Kyle Lowry is making a joke, but not really joking, in the way that few others than Kyle Lowry can make a joke, but not really joke.

Lowry’s effort is coming as an effort to dispute a premise, one of the delightful curmudgeon’s favourite pastimes. Said premise: When the Raptors traded Rudy Gay to Sacramento in a seven-player deal on Dec. 9, 2013, the franchise changed forever. In fact, it might have been the most crucial move in terms of setting up the future in franchise history, and that includes the draft-day trade in which the Raptors acquired Vince Carter.

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“I think the trade that changed it all was the deal that brought me here,” Lowry says. “That’s what I truly believe.”

Assuming Lowry is being at least as honest as he is being enjoyably disagreeable, you can see Lowry’s point. He is, arguably, the most productive player in franchise history, the most important player on the roster as the Raptors ran off five consecutive playoff appearances. He will end up as the franchise leader in a number of categories.

Lowry’s argument dies when you dissect his first year and change with the Raptors. The 2012-13 team started 4-19, endured a fracture between coach and management, went through a lineup change when an injured Lowry lost his starting job to Jose Calderon and eventually made a roster-altering trade, acquiring Gay from Memphis. Still, that team did not make the playoffs, which spelled the end of Bryan Colangelo’s time in Toronto and brought Masai Ujiri to town. Amid talk that Ujiri would dismantle the roster when the time was right, the Raptors started the next year 6-12. Obviously, Lowry was not changing things by the power of his play and personality alone. He concedes as much.

“We all knew something was going to happen,” Lowry said earlier in the week. “We didn’t know what, when, how. We knew we were 6-12 and something was going to happen. We all prepared for it mentally and were ready to deal with whatever happened.”

On Dec. 8 the news broke: Gay, Aaron Gray and Quincy Acy were being sent to the Kings for Patrick Patterson, Greivis Vasquez, John Salmons and Chuck Hayes. That night, the Raptors surprised the Lakers behind 81 combined points from Lowry, DeMar DeRozan and Amir Johnson. The next day, the league made the trade official.

“I think it changed the trajectory of a lot of things,” Lowry said.

Most notably, it changed the Raptors’ trajectory. Five years this weekend, the trade went down. Happy five-year anniversary of your team’s unpredictable competence, Raptors fans.

The Raptors’ Rudy Gay era started extraordinarily well as January turned into February in 2013. Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment invited many of their corporate employees to observe Gay’s introductory press conference, serenading the new would-be saviour with chants of his name. Then-Raptors boss Colangelo spoke about his long flirtation with Gay that dated back to the 2006 draft, Colangelo’s first with the Raptors, when he picked Andrea Bargnani instead of Gay and a host of other candidates. This was his chance to make that right. (Bargnani was still on the roster when the Raptors acquired Gay, by the way.)

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The Raptors started 5-2 with Gay, and he hit two game-winners in the final seconds — one against Indiana and one against Denver. In that sense, Gay’s start with the Raptors was a lot like Jimmy Butler’s recent start with the 76ers, save for the different contexts in which those teams existed.

The recent Butler trade was made to truly open up the 76ers’ championship window. They gave up two useful assets, but Butler moved them from a very good, promising team to a team that could make the Finals. The Raptors were 16-29 at the time of the Gay trade, with Bargnani looking like he was done contributing. Meanwhile, Lowry spent much of his first season in Toronto hurt and quarrelling with his coach, Dwane Casey, who in turn was quarrelling with Colangelo over the team’s slow start in the coach’s second season. Colangelo and Casey were officially on the hot seat, and would have had a hard time defending their jobs after the season if it kept up as it did. The Raptors were on the verge of missing the playoffs for the fifth consecutive year, all under Colangelo’s leadership.

Colangelo and his management staff defended the three-team trade — sending Calderon to Detroit and young big man Ed Davis plus a second-round pick to Memphis for Gay and Hamed Haddadi — by saying it addressed the Raptors’ long-standing supermassive black hole at small forward at a minimal asset cost, even if Gay were not the ideal fit next to  DeRozan. (In a nice bonus, the move cleared the way for the new point guard, Lowry, to recapture his starting role from Calderon.) Critics countered that Gay’s skill set represented a massive overlap with that of DeRozan and giving up any future asset to raise a team’s potential from subpar to mediocre was not worth the trouble or the time.

In the end, both parties were kind of right. From Gay’s first game onward, the Raptors went 18-18, a marked improvement for the team. It was good enough to finish ninth in the conference. Colangelo could easily say he delivered on his promise to help the Raptors take a leap, while others could dismiss the move as one that did not raise the bar in a meaningful way.

