Every Toronto Raptors game against the Miami Heat for the next couple of seasons is going to be an emotional affair, as seeing Kyle Lowry in those vibrant City Edition uniforms is always going to be an unusual sight. Seeing the GROAT with Miami across his chest just looks wrong.
Lowry appeared ready to move on from Toronto and join a contending team, which led to a sign-and-trade swap that gave the well-compensated Lowry a three-year contract. His Heat earned the top seed in the East last year, though Toronto was not that far behind him.
The Raptors will face off against Miami for the first of two straight road meetings on Friday night, giving them an opportunity to measure just how far they’ve come in their quest to match up evenly against one of the best teams in the East. Subtracting Lowry may have actually helped further that end.
The Lowry trade was brutal to swallow initially, but the Raptors have been able to rebound and create a contending team following his departure. Losing a Canadian icon is tough, but that trade happened at just the right time for this franchise.
3 reasons why the Kyle Lowry trade helped the Toronto Raptors
3. Financial flexibility
The Raptors knew that they could not move forward with their new era, centered around Scottie Barnes, and built a competitive team with Lowry’s contract dangling off the team’s books. Lowry can still be an effective player, but a three-year contract with $85 million fully guaranteed is quite rich.
The Raptors are still figuring out what to do with Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam from a financial point of view. They must do so with the expectation that Scottie Barnes will eventually get a huge payday. With Lowry playing as he has been on the contract he signed with Miami, Toronto would have been put in a box.
The Toronto Raptors couldn’t afford to pay Kyle Lowry.
If Lowry were in the fold, does Gary Trent Jr. get that contract in free agency? Even if the answer was yes, the Raptors might not even entertain the notion of giving him a nine-figure deal this offseason if they had all that Lowry cash on the books. At age 36, that’s quite a hefty commitment.
Lowry coming back on a short-term deal may have made the conversation a bit different, but his apparent motivation to leave coupled with the fact that he wanted $28 million per year upfront was too expensive, even for an ownership group that will pay to retain stars.
2. An enhanced role for Fred VanVleet
VanVleet sliding into the point guard role after Lowry left made so much sense. Not only was he capable of being the team’s leader from an emotional point of view, but because he has the scoring skill, hard-nosed defense, and superb passing to mimic what Lowry had done for nearly a decade.
VanVleet set new career-best marks across the board last season while establishing himself as one of the league’s most consistent 3-point shooters. Had it not been for nagging injuries eating away at his productivity, the All-Star point guard could have made a very robust challenge for an All-NBA spot.
Fred VanVleet has taken Kyle Lowry’s role with the Toronto Raptors.
While Masai Ujiri is a renowned roster builder and ensures his stars are taken care of, he has shown that he will not let nostalgia goggles blind him from improving the team at the moment. Ujiri saw that VanVleet was ready to become a true star, though it took jettisoning a legend to do it.
Lowry spent the last few seasons of his Raptors tenure molding VanVleet into an electric player that is capable of leading a team as the primary ball-handler. Given the circumstances, the student took over from the master at the perfect time.
1. Precious Achiuwa and Thad Young
The Raptors’ sign and trade with Miami brought Goran Dragic and Precious Achiuwa to Toronto. The former was flipped in a trade deadline deal that brought Thad Young to Canada, while the latter has quietly become one of the NBA’s most intense and interesting young forwards.
Young, who recently signed a multi-year contract with Toronto, played an incredibly valuable role on last year’s team, serving as the veteran glue guy who picked up a struggling bench. The real gem of this deal, however, was one of the best two-way young bigs in the league.
The Toronto Raptors struck gold with Thad Young and Precious Achiuwa.
Achiuwa, who scored 10 points and came alive in the second half of Toronto’s opening night win against the Cavaliers, has quickly established himself as the team’s Sixth Man and a future piece that Toronto wants to keep developing. Miami was barely giving him the time of day, but the Raptors have helped him blossom.
While the return sounded a bit sketchy at first glance, getting a young forward like Achiuwa and a veteran that was eventually turned into Young is quite a coup for Masai Ujiri. Unless Lowry gets back to the Hall of Fame form he exhibited so often in Toronto, the Heat may get the short end of that stick.