NBA Rumors: Heat and 76ers will still be chasing Kyle Lowry this summer

They didn’t get him at the trade deadline, but the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat are set to renew pursuit of Kyle Lowry this summer.

As the Toronto Raptors started to go downhill, Kyle Lowry was pursued by contending teams at the trade deadline. A deal did not get done for the looming unrestricted free agent, as the Lakers, 76ers and Heat pursued him.

The Raptors won’t be re-signing the 35-year old Lowry, most likely, and he will have multiple suitors on the open market. To that end, Sam Amick of The Athletic has reported the 76ers plan to pursue a sign-and-trade for Lowry this offseason. The Heat are also expected to enter the mix to sign him.

Amick passed along comments from one GM regarding Lowry’s free agent market.

“There’s teams with money and not a lot of players, so I think he’s going to do really well,” the GM said of Lowry.

Could the 76ers really get Kyle Lowry?

The 76ers project to be over the salary cap for next year, headlined by the contracts of Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons and Tobias Harris. They won’t want to include any of those three in a deal for Lowry, but due to surface-level position redundancy Simmons would be the likeliest one to go. Getting him far cheaper than his current $30 million salary is possible, but the idea Lowry would take a serious pay cut has already been dismissed.

The Heat, on the other hand, only have seven players under contract for next year and they are top-10 in projected cap space for next year right now (according to Spotrac). Another possible suitor who’s gaining some steam, the New York Knicks, will also have money to spend as they re-emerge as a place players want to play.

Lowry is a Philadelphia native and he played collegiately at Villanova, which has always made it easy to tie him to eventually playing for the 76ers. Never say never when it comes to lead executive Daryl Morey finding a way to get a deal done, but adding Lowry to Philadelphia’s current three-man core is incredibly unlikely given what the open market will yield for him.