Tim Leiweke became the CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment that spring, and he took the latter view. In May, Colangelo was out as the team’s president and general manager, with Ujiri taking over. Without a draft pick in either round in his first year, as Colangelo had dealt them for Lowry and Gay, Ujiri used the beginning of his tenure as an evaluation period. Bargnani was dealt in an obvious and necessary summertime move, but Ujiri was going to give the rest of the team a short runway to prove themselves. Questions about the Raptors’ tanking dominated training camp, with players and coaches scoffing at the inquiries, as they should have — tanking is largely the dominion of management, not the roster or even the coaching staff.

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Proof arrived in a hurry. By Dec. 8, the Raptors were 6-12, on a five-game losing streak. The disappointing start was epitomized by a double-overtime loss in Houston. The Raptors were competitive against a solid team, but Lowry, DeRozan and Gay all played upward of 47 minutes because Casey did not, and could not, trust his bench. There was too much overlap in the offence — Gay and DeRozan combined to take 62 of the Raptors’ 114 field-goal attempts that night, hitting on only 17. Gay’s 11-for-37 night represented just one of 11 instances since the 2000-01 season where a player took at least 30 field-goal attempts and shot worse than 30 percent from the floor.

“We were all talking about it and we were all thinking, ‘You know, shit, something might be going on, there might be something happening pretty soon,’” Jonas Valanciunas said recently. “Always, when you’re losing, you’re not performing, you have that sense as a team, if not as a person. … I’m not talking one or two games or five games. It’s a long stretch of 20 games or 30 games. It feels like that.”

A few weeks ago in the Orlando Magic locker room, former Raptor Terrence Ross put it bluntly.

“It was kind of hard — it wasn’t hard to focus, but we were all definitely thinking, ‘This could be our last (game).’ Yeah, it was that uneasy tension at first. We kind of had to block everything out. It was too much.”

The 2013-14 season was Nick Nurse’s first in the NBA. Ujiri plucked Nurse from Rio Grande Valley, the innovative Houston Rockets’ D-League team, to help Casey modernize the Raptors’ offence. Having coached around the world, Nurse was far from a basketball rookie, but this was his first time dealing with the NBA grind.

As such, he had little time to ponder what might happen to the roster. Nurse said he did not remember any specific trade speculation, even as his players recalled knowing a move was inevitable. The facts: The starting lineup of Lowry, DeRozan, Gay, Valanciunas and Amir Johnson was sputtering, allowing 8.1 points per 100 possessions more than they scored through 18 games. In the 506 minutes Gay and DeRozan shared the floor, the Raptors were scoring just 98.8 points per 100 possessions, which would have ranked just below league-worst Philadelphia for the season. The Raptors’ true shooting percentage, which factors in three-pointers and free throws, with Gay and DeRozan was at 50.2 per cent, which also would have been worst in the league. While there were nice contributions from Ross and Tyler Hansbrough, the bench was neither deep nor trustworthy. Nothing was working.

On the afternoon of Dec. 8, the Raptors rolled into the Staples Center for a game against the Lakers, the final game of a three-game road trip.

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“The assistants, we went on the early bus,” Nurse said recently in his office at the Raptors’ training centre. “We were walking down the hall, and (Raptors assistant-turned-Lakers assistant) Johnny Davis of all people came down and said, ‘Man, interesting trade.’ And we were like, ‘Yeah, what trade was that?’ He goes, ‘Rudy Gay to Sacramento.’ And we were like, ‘Errrrrrr, what?’ ‘Yeah, you guys just traded Rudy.’ I don’t even know who I was walking with. It must’ve been me and (then-Raptors assistants) Billy Bayno and Jesse Mermuys walking down the hallway. I think we had a really short roster that day.”

News of the trade broke on Dec. 8 and the deal was finalized the next day. It was transformative for the Raptors, even if the pieces involved were not the most important parts of the transaction. In 315 games, Gay, Acy and Gray produced 18.8 win shares, which is about the equivalent of one above-average MVP season. In this case, that production was spread out over four seasons. From their four players, the Raptors got 22.7 win shares over 550 games. On the surface, not franchise-altering stuff.

Gay was moved almost by a process of elimination. At that point, DeRozan had not proven he could be a high-usage player on a good team. Lowry had stumbled since his breakthrough seasons in Houston and had not killed the league-wide perception of him as a point guard not quite exceptional enough to be a great starter but not cooperative enough to come off the bench happily. If the teardown continued, Lowry would be moved, sure, but Gay was the natural first step.

Gay was the highest-paid player on the Raptors, with two years still remaining on the five-year, $82-million deal he signed with Memphis before the 2010-11 season. A source with knowledge of negotiations remembered Ujiri canvassing the league to find a trade partner. The Kings showing interest in both DeRozan and Gay, with the veteran having more value at the time. (It might not have hurt that it was Vivek Ranadive’s first full year as Kings owner. That Kings GM Pete D’Alessandro was Ujiri’s right-hand man in Denver also helped the deal get done.)

