Kyle Lowry ‘excited’ to join Heat and close friend Jimmy Butler. Also, where roster stands
Kyle Lowry is officially a member of the Miami Heat.
The veteran point guard signed his new contract to join the Heat on Friday, after the NBA’s moratorium period ended and signings were allowed to begin. The fully guaranteed deal is worth $85 million over the next three years, according to a league source.
“I’m excited. I’m really excited,” Lowry said to reporters via Zoom shortly after signing his new contract. “I’m not like a crazy fiery yelling type of guy, except on the court. But I’m really excited for the opportunity. I’m not going to talk about it too much. I just want to get out there and be able to do my job at a high level and try to take this organization back a level where it once was.”
Miami acquired Lowry, 35, in a sign-and-trade deal with the Toronto Raptors in exchange for Goran Dragic and Precious Achiuwa. The Heat needed to acquire Lowry via sign-and-trade because it did not have the necessary cap space to sign him outright as an over-the-cap team.
Despite his age, Lowry (6-0, 196 pounds) is still considered one of the league’s top point guards. Lowry, who was voted into the All-Star Game in six of the past seven seasons, will be expected to elevate the Heat’s offense with his efficient three-point shooting and will take some of the on-ball pressure off Jimmy Butler as a facilitator while also serving as a tough on-ball defender on the other side of the court.
Lowry averaged 17.2 points while shooting 43.6 percent from the field, 39.6 percent on threes and 87.5 percent from the foul line, 5.4 rebounds, 7.3 assists and one steal in 34.8 minutes with the Raptors last season. He has spent the past nine seasons in Toronto and is considered one of the greatest players in Raptors history.
Lowry was named to the All-NBA Third Team for the 2015-16 season and was a key part of the Kawhi Leonard-led Raptors team that won the NBA championship in 2019.
“Kyle Lowry is a great leader and an exceptional defender,” Heat president Pat Riley said in a statement. “As a point guard, he will bring important skills to run the offense, score the ball and defend with the very best.”
But durability is one legitimate concern surrounding Lowry. He’ll turn 36 in March, and he missed 26 games last season, 14 games in 2019-20 and 17 games in 2018-19. But Lowry has also managed to avoid serious injuries, as he has played in 60 or more games in seven of the past nine seasons.
The Heat always seemed to be Lowry’s preference entering free agency. Playing for Miami appealed to him and Lowry revealed Friday that his close friendship with Butler was a big factor in his free agent decision.
“Me and Jimmy, we’ve been talking about this for a long time now,” Lowry said. “He kind of was continuing to chirp about it and talk to me about it. But as a true friend, it doesn’t matter what decision I made, he was going to support me. But he was really on me about coming to the Heat and kind of fulfilling some things that we talked about before and trying to possibly play together.”
Butler and Lowry played together as Team USA teammates on the squad that won gold in Brazil in the 2016 Olympics. Lowry expects their on-court chemistry with the Heat to be “fiery.”
How close are Lowry and Butler? Butler picked Lowry as the godfather of his daughter Rylee, who was born in October 2019.
“I’m looking forward to the opportunity to actually get back on the same team besides the Olympic team,” Lowry said. “We’ll now be every single day going to work and battling against other teams in the NBA and trying to get to that highest level.”
The Heat also pursued Lowry at last season’s March trade deadline, but didn’t get him in part because of its reluctance to include Tyler Herro in offers. A few months later, Herro and Lowry are on Miami’s roster.
The Heat’s roster for next season is nearly complete with 13 players on standard NBA contracts (these are salary estimates): Butler ($36 million for next season), Bam Adebayo ($28.1 million), Lowry ($26.9 million), Duncan Robinson ($15.5 million), P.J. Tucker ($7.3 million), Herro ($4 million), KZ Okpala ($1.8 million), Markieff Morris (minimum counts as $1.7 million toward salary cap), Dewayne Dedmon (minimum counts as $1.7 million toward salary cap), Victor Oladipo (minimum counts as $1.7 million toward salary cap), Max Strus ($1.7 million), Gabe Vincent ($1.7 million) and Omer Yurtseven ($1.5 million).
The Heat added Lowry, Tucker and Morris and retained Robinson, Dedmon, Oladipo, Strus, Vincent and Yurtseven in free agency.
“On paper it looks great,” Lowry said of the Heat’s new-look roster. “But you have to put the work in on the floor. I don’t ever try to say, ‘Oh, we can do this and we can do that.’ At the end of the day, you still gotta go out there and lace them up and go out there and do your job. Play defense, score, put the ball in the hole. It looks good, but you have to find a way to put it together. If you don’t find a way to put it together, it don’t mean jack.”
The Heat’s front office only needs to fill one more roster spot to get to 14 players, which is one shy of the NBA regular-season maximum of 15 players but still acceptable under NBA roster rules. Miami has gone with 14 players in previous seasons when up against the luxury tax or hard cap.
The 13 players already committed to Miami for next season combine to total $129.6 million, and that number grows to $134.8 million when including Ryan Anderson’s $5.2 million waive-and-stretch cap hit.
The 2021-22 NBA salary cap is set at $112.4 million and the luxury-tax threshold is at about $136.6 million. But because the Heat is acquiring Lowry through a sign-and-trade transaction, Miami faces a $143 million hard cap.
This leaves the Heat with about $8.2 million to fill out the roster before reaching the hard-cap threshold unless other trades are completed to create additional room. Completing the roster could be as simple as re-signing forward Udonis Haslem to a veteran minimum contract that would count only $1.7 million toward the salary cap, luxury tax and hard cap.
But the hard cap isn’t the only thing to monitor. Miami also can’t ignore the luxury tax threshold after finishing the 2019-20 season as a tax team and the threat of a punitive repeater tax (when a team is over the tax at least three times over a four-year period) looming.
The Heat stands roughly $1.8 million away from the tax line and can narrowly avoid entering the tax by completing the roster with Haslem’s $1.7 million cap hit. Miami also can sign two players to two-way contracts, which don’t count against the salary cap.
“Basically I’ve just been told it’s hard working and it’s all about winning,” Lowry said when asked about what he knows about Heat culture. “It’s all about going out there and trying to be successful no matter what. It’s kind of one of the things were you just try to figure it out as you go. I haven’t been told too much, but I’m just looking forward to being here and the opportunity to try to compete for a championship.”
