know that when there’s a deadline like draft day we all put it in high gear,” he said. “I feel that things will happen around the league … and I don’t know what will come up with us. I can’t tell you because I don’t know what offers will be made, what will present itself to us.”