When LeBron James finally ceases his reign as NBA king, he’ll be rightly remembered for winning championships, for elevating teammates, for humbling defenders.
But he ought to be given credit, too, for a less-talked-about gift — for paralyzing opposing franchises.
With the spiralling Raptors sending signals they will most likely stand pat between now and the Feb. 23 trade deadline, you can make the case that the current roster-building ethos in Toronto is wholly LeBron-inspired. The Raptors aren’t loading up to contend. They aren’t tanking to rebuild. Theirs is an alternative strategy: They’re waiting for King James to retire.
The thinking seems to go like so: If you can’t beat him, don’t beat your head against the wall. We the North. He the best. Stay the course.
In a lot of ways, it’s a completely reasonable outlook. Beating James, who has been at the centre of six straight NBA finals, is among the most difficult riddles in NBA history. The whole league has been trying to unravel it for most of a decade. And if the Raptors don’t make a significant move between now and the deadline, which arrives at 3 p.m. a week from Thursday, they’ll be acknowledging they’re as flummoxed by James’ dominance as almost everyone else.
Yes, it’s true the Raptors came within a couple of wins of beating the Cavs last spring. But proponents of standing pat will tell you the six-game dalliance with Cleveland in the Eastern Conference final made the Raptors look better than they actually are. In the Cavaliers’ four wins, they trounced the Raptors by an average of 29 points a game. In Toronto’s two victories, you can make the case the Cavs arrived under the belief they could flip a switch, and the Raptors, to their credit, took advantage of a superior team’s slacking to prolong the charade.
So maybe it’s absurd to think the Raptors were going to pose a serious threat to James and a healthy Cavaliers team this coming spring, even with the addition of possible trade-deadline targets like Atlanta’s Paul Millsap or Orlando’s Serge Ibaka. You’d hardly get laughed out of the room for looking at the available evidence and arriving at that conclusion.
But the conclusion, let’s be clear, has consequences. What does it say to Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan? It says the “big dogs” in management, as Lowry referred to team president Masai Ujiri et al on Monday, have assessed the situation and decided that a team built around Lowry and DeRozan is not particularly worthy of further investment. It says management believes the Lowry-DeRozan era peaked last spring. The current swoon, in which the Raptors have lost 10 of 14, only shores up the argument. Tuesday’s game in Chicago, against a Bulls team the Raptors haven’t beaten in more than three years, isn’t likely to bring forth a resounding counter.
“Something gotta give. Something gotta change,” Lowry said after Sunday’s loss to the Pistons. “I have an idea but I’m (going to) keep my mouth shut, keep it professional.”
Lowry wouldn’t speak to the root of his quarrel when asked to elaborate on Monday. And in the wake of another close loss, there were those who theorized he wasn’t thrilled with a coaching staff whose late-game play-calling sometimes raises eyebrows.
“I take that as frustration,” head coach Dwane Casey said Monday, reacting to Lowry’s Sunday comments. “Kyle and I, we have a husband-wife relationship that’s good and bad. We go at each other. But again, we know we’re in the foxhole together. And I didn’t take that in any way as a slight or a negative. “
Coaching isn’t the issue here, folks. It’d be disingenuous for Lowry to complain about the guy calling the plays when Lowry is consistently handed the ball with the game on the line. As much as Casey has been criticized for overplaying Lowry, the bench options are limited, and Lowry can’t be upset that the high-volume workload has helped him post career-best numbers in a contract year.
No, Lowry’s issues have to go well beyond coaching. He can’t be thrilled that the Raptors, after last spring’s franchise-best post-season run, replaced Luis Scola and Bismack Biyombo — along with their combined 14 seasons of NBA experience — with a couple of rookies, Pascal Siakam and Jakob Poeltl, who are promising but green.
Lowry can’t be thrilled that, as a result, the Raptors play every night with a gaping hole at power forward — one Ujiri hoped might be filled by off-season acquisition Jared Sullinger, whose problems with injury and conditioning have rendered him a non-factor. Lowry can’t be thrilled, either, that Jonas Valanciunas has flat-lined as an offensive contributor and remains a slow reactor on the defensive end. Lowry can’t be thrilled that, as a result, the team lacks veteran savvy in the frontcourt.
Add all that up and you come to this: Lowry can’t be thrilled that the Raptors seem reluctant to make the personnel additions that would maximize his competitive prime. For all the sweat equity he’s poured into the franchise, the franchise is essentially saying it’s not good enough. Not good enough to beat LeBron, that is. No sense wasting talent and draft picks and prospects in a deal that won’t change that fact.
Maybe, given Ujiri’s hard-won goodwill in the city, that’s a wholly saleable argument to most fans and ownership — to everyone but the players giving everything to be competitive now. It’s saleable to everyone except those who believe Lowry and DeRozan are owed the franchise’s every effort to unconditionally strive for excellence, to be ready if Cleveland stumbles or if James tweaks his occasionally wonky back. Waiting for LeBron to retire might seem reasonable enough to some. It also might mean waiting an awfully long time. James is only 32. And for all the miles on his odometer, he seems ever more adept at scientifically staving off the grind’s effects.
Lowry is going to have options this coming summer, when he’s an unrestricted free agent at age 31. If the franchise’s trade-deadline decision turns out to be inaction, who’d be surprised if the requisite change of which Lowry spoke Monday ends up being to his address?
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