The Raptors were interested in both the Kings’ 2014 first-round pick and recent seventh-overall pick Ben McLemore, both off the table from Sacramento’s view. Ujiri quickly pivoted to Vasquez, a favourite of Ujiri’s thanks to their ties with Basketball Without Borders and the point guard’s fiery play, and Patterson, whose basketball IQ and time at the University of Kentucky would certainly resonate with Casey. Acy, Gray, Hayes and Salmons were simply there to make the salaries match up.

Like that, it was done. Gay never even got on a bus to go to the Staples Center, having heard about the deal from his agent. Acy and Gray were not as lucky.

“We were in the locker room, warming up,” Valanciunas said. “I just finished my warm-up. … I was with (Acy) all the time, he was my guy working out, doing stuff together. Same with Aaron Gray, working out all the time together. We finished that workout, and were changing. … Those guys didn’t know and just found out via text message.

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“Quincy was shocked. He was like, ‘Shit.’ He didn’t want to leave.”

Gray, on the other hand, had the experience to deal with it in a more level-headed manner, mixing humour and earnestness. The scene was memorably captured on an episode of Open Gym, the Raptors’ in-house documentary series.

“It was sad. It was funny because (Gray) made jokes,” Valanciunas said. “Losing the teammates, (it’s like) losing family members because you’re always together, those guys. You can’t say it was hard, because you know one day it’s going to happen, that you’re going to separate. You’re not going to play with your teammates your whole career. But it sucks when it happens this quick. Five minutes earlier you’re working out with a guy, pushing him around. Five minutes later, he’s packing a bag and leaving.”

With Landry Fields starting in Gay’s place and the Raptors using just eight players, they upset the Lakers that evening. Still, the trade only provided more credence to conventional wisdom at the time.

“I just remember when that happened, everyone felt like, at least on social media, everyone thought we were going to tank,” Ross said. “ We were just kind of playing for nothing.”

The next steps seemed obvious. Lowry would be sold to the highest bidder, who appeared to be the New York Knicks until James Dolan got cold feet given his team’s past disasters dealing with Ujiri in the Carmelo Anthony and Andrea Bargnani trade.

“I thought I was gone. It was business,” Lowry said. “I was ready for my new journey. There was no joke. I was packed and ready to go.”

After that, any piece that could clear salary or land the Raptors future assets would be moved, too. Casey, hired by Colangelo, would eventually be fired, replaced by Ujiri’s handpicked choice. The Raptors would get a high draft pick in 2014 — local kid Andrew Wiggins, if they were lucky — and go from there.

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The fates, and those Raptors, intervened.

“I remember coming into — I think it was a practice — and Kyle got everyone together and was like, ‘Fuck it, we (are) all we got. Nobody is gonna do nothing for us. We’ve got enough to win. We gotta go out there and do it,’” Ross said. “He and DeMar were leading the way from there and we turned it around.”

“I think me and DeMar sat there and said, ‘It’s on us. Either we’re going to make it or (the front office will) break it,’” Lowry said. “‘Either we’re going to make this work or they’re going to blow it up even more.’ I told (Ross), ‘Listen, this is your chance to start to play. DeMar, you’ve got to pick it up. I’ve got to pick it up.’ That’s what I said. It wasn’t my voice (being so important). It was just me telling the guys the truth. It was what it was. For some guys it was time to step up, or I know I ain’t gonna be here or this (collection of players) ain’t gonna be here. It was the truth. Everything I said at that time was the truth.”

Still, there was the whole matter of winning games. Vasquez had vision and guts, but he was also a defensive turnstyle. Patterson was a malleable player, at that time struggling to extend his shot past the three-point arc, who did not have a calling card. Salmons and Hayes were bit pieces and past their primes.

The on-court fit was a consideration of the trade, but far from the priority. League-wide observers might have thought the Raptors won the trade or at least held their own because of the monetary aspect, but nobody thought they had won the talent part of the trade. This was a bad team that was likely to get worse.

“You hope and pray for chemistry,” Ujiri told me a year after the trade. Ujiri declined a request to revisit the move again this time around.

“We were just lucky that right away, it fit and there was good chemistry. I think that was unique.”

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Patterson gave the frontcourt more versatility, a player who could play next to Johnson when Valanciunas was too slow or raw for a certain matchup. Vasquez proved to be able to help lead the bench and play well next to Lowry, traits have been carried on by the backup point guards who followed him, Cory Joseph and Fred VanVleet.

“He came off the bench and he’s gonna talk shit, he’s gonna talk to the crowd,” Ross said. “He played with that eccentric spark.”

