It seems winning the Sixth Man of the Year has its benefits.
As per reports, Lou Williams is expected to get strong interest for multiple clubs, meaning that despite the mutual interest Williams and the Raptors have shown, the Raptors may simply be priced out on an item that isn’t worth getting into a bidding war on.
Williams earned $5.4M last season and is set to receive a hefty raise. The talk is that Williams could command a three-year deal in the range of $27 million or four years for $35 million, which the Raptors could match, but really, why would they? Williams, as well as he performed last season, had the benefit of a high usage rate, carte blanche in terms of what he could do on offense, and absolutely zero supervision. It really was a dream contract year for a player that’ts ball-dominant, borderline selfish, and a great but inconsistent shot-maker.
Williams posted a usage rate of 27%, which was second only to DeMar DeRozan, and averaged 15.5 points on 40% shooting. In the playoffs, his percentage plummeted to 31% as defenses tried a little bit harder to contain a very simplistic style of play and player, and were quite successfully at it.
The problem with Williams is that he simply can’t play with DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, because it significantly reduces the size of your lineup, and concedes a tremendous amount of defense. Your sixth man has to be able to play with your starters, and Williams can’t do that because you already have the ball-dominant DeRozan, and Kyle Lowry on the court. He works great when Dwane Casey’s managing the game using hockey lineups with the bench willing to collect rebounds, but as evidenced in the playoffs, not so much in real world situations.
Good luck to Lou Williams, but if we start paying his caliber of player $8-9M a year, and he continues playing in the same manner he did last season, this franchise is in deep trouble.
