Just under two weeks from the beginning of free agency, the NBA is going haywire with news and rumors. Things have been mostly quiet with the Toronto Raptors, but the incomparable Bruce Arthur may have changed that in his column in The Toronto Star on Monday evening.
In writing about the Raptors’ position in an Eastern Conference-in-flux, Arthur provides some pretty striking – and yet-to-be-reported – details on the free agency of one Kyle Lowry. Lowry will become an unrestricted free agent on July 1 after declining to exercise his player option, and Arthur’s reporting from early in the offseason paints a pretty worrisome picture for those hoping the Raptors retain their point guard.
From Arthur:
Kyle Lowry is a free agent, and multiple league sources say the all-star point guard has been grumbling about dissatisfaction with the Raptors for months. As of mid-May other teams were being told Lowry had “zero interest” in returning to Toronto, even if the Raptors offered a maximum five-year deal. Which since the club had no intention of offering a five-year deal probably made Lowry’s declaration easier to make.
There’s a ton to unpack here.
- “grumbling about dissatisfaction with the Raptors for months” – This isn’t all that surprising. Lowry doesn’t exactly hide his emotions well, or even attempt to, and it was plainly obvious that he was upset with how the season ended. You can even trace it back further than that, to before the trade deadline, when Lowry made not-so-veiled comments about the need for better adjustments, or in his contentious justification of playing through his injury at the All-Star break. Lowry is generally cantankerous, and his heart-on-his-sleeve approach can’t always be taken at face value in the immediate term. This isn’t the end of the world.
- “teams were being told Lowry had “zero interest” in returning to Toronto” – Okay, this is a much bigger deal. Again, Lowry is Lowry, so these proclamations have to be taken with a grain of salt, and mid-May would have been the peak of Lowry’s dissatisfaction. That’s before Dwane Casey and DeMar DeRozan went to Oakland to meet with him, before there was any chance of a cooling-down period after the end of the playoff run, and so on. The NBA landscape has changed, too, with Philadelphia and the Clippers in particular seeming like less likely destinations than they maybe were a few weeks ago. There’s also some chance there’s a modicum of posturing here as Lowry, short on leverage destinations, works to maximize his earnings. Still, hearing this is pretty striking, and it’s not the greatest of signs.
- “as of mid-May” – Again, this is the most important part of what Arthur is reporting, and a piece of context that seems to be getting lost on Twitter.
- “the club had no intention of offering a five-year deal” – This is probably the most important of the notes Arthur provides. If the Raptors aren’t willing to offer a fifth year – a reasonable position given Lowry’s age, injury history, and potential salary – then negotiations become a lot more narrow. The Raptors can offer more over four years than any other team still, but the financial advantage shrinks significantly without a fifth year to dangle. It’s also the first we’ve heard from Toronto (non-Woj division) beyond the fairly standard “we’d like to have him back” stuff. It’s interesting, and may be indicative that the Raptors have a cap on just how all-in they’re willing to go in terms of trading future flexibility to maximize the current window.
If this all seems incredibly negative, there’s more context that settles things down a bit. Again, this is what Arthur was hearing about what Lowry was saying. Things have shifted some since as the league gets some semblance of its market, and Lowry himself told TSN 1050 last week that he loves “everything about this city,” putting it on par or above every other NBA city. That’s the city, not necessarily the franchise, and it’s a public proclamation versus a private one. Again, grains of salt and all. In wrapping up, Arthur also provides that the Raptors are “used to it by now” with respect to Lowry’s mercurial approach to things.
For additional context, here’s Adrian Wojnarowski on The Vertical Podcast last week (Woj is close with Lowry and almost always has Lowry news first, historically):
They’d like to bring back both of them. I think that it may be more of a – it’s going to be a negotiation – it’s not a question of do we want him, do we not want him, it’s gonna be what number are we bringing them back? It’s free agency, and guys can look around. I’ve had this conversation with Kyle a few times. He’s talked to me about what it would mean to, you know, he made his career in Toronto. Toronto’s the place where he became an All-Star, it’s the place where he established roots, and stopped being a journeyman in the league. He knows that if he signs another deal in Toronto and plays his career out here, he’s gonna be a guy who’s gonna have his number retired there and he’s going to have a post-basketball life in Canada, if that’s something that he wanted. He’s a popular player there. So there’s lots of reasons for Kyle to stay, but again, it gets back to, what’s the number?
There’s also this, from Lowry himself, in response to the tweetstorm that followed Arthur’s article:
I dont do this ever but :
Don't believe what you hear !! Especially if it didn't come from me, and that bs FOR SURE didn't come from me..GN— Kyle Lowry (@Klow7) June 20, 2017
What, exactly, to make of all of this is unclear, and if it feels like there’s more to the story that will likely come out, that’s almost surely the case. The truth is probably that neither side knows for sure yet exactly what will happen on July 1, with the league landscape threatening to shift dramatically before free agency even opens, and Lowry’s own market still unclear. If Chris Paul stays in L.A., Bryan Colangelo is earnest in saying the Sixers want to keep their cap space for 2018, and the Spurs aren’t interested, as reported, Lowry is pretty thin on alternative destinations that can offer a combination of money and competitiveness.
Houston is probably the single biggest threat now, a pretty perfect basketball fit and a team that can find its way to the necessary cap space without too much difficulty without sacrificing their attractiveness to Lowry. Whether there’s interest on either side is unclear, and again, things change so quickly that another team could wind up looking like a reasonable fit. The Raptors still probably remain the most likely single destination, but they might not be favored against the field as a whole.
Nothing is clear, because it’s not really supposed to be right now. Lowry loves the city but wants to win and wants to be paid handsomely. The Raptors want to keep Lowry and remain competitive but only at what they feel is a good price that doesn’t sacrifice too much down the line. This is what free agency is, and in this particular case things seem especially touchy because both sides have legitimate reasons to continue together or go separate ways, and because the current air of inevitability in the league (shaky though it may now seem in the East) colors things in a peculiar way.
So, I guess, make of it all what you will.
