Toronto Raptors’ All-Star point guard Kyle Lowry is non-committal on his availability for Game 4 of their Eastern Conference semis series with the Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday. Lowry already missed Friday’s game after suffering a sprained left ankle in Game 2 of the best-of-seven match-up.
Kyle Lowry’s future
The general feeling for Lowry heading into the free agency season is that he will re-sign a mega-deal contract that pays him between $27M to $30M per year. However, with the Raptors looking more like a pretender than legit title contender against the defending champs, the veteran playmaker might consider exploring other destinations where he can get a nice payday and win a championship.
In an interview with the Vertical, Lowry talked about the monumental challenge of beating the Cleveland Cavaliers because of the presence of the man hailed as the best basketball player in the world – LeBron James.
“They’ve got LeBron James. Nobody’s Closing The Gap on him. I mean, that’s it right there: They’ve got LeBron James and nobody’s closing the gap on him,” said Lowry, who was averaging 20 points and 7 assists before the injury.
Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri has expressed his desire to keep Lowry in the fold, though it’s uncertain if he’s willing to throw in a five-year contract for a point guard who just turned 31-years-old last March.
More salary problems
Aside from Lowry, the Raptors are in danger of losing the services of Patrick Patterson, P.J Tucker and Serge Ibaka. These three players are projected to get a nice spike in their salary for next season, and the Raptors’ projected cap space of $21M might not be enough to keep all of them.
Doug Smith of the Toronto Star even guaranteed that there’s no way Ujiri can re-sign all four free-agents – including Lowry – unless the Raptors can make a move on the trade market to alleviate their cap space. Some writers think the Raptors will try to shop small forward DeMarre Carroll, who has not lived up to his billing as a 3-and-D guy in two seasons with Toronto.
Carroll, who signed a 4-year, $60 million deal with the Raps in 2015, was signed specifically to at least contain James in case they met the Cavaliers in the playoffs. Unfortunately for Carroll, James totally torched him in the 9 playoff games between the Raptors and the Cavaliers.
In this year’s series in particular, James is averaging 36.3 points on 60 percent FG shooting and 53 percent from beyond the three-point line. On the other hand, Carroll is averaging 1.0 points and 2.0 rebounds in 12.7 minutes per game in the conference semifinals.
