Raptors may have no choice but to pay $130 million for the same team LeBron James crushed

The Toronto Raptors have a problem.

Their season ended on Sunday in a Game 4 defeat at the hands of LeBron James, his sixth straight win against the Raptors in the postseason. James was 3-0 against Toronto in the regular season, too. (Cleveland lost once when James didn’t play.) At the trade deadline, the Raptors acquired P.J. Tucker and Serge Ibaka, players specifically designed to give them a better chance against the Cavaliers. The four-game sweep shows it clearly didn’t work, with James making it clear he has no respect for this team.

The problem is twofold, and not beating James is the first part. The second comes this summer, where the Raptors already have $76 million in salary guaranteed for next season. With Kyle Lowry and Ibaka both hitting free agency, do the Raptors bring back a team that’s proven to consistently fall short against the Eastern Conference’s best team?

That’s a question without a clear answer either way.

They would be a very good regular season team for a year. They might even be favorites to win the Eastern Conference given how Cleveland often sleepwalks through the regular season. The Raptors basically didn’t play together fully healthy after the trade deadline, with Lowry immediately undergoing surgery on a wrist injury he had suffered before the All-Star break. Give them a year together, and you have to like how good they can be for 82 games. Still, we just saw what happens when they play Cleveland in the playoffs, and it’s not pretty.

Bringing them back would also be extremely expensive. Lowry’s max salary would start at $35 million, while Ibaka would probably be in the $20 million range, at least. Add those two contracts and you’re over the cap just like that, without the flexibility (or the ownership approval) to add anything else to improve this team.

You’d be paying $130 million before luxury tax for a team that hasn’t shown any evidence that it could beat Cleveland.

Toronto has a few young players that potentially give them internal means of improvements, but they also have $48 million invested in Jonas Valanciunas over the next three years, which presumably limits Lucas Nogueira or Jakob Poeltl taking the starting job even if they develop. Those players alone improving probably won’t make this a team that can beat James.

Then where do you go? As free agents, both are obviously well within their rights to leave Toronto if they want. Could somewhere like San Antonio entice Lowry? Could Ibaka, traded twice in the past 12 months, finally be interested in exerting his own free will on the market?

Toronto is a good team that can entice free agents, but it probably wouldn’t recoup the losses of those two players. If the Raptors wanted to make a play for, say, Chris Paul, they would probably be considered. But could you convince him that the path to the Finals is any easier with James looming as large as he does?

Does Toronto feel comfortable committing more than $50 million per year to Lowry and DeMar DeRozan through 2021? It’s probably the option that makes the most sense.

The Raptors may not be able to beat the Cavaliers at full strength, but you never know what could happen. Teams splinter or get injured unexpectedly, and the 2011 Mavericks are the best-case scenario for a team sticking around long enough until everything fell perfectly for them.

There may be an opportunity to shed money by trading Valanciunas, clearing the way for one of the younger options if Toronto feels like they can take over in his place. It was hard to play Valanciunas at times this postseason, after all, with the Raptors moving him to the bench in separate instances during both playoff series.

The Raptors were just crushed by the Cavaliers, and they’re probably going to have to spend more than $50 million per year to bring back the team in its current iteration. It feels like they’re just treading water ... but it might be the only real option they have.