Lowry leads down home, sweet home stretch
PHILADELPHIA— It was obvious about 70 minutes before tipoff on Saturday night that these homecoming games mean a lot to Kyle Lowry.
The Toronto Raptors point guard had a letter-sized envelope that was bursting with tickets for family and friends to watch him play at the Wells Fargo Center.
“Only a few people. Fifty, 60, not that many,” Lowry casually said after the Raptors’ 108-95 win. “Usually I get 75 to 100.” That group went home happier than the rest of the14,100 that turned up.
Lowry scored10 of his team-high 25 points in the fourth quarter and added six rebounds and five assists in the win, which gave the Raptors their third in a row.
They’re now 24-15 as they ready to leave for London, England, and a Thursday game against the Orlando Magic at O2 Arena.
“His give-a-crap-level is pretty high,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said of Lowry when he returns to Philly.
“It’s always high but it’s a little extra high when he comes home,” Casey said. “He’s our sparkplug.”
The sparkplug enjoys these quick trips home, this being his second and final one of the season. When the Raptors arrived here early Saturday morning, Lowry passed on the team hotel.
“I go to my house and sleep in my own bed,” he said. “I stay in my own bed and wake up and hang out in my house and take a drive down to meet the team.
“It’s always fun to come home. It’s always tempting to get too relaxed but I understand I come home for a reason.”
That reason became extremely evident late in the game.
The Raptors’ 15-point, third-quarter lead was down to four inside the first 90 seconds of the fourth, with Sixers guard Ish Smith trying to pull his moribund team to its fifth win of the season and what would have been its fourth in seven games. Smith was working on a career-best 28 points, but Lowry stepped up and helped put the game away.
He scored the Raptors’ first six points of the fourth and assisted on a Patrick Patterson (11 points) threepointer that put Toronto up 84-73. He hit on another pair of layups and assisted on a lob to Jonas Valanciunas to keep the lead at nine with just over four minutes to play. Valanciunas and Cory Joseph helped stretch the lead out quickly after that, with the Raptors going up by as many as 17 points. Valanciunas finished with 17, on 7-of-10 shooting from the floor, and pulled down nine rebounds.
DeMar DeRozan had 19 points, seven rebounds and five assists for the Raptors, highlighting his night with a pair of first-half dunks.
He flew by rookie Jahlil Okafor — who was key in Philly opening up a 12-0 lead to start the game — for a huge one-hander, then caught a twohand reverse his next time down the floor.
“We knew we were going to turn it around,” DeRozan said of the early deficit.
“We just knew we had to lock it in. We shrunk the paint and tried to stop transition points and once we did that it was fine.”
“It’s good and it’s bad,” Casey said. “It’s fool’s gold to a certain extent, for where we’re trying to get to. It’s not just to win, but we’ve got to continue to improve.
“We have bigger fish to fry. I’m the only Debbie Downer in the room, but again, we know. We know what we have to improve on.”
DeRozan said he could relate to Lowry’s play in his hometown.
“I think you always get that extra (motivation),” he said. “When it’s anybody coming home to play, whether it’s friends or family in the crowd, that definitely motivates you.”
“Kyle playing in Philly, he wasn’t going to let us down,” Casey said.