Lowry airs the laundry
Guard says he felt betrayed by the DeRozan trade, but Raptors president Ujiri says he’s used to his all-star being mad at him
We’ve all heard the old saying: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Somewhere along the way, Kyle Lowry got it garbled. He’s shown a knack for taking those who ought to be closest to him — specifically the people who’ve helped him build a wildly suc- cessful NBA career — and turning them into enemies, imagined or otherwise.
So it was no real shock to hear Lowry single out his new in-house foe on ESPN on Wednesday. With the U.S. sports giant devoting immense resources to shine a spotlight on Toronto’s top-of-the-league NBA team — with the Raptors featured in ESPN’s day-long All Access, shown on multiple platforms consumed by millions — Lowry chose the moment to lay bare the chill he says exists between him and the man who heads the organization.
In an interview with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols, Lowry said he “felt betrayed” by the summertime trade that sent best friend and Raptors all-time-leading scorer DeMar DeRozan to San Antonio and fetched Kawhi Leonard. Asked to characterize his relationship with Masai Ujiri, the man who orchestrated the
franchise-changing swap, Lowry deadpanned his response for effect.
“He’s the president of basketball operations, and that’s it,” Lowry said of Ujiri. “For me, I come out here and do my job.”
There was a suggestion by Nichols that Lowry’s answer left room for interpretation. But for anyone who’s watched Lowry closely since he arrived in Toronto in 2012 bearing a well-earned reputation as a journeyman malcontent, elaboration wasn’t particularly necessary.
Let’s just say there are gentle souls among us who keep their world view in perspective writing a daily gratitude journal. Lowry, no matter how much the universe smiles upon him, seems to nourish his soul keeping a grudge list. Teammates and coaches find their way on and off it. Now, apparently, Ujiri tops it.
To which many reasonable observers would say: Big deal. The Raptors are winning. Lowry’s leading the NBA in assists. What’s it matter that the star point guard doesn’t get along famously with some guy in a suit, especially when that discord stems from a loyalty to DeRozan? Lowry’s a bulldog competitor who thrives on internal friction. And if there’s one thing he and Ujiri can definitely agree on, it’s that they would both value a championship a lot more than any fleeting NBA friendship.
Ujiri, to his credit, met his point guard’s cold shoulder with a warm smile on a later ESPN segment. What else could he do on a night that was otherwise devoted to celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late Nelson Mandela, the great South African freedom fighter and late-life conciliator who was Ujiri’s hero.
“Kyle Lowry’s always mad at me. Every year, he’s always mad at me,” said Ujiri. “It’s been like that with Kyle since I came here … I know how Kyle is. I love him to death. He plays basketball the right way. He gives it his all. I’m so used to it. And I know he has a good heart. And I know I haven’t done anything wrong to him. I didn’t even trade him.”
Ujiri was laughing as he spoke those words. When you run the constant-maintenance ego train that is an NBA franchise, if you don’t laugh, you cry. Ujiri has been living in the alternate universe of a kids’ game turned into a multi-billion-dollar business for years now, so he’s used to nonsense like this.
But for those of us who reside elsewhere, it’s worth wondering: Now age 32 and 13 years into his NBA career, how could Lowry be anything but grateful to Ujiri? A couple of summers ago it was only Ujiri who signed Lowry to a three-year free-agent deal worth about $100 million (U.S.). This was at a moment when demand for Lowry’s services wasn’t exactly feverish. He was past 30 and burdened with a long trail of playoff underperformance. The Raptors essentially had zero competition in the bidding, and the deal seemed outsized considering the lack of market interest.
But Ujiri, nobody’s fool, had to consider factors beyond supply and demand. For one, lowballing Lowry wouldn’t have built the right bridge to future prosperity in Raptorland. Inking him to a generous deal didn’t put the Raptors even remotely in the neighbourhood of peril. Maybe Ujiri even figured paying Lowry like a franchise player might give him the idea he ought to comport himself more like one. Imagine that.
Not that Lowry hasn’t played well and played hard this season. But if you watched him in the playoffs last spring, you know he’s not the same explosive force he was even a couple of seasons ago. So while folks around the team have come to accept that it’s not in Lowry’s nature to value in-team altruism, that quality will get harder to stomach with an accelerating fall-off in athleticism.
Ujiri, of course, is hardly the first target of Lowry’s apparent craving for conflict. He’s also sparred with Dwane Casey, this in the years before Casey was fired and replaced by Nick Nurse last spring.
“If he’s the coach, I’m a player,” Lowry said in an infamous 2015 non-endorsement of Casey’s work.
And for all Lowry’s romanticizing of his relationship with DeRozan, let’s not forget they butted heads, too — to the point the team organized a summit in June of 2017 to repair their frayed ties after another in a line of playoff ousters.
What’s it all mean for the team?
The Raptors have been dealing with Lowry for seven years. They’ll survive his petulance a couple more.
Still, at a moment when Ujiri was attempting to put the franchise’s best foot forward for Wednesday’s U.S.-based blanket coverage — in a season built on wooing Leonard longterm — the team president probably wouldn’t have objected if Lowry, grudge list or not, found the professionalism to grit his teeth and do his part in the sales pitch. He’s known Lowry too long, mind you, to be shocked that Lowry opted for a public sulk.
“It’s one big family,” Nurse told ESPN, speaking of his team’s vaunted culture.
When Nichols repeated that sentiment in her interview with Lowry, no one could have been shocked Lowry took objection to it, too.
“You can say we’re family,” Lowry said skeptically, “but families do things a little bit better sometimes.”
Keep your enemies closer, indeed.
Ujiri has known Lowry too long, mind you, to be shocked that Lowry opted for a public sulk