The Sixers are rumored to be in place to put a bid on Toronto Raptors player Kyle Lowry- but both parties (Raptors and Sixers) have suspiciously kept it under wraps if this is true. Well, history has it that when Lowry was signed by the Raptors all the way back in 2019, he had a $30 million extension on his one-year contract. This led to rumors building that this contract was specifically designed to portray Lowry as a good target. In the previous season, this decision paid off- as the team was definitely in the upper levels of the NBA standings.
Kyle Lowry’s Trade Drama Involving Sixers
This season, though, things haven’t gone as well. The Raptors have completely trashed any chance of contention with a 16-17 record- which is probably good enough for the No.5 seed. In this crisis, the team might start looking into a buyer who would be willing to pay for the 35-year-old Lowry. Currently, they have two options in hand- either they could cash out Lowry while they are still ahead, or they could lose him for nothing when his contract ends. The wise decision would be to trade the icon now- when his value is still pretty high.
Now, this is where the Sixers come in. The cashing in on Lowry is too big a deal for trade rumors to not come up. Nonetheless, Mark Bartelstein did deny any and all claims about a potential trade deal signed between the Raptors and the Sixers in exchange for Lowry.
Lowry’s manager refuted the claims stating that there was no such deal in place between the Raptors and the Sixers regarding his client. He further stated that this was merely clickbait- designed to get the average viewer to check-in. After the rumors began, he had personally called Masai Ujiri, the President of the Toronto Raptors- informing him that they definitely didn’t contact the Sixers to purchase Kyle Lowry.
Despite this confident statement from his agent, we simply can’t distrust the words of Keith Pompey, who has been quite an important reporter. And the article written by Pompey illustrates one key point that Bartelstein exaggerated- Pompey had simply written that Lowry would fit in well with the Sixers. Bartelstein talked about how there were rumors about Lowry already being traded off to the Sixers.
Now, whether this was a Freudian slip, or a genuine mistake, only the Toronto Raptors, and the Sixers would know.
