TORONTO — Before he left town for a well-deserved beach chair and a permanent wrap of ice on his elbow, Kyle Lowry was asked about his faith in Toronto Raptors’ management.
“Masai,” he said, “can do anything.”
There was a sense of wonder in the statement, which is something coming from a guy who is inscrutable at times and is also the one Raptor who would have Most Likely to Become a GM One Day signed next to his yearbook photo.
It’s also understandable. Sometimes it does seem like Masai Ujiri can do anything. He traded Rudy Gay to Sacramento for a package of players in 2013; since that time the Kings have won 84 games with zero playoff appearances and the Raptors have won 146 with three post-season showings. Ujiri flipped Greivis Vasquez to Milwaukee last offseason for a second-round pick that became Norman Powell, without whom the Raptors likely don’t survive the first-round playoff series against Indiana. And he successfully traded human punchline Andrea Bargniani to the Knicks three years ago for a first-round pick that came due this spring and ended up at No. 9 overall.
At this point, if Ujiri could summon storm clouds and throw thunderbolts with his fists, it would only seem of a piece with some of his earlier works.
But the Toronto GM will need all of his magic in this off-season if he is to accomplish what he said on Monday were his goals.
In a season-ending press conference that started off vague and ended rather less so, Ujiri said it his hope to bring back most of the team that made the Eastern conference final for the first time in franchise history. That would include pending free agents DeMar DeRozan and Bismack Biyombo, both of whom are going to require significantly more money than they were paid this season. Even allowing for the possibility of spending past the NBA’s luxury-tax threshold — Ujiri said ownership has always told him that route was available if needed — it seems impossible for the Raptors, a team already at the cap, to add something like $40-million in new salary just on players who were already here.
“That’s our job,” Ujiri said, “to figure it out.”
“We’re proud of those guys and we want to bring them back.”
One way for them to figure out it out would be to convince one or both of the free agents to take less than market value in hopes of staying with a winning group. Asked if he would be willing to give DeRozan the maximum allowed contract under the league’s CBA, which would start at $25-million annually, Ujiri said that was a conversation “for later.” It was enough to wonder if the GM’s move was going to be to push DeRozan to accept a Spurs-style discount. There were more comments about he believed in this roster, how “the ball is in my court to figure it out,” but then, after almost a half hour of such talk, Ujiri was much less equivocal: “Our number one goal is to bring DeMar back here,” he said.
And so, if Toronto is DeRozan’s first choice, as he said, and if signing him is Ujiri’s primary goal, that should be that. Unless someone was being very disingenuous in their comments.
Whether all of that is the best thing for the Raptors is a more complicated question. Ujiri was asked if he saw a path to championship with a team built around this core group. Here’s what he did not say: Yes. He said, instead, that he has a belief in these guys, and anyway, predictions are meaningless. That’s fair. No one saw this core three years ago as the makings of a conference finalist, either. Not even Ujiri, since he tried at the time to move Lowry before finding a rich vein with the Gay trade.
The path to an NBA Finals is usually built around generational players — Kobe, LeBron, Curry, Durant — although the Spurs and Celtics have at least shown in recent years that there are ways to do it without first acquiring a transcendent talent. Toronto’s route is certainly less clear. What would this core look like if they hadn’t managed to survive a Game 7 in the first round against Indiana? (Ujiri said, reasonably, that he didn’t have to answer that question because they didn’t lose to Indiana.)
But they did win two playoff rounds, and it’s hard to fault the GM for seeing that as something on which to build. Would he rather have Russ Westbrook and Kawhi Leonard in place of Lowry and DeRozan? Sure, but that option isn’t available.
Ujiri is working with what he has in front of him, which sometimes is the best you can do. The last time DeRozan signed a contract here, it looked like it might be a tremendous overpay. He turned into an All-Star. When Jonas Valanciunas signed his extension last year, he was a one-way player whose coach didn’t trust him in crunch time. That contract now looks like a massive steal.
It sounds like that kind of continuity is what Ujiri will bet on again. Bring back his guys, maybe upgrade a couple of roster spots, determine what to do with two first-round picks. And somehow manage it with almost no money to spare. It won’t possibly be easy.
Time, as Ujiri says, to figure it out.