30 teams in 30 days: Toronto Raptors offseason preview

The Toronto Raptors face key decisions once again this offseason, as four immensely important free agents will hit the open market this summer, led by Kyle Lowry. Lowry has a player option for $12 million for next year that he’ll turn down in favor of a contract starting at almost three times that amount, either in Toronto or with another team.

The Raptors will have to navigate Lowry’s free agency at the same time as Serge Ibaka, Patrick Patterson, and P.J. Tucker will be meeting with teams and discussing their value. Lowry is expected to get a max contract, but the annual values of the other three incumbent Raptors is up for negotiation between general manager Masai Ujiri and the respective agents of these players.

Here’s where the Raptors stand going into the draft and free agency, assuming that Lowry opts out and non-guaranteed contracts for Norman Powell and Fred VanVleet are retained:

Just $41.4 million separates Toronto from the $121 million luxury tax threshold, though the Raptors may be more willing than some other teams to take on a tax bill to keep their team together. While the mid-season additions of Ibaka and Tucker didn’t net them a positive result against the Cleveland Cavaliers in their second-round series, consistent contention for the Eastern Conference Finals is a perfectly adequate goal for ownership to have for the team every season for the next few, with the added value of being just one or two breaks from contending for a berth in the NBA Finals.

The decision starts with Lowry, who has been on one of the most team-friendly contracts in the league the past few years and will be commanding a full max, starting at $35.4 million for next season. Without taking anything else into consideration, this is a huge decision for the future of the franchise: do they want a 31-year-old point guard signed up to a five-year, $205 million contract? There’s no correct answer; ownership has to put a value on their current level of success and weigh that against potentially hamstringing themselves down the line.

Ibaka isn’t going to command a full max, which means there’s wiggle room in negotiating his next contract. He’ll still be quite expensive for Toronto to keep, especially if Lowry is already signed up and ownership has greenlit Ujiri to go into the tax to keep the team as competitive as possible. In that instance, Ibaka might push the Raptors for an extra $3-5 million in annual value, knowing that they would have no other choice than to sign him or be unable to replace him. Tucker and Patterson can play the same game, to a slightly lesser extent, if they’re concerned with getting every dollar of value they can from Toronto.

Assuming the Raptors run it back for another year, they’re going to run into a roster crunch: they currently have 11 guys under contract and adding their four free agents plus their first-round pick takes them over the 15-man limit. While VanVleet showed some things last season, they may be forced to cut him to get back in compliance with the NBA’s roster rules. A trade involving Jonas Valanciunas or DeMarre Carroll would knock out two birds with one stone, saving them a ton of money in luxury tax penalties and opening up that precious roster spot. Valanciunas is going to have a very minimal market; the Raptors might even have to attach a future pick to get rid of him. Carroll is halfway through the four-year, $60 million contract he signed in 2015 but hasn’t been nearly the player he was in Atlanta the year before he signed for Toronto, fighting through a confluence of injuries that seemed to have zapped his explosiveness and lateral quickness.

An interesting name to watch in the trade market for the Raptors: DeMar DeRozan. Ujiri’s comments at his exit interviews with the media were not particularly complimentary of the player he signed to a five-year, $139 million contract just last summer. Trading DeRozan and Valanciunas could net the Raptors more than $26 million in cap space, enough to go out and grab a low-tier max guy to go along with Lowry and Ibaka.

Next: 30 teams in 30 days: Utah Jazz offseason preview

The Raptors are unlikely to bring back all four of their incumbent free agents, and if they lose Lowry or Ibaka, ownership and Ujiri do have to start thinking about where their team is and what their long-term plan is. While it’s admirable to keep at it with the same group year in and year out in the hopes that something will break their way, the long-term health of the franchise has to take priority. A full-blown teardown would be ugly, like it is for any team that doesn’t get an assist from Billy King, but the idea has to be in Ujiri’s head with the way the team has performed in the playoffs in recent seasons.