Salmons gave Casey a more experienced wing defender who he could use when DeRozan and Ross were not cutting it. Nurse called Hayes the Raptors’ “turn-off-the-water” guy, a player whose role was limited to slowing down opponents’ post scorers.

“I can simply say they wanted to win,” Lowry said. “They were coming from a situation where they weren’t winning. We had a veteran in John who wanted to come in and play and help us. And Chuck was a veteran and Pat, I played with Pat and Greivis. Those guys came in and just wanted to win.”

“It was like just add water, instant chemistry,” Nurse said, snapping his fingers for emphasis. “It was amazing.”

The Raptors went 8-3 in the immediate aftermath of the trade, including a pair of shocking wins in Dallas and Oklahoma City. The Raptors reached .500 on New Year’s Day and were in first place in the Atlantic Division shortly thereafter.

Ujiri and his staff had stumbled upon the type of hard-working, athletic, intelligent team he wanted to build in the first place. He no longer had much of an option to break up the Raptors. The biggest reasons why were obvious.

It remains one of the biggest what-ifs in Raptors history: What if Dolan had relented and allowed the Knicks to trade a draft pick for Lowry? What dominoes would have followed?

“Every once in a while I do (think about it),” Nurse said. “I think a lot about what he’s done for this organization and for me personally. I try not to think about the ‘me personally’ part, but who knows? He started playing the best he ever played and (has) certainly risen the tide here.”

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It is semantics whether you consider the Gay trade a case of addition by subtraction. It is undeniable that the trade was a case of addition by internal promotion. With Bargnani and Gay gone, DeRozan became the unquestioned top scoring option for the first time in his career. DeRozan’s game remained (and remains) divisive around the league, but that is about when people started to appreciate the work DeRozan put into his skill set. In February 2014, he made his first All-Star game. He made himself good and respected enough to make his way onto All-NBA teams and eventually become the centrepiece in a trade for an MVP candidate, Kawhi Leonard. It is unlikely he would have reached those heights with Gay occupying similar spots on the floor as he did.

Lowry, on the other hand, did not make the All-Star team that year.

“I remember texting Kyle that year after the All-Star (reserves were announced) saying, ‘You got screwed, you should have made it,’” Nurse said.

Honours like that would come in time. In the interim, Lowry’s role with the Raptors grew immediately. He was empowered to take a bigger share of the offence. That meant he had to learn how to become a more efficient scorer, which translated to him becoming a high-volume, high-efficiency three-point shooter.

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While DeRozan and Lowry were always co-leaders, Lowry’s hard-nosed playing style and his more vocal approach made him a more natural fit in the centre of the locker room. If he had been moved to New York, he would have been in Carmelo Anthony’s shadow, still having not killed the perceptions about his game and attitude.

“It cleared up Kyle’s role. Sometimes he didn’t know whether to go to DeMar or Rudy or DeMar or Rudy,” Nurse said. “And now it was like, ‘OK, there’s DeMar, and now I’ve got to shoulder some of this,’ which he certainly needed to do. He was (passing) one way or the other, and it never left much (offence) for him.”

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Lowry, as ever, remains stubborn about the trade’s impact on his career.

“I don’t know (if the Gay trade changed) my spot in the league. My role changed to where I had the ball in my hands a little bit more. I wasn’t just out there. I think that was the time I tried to play a bit more aggressively and be more physical and be more aggressive offensively. I don’t think about it changing anything, because I still would have been given (whatever) opportunity and I would have taken the opportunity that was at hand and live with it and go through with it and try to get better results.”

Perhaps that attitude ties in directly to the present day. Gay is the Godfather of Lowry’s son Karter and is one of the guard’s best friends in the league. After the trade, Lowry had to transform his game to better suit the new reality, despite his disappointment about being separated from a confidant. This summer, of course, the Raptors again traded one of Lowry’s best friends in the game in DeRozan. Again, Lowry needed to change his game, becoming even more of a distributor, in order to adapt to the Raptors’ changes. Again, there are signs that he was not altogether thrilled to be down a close friend. Again, Lowry is thriving with his new role, despite a recent shooting slump. Lowry leads the league in assists.

Let’s not assign causation; it could be pure coincidence, Lowry just making the necessary adjustments as a professional.

“Never live in the past,” Lowry said when asked to reflect on what the Gay trade meant for him. “Just live in the moment.”

And what will he think about it in 10 years, when he presumably has more time to dissect his career?

“Not a damn thing.”

Let us leave it at this, then: With Gay as a Raptor, the Raptors went 24-30. Since then, they have gone 278-140.

(Episode from Open Gym courtesy of Open Gym; charts made by Dom Luszczyszyn)

(Top photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)