The Kyle Lowry buyout signing is official:

He won’t play on Wednesday night and is expected to make his Sixers debut after the All Star break. It’s a $2.8 million deal for the rest of the season.

Lowry, of course, grew up in North Philadelphia and played at Villanova. He’s an NBA champion and six-time All Star and brings a wealth of experience to a team that hasn’t gotten out of the second round in, well, you know. He won his ring playing for Nick Nurse and knows the head coach better than anyone.

Thing is, Lowry turns 38 next month, and he’s a buyout signing. When’s the last time a buyout player really moved the needle? Boris Diaw in 2012? Is this the Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli combo deal of the Bryan Colangelo era? Lowry is a buyout player for a reason, so it’s fair to ask if this move does anything for anyone in Philadelphia.

Are you excited for Lowry?


This would have been a wonderful move a couple of seasons ago, even when Lowry was 34 and at the end of his Toronto contract. You’d have brought in a pro ball handler who can toss 7-8 assists per game and knock down threes at a 37% clip. You’d get some good perimeter defense and on-court organization and guidance.

But the Sixers aren’t getting that Lowry. They’re getting ancient Lowry, who is dangerously close to being washed and is the 5th-oldest player in the league. Only LeBron James, Chris Paul, Taj Gibson, and P.J. Tucker are older. And when the Lowry + Philly link first popped up, people saw this as a move to upgrade Pat Bev as the backup ball handler. That was before the Cam Payne trade, and Payne has played reasonably well in his first few games with a short-handed Sixers team. Lowry’s role might be a minor one, but again, this is a buyout, so it’s a low risk type of move and you’re never going to argue with adding someone with his resume to a team.

The thing that makes me laugh about the Lowry signing is that he’s a total flopper and Sixers social absolutely killed the guy over the past half decade. Ben Simmons punched Lowry in the nuts and they were going to fight in the hallway after that one game. There’s a treasure trove of old posts from Sixers accounts just absolutely killing Kyle Lowry for stuff like this:

Some people do the hypocrite routine with these players. When they’re on the opposing team, we become annoyed with the flopping and embellishing and bullshitting and criticize to no end. But when that player joins our team, it’s not flopping or faking, it magically becomes “veteran savvy.”

“Oh he’s so good at taking charges!”

“He makes smart plays!”

“He gets under people’s skin!” 

Hilarious.

Let’s just be honest with ourselves – Kyle Lowry is a total bullshitter. He always has been a bullshitter. But he’s a very good bullshitter, and he’s doing it for his hometown team now, so we’ll have to just recognize and accept it.

The upside of a move like this is that maybe Lowry gives you some veteran contribution off the bench and that his wealth of experience rubs off on some of the young players. Nothing wrong with that. The downside is, well, not much. He’s a buyout player who doesn’t damage the salary cap or screw up any sort of roster balance or chemistry. The signing itself is perfectly fine, it just would have been better five years ago.