Raptors Notes: Offseason Options, Rebuild

After suffering a humbling sweep at the hands of the reigning champion Cavaliers, the Raptors are in limbo heading into the offseason, Zach Lowe of ESPN writes. In front of them are several options ranging from full on teardown to attempted recovery.

One of the options Lowe lays out is letting Kyle Lowry sign elsewhere lest the Raptors get bogged down in a five-year, $200MM contract. If that happens, Lowe posits that there isn’t much point bringing Serge Ibaka back either.

Ultimately, he continues, it would only make sense to trade DeMar DeRozan as well and fully embrace a tank.

That said, the scribe notes that the franchise could choose to bite the bullet and sign Lowry to a lofty five-year deal and then let Ibaka walk with the intention of replacing him with cheaper, shorter term players.

At the end of the day, Lowe argues that retaining the current core in its entirety would put the club well over the luxury tax threshold, the only problem being that their on-court performance doesn’t necessarily warrant it.

Regardless of the path team president Masai Ujiri chooses to pursue, he’s built up enough goodwill and ownership trust to see it through.

There’s more from the Raptors:

• In the same piece, Lowe wonders if making a coaching change and letting Dwane Casey go could help “unstick” Toronto’s notoriously disappointing postseason offense.
• Amid talk of an uncertain summer, DeRozan said that tearing everything down would be difficult. “It’s hard to break down a team that won 50-plus games two years in a row,” he told the media, including Josh Lewenberg of TSN.
• The Raptors were headed toward a full on rebuild before a late-season surge following the trade that sent Rudy Gay to the Kings in 2014 boosted them into Eastern Conference contention, Scott Stinson writes for the National Post.