National Post (National Edition)
Raptors’ Lowry slowly earning Casey’s trust
Relationship between point guard and coach a work in progress
TORONTO • Of the million things, big and small, that went wrong during the disastrous start to the Toronto Raptors’ season, the frayed relationship between coach Dwane Casey and point guard Kyle Lowry never truly caught on, narratively speaking.
There were sexier topics: Andrea Bargnani’s year from Hades, the lessthan-ideal dynamic between Casey and Bryan Colangelo and the Raptors’ complete defensive deterioration all ranked as primary concerns. So, when Lowry appeared irate at Casey at the end of a disheartening loss in Sacramento in December, it did not seem very important.
Nonetheless, it was clear Casey preferred Jose Calderon to Lowry. Casey offered the usual political correctness — “It is not anything Kyle has done wrong,” became a usual refrain during Calderon’s reign as starter — but there was a fundamental lack of trust between the coach and the man who was supposed to be his new starting point guard.
It was quite a reversal of what was expected. Lowry, a sturdy defender and shot creator, was supposed to define Casey’s preferred style. But when the losses piled up, Lowry’s flaws were revealed to his coaching staff: the tendency to gamble on defence, the quick three-pointers on offence and his occasional inscrutability.
“You don’t just come here and say, ‘OK, coach, whatever you say,’ ” Casey said Friday morning in advance of the Raptors’ game against the New York Knicks. “You’ve got to build that understanding of what the coach is trying to do.”
Casey professes that the pair’s relationship has improved drastically as the season has gone. It has had to: When Calderon was traded at the end of January, Lowry became Casey’s only viable option.
And it is clear Lowry has become more comfortable with adopting the style Casey would like the Raptors to play. The point guard has become selective with his shots, sometimes looking like a spot-up three-point artist in- stead of making forays into the paint, and he has led an offence that does whatever it can to get the ball to Gay and DeMar DeRozan. Lowry is still a gambler on defence, but the Raptors have allowed just 0.96 points per possession when he has been on the floor since the acquisition of Gay, according to nbawowy.com. When he has not been on the floor, the Raptors have allowed 1.25 points per possession during that span. While Lowry is not the sole reason for that disparity, his efforts have not been incidental, either.
“It’s much better,” Casey said of the pair’s relationship now compared to the start of the year. “Again, he’s coming in and he doesn’t understand. It’s something new. He has to do something different than he’s done for the rest of his career.
“Anytime you come into a new relationship, a new environment, there’s always a feeling-out process, a building of trust.”
Still, it is certain that Lowry has not maximized his production precisely because of the Raptors’ philosophy. If there is one player who embodies the tension between the coaching staff and the analytics’ staff that was exposed in this week’s grantland.com piece on the Raptors, it is Lowry. The numbers say that Lowry’s offensive game — he is a high-volume three-point shooter who can slice open a defence with his aggressiveness — ensures the Raptors will use their possessions more efficiently. However, the turnovers, lack of ball movement and occasional chaos that reliance on Lowry can create can be torturous for a coach to sit through, particularly as a team struggles to win.
What the Raptors have been left with is a point guard who is more or less running the team as designed, but without a gung-ho joie de vivre. Casey is pleased with his progress, but Lowry has not necessarily killed the perception that can be a mercurial presence around a team.
Lowry will drive you crazy if you let him. His shot selection looks and feels random at times, even though he is cagier than he will ever let on. He certainly is not Calderonian in his countenance, either. Yet, as this year has gone, he has slowly earned Casey’s trust.
In accomplishing that, however, the Raptors have assured that they will not answer a very important question this season: Should Lowry be this team’s point guard of the future?