The Cavs Might Have Destroyed Toronto’s Window, So It’s Decision Time For The Raptors

The NBA can be a cold and unforgiving place sometimes. And one of the facts of life for quality teams is that they have to experience growing pains in the postseason. Every great team has to face their own version of a video game Boss, and just like in the digital realm, they usually have to lose multiple times before they make it over the hump.

Michael Jordan and the Bulls had the Detroit Pistons, LeBron James and the Cavs had the Celtics, ad infinitum. Of course, some teams never quite make it past that next step. The question is, how do you know when your window has closed? That’s what the Toronto Raptors are facing now after being ousted by the Cavs for the second year in a row, with a 109-102 loss in Game 4 on Sunday to complete the series sweep.

There are obviously a set of circumstances that make this question much easier to answer. One of the more crucial ones is whether your team was actually competitive. Unfortunately for the Raptors, it was a resounding no in this series. For one, the Cavs simply have more talent. But that’s relatively true for the other 95 percent of NBA teams.

What’s troubling is why the Raptors weren’t more competitive. Granted, they don’t have LeBron James on their team, but they boast a pair of All-Stars in Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, along with a versatile stretch-four in Serge Ibaka. They also have a strong supporting cast that includes Corey Joseph, P.J. Tucker, and Normal Powell.

But an NBA team is only as good as its best player(s), and in the Raptors’ case, the consistently inconsistent duo of Lowry and DeRozan when it comes to the postseason is plenty of reason for alarm. Lowry’s struggles in last year’s playoffs have been repeated ad nauseam, and his play this year prior to his ankle injury was eerily familiar. His scoring, assists, and overall efficiency all dip significantly in the postseason. That doesn’t bode well when he’s supposed to be not only your best player, but the engine that runs your entire team.

And although DeRozan had a breakout performance in Game 3, he was virtually a non-factor when you consider what the Raptors are paying him to give them what they hoped would be a consistent boost in the playoffs.

Given the way the Cavs have been toying with them, it’s hard not to see that the Raptors lost the psychological warfare early in the series and have never been able to recover. It’s one thing to operate at a deficit, talent-wise, but when you have questions about whether your two best players are mentally tough enough, you have a real problem on your hands.

These issues will loom large over the offseason for team president Masai Ujiri. Lowry can opt out of his current contract and become an unrestricted free agent this summer, and there’s little reason to think that he won’t.

He’s still a tremendous talent, but at 31 and with a history of injuries and wilting in big moments, it’ll be interesting to find out whether the market still sees him as a max-caliber player. It most likely will, and the Raptors, of course, can still offer him the most money. They’ll just have to decide if that’s the path they want to take. It’s not such an easy answer.

Teams in this position always face a conundrum. If they do decide to give up on Lowry, what other legitimate options do they have? Beyond Chris Paul – who the Clippers expect to re-sign this summer – Lowry is undoubtedly the best point guard on the market this offseason.

They face a similar scenario with Ibaka, who’s also set to enter free agency. Ibaka has added a nice dimension to the team, so they’ll have to decide whether they want to hedge their bets on him going forward, or whether they think they have a fighting chance of luring Paul Millsap, who is the only upgrade at that position available this summer and who was already linked to Toronto in trade rumors prior to the February deadline. Ibaka will almost certainly test the waters, so it’ll ultimately be up to him whether he believes he has a better shot at winning elsewhere.

The only other viable option for the Raptors is to blow it all up and start from scratch, and that doesn’t seem likely. That would mean letting both Lowry and Ibaka walk and trying to swap DeRozan for some combination of young talent and future assets. But that would also mean a long and painful rebuilding process for a franchise and a fanbase who both believe they’ve been right on the cusp the past few seasons during a stretch that has inarguably been the most successful era in team history.

It seems more likely that they’ll give it another go, even though that’ll no doubt entail eating a hefty luxury tax, given the massive contracts they’ll have to dole out to both Lowry and Ibaka, not to mention whatever they’ll have to spend on Tucker, who’ll hit free agency this summer as well.

The rationale behind it will be perfectly sound. They want to see how good they can be when Ibaka and Tucker have had a full season to gel, alongside a presumably healthy Lowry. As far as head coach Dwane Casey is concerned, he’s all in for it.

But Casey’s future with the franchise will likely be another question mark if the front office decides they want to move away from his style of play, which is increasingly anachronistic in the modern NBA. Or if they think that this group needs a different voice in the locker room to make the next leap.

Beyond that, the Raptors would like to try and surround their core group with more talent this summer, but that’ll be difficult given the financial reality.

Their best strategy here would be to try and unload Jonas Valanciunas, an old-world center with lead feet who proved he’s mostly useless against the Cavs, and DeMarre Carroll, who likewise played himself into a bench role when it mattered most. Both still have value around the league and could make attractive trade chips and/or potentially present an opportunity to free up some sorely-needed cap space.

But they won’t escape the lingering question of whether their two main stars have what it takes to win in this league, until they actually prove that they can do it. That most likely means another date with LeBron, the Final Boss they have no answers for.