The answer to Lowry question is Kyle Lowry
Raptors guard understands the pressures of leadership: ‘I have to play better’
Kyle Lowry wasn’t really trying to fix his shot out there on the floor of the near-empty Air Canada Centre, an hour and a half after the game. Cleaners were going row to row in the stands; a couple TV cameras and a reporter here or there lingered around the edges of the court. A lone blue-shirted security guard watched from a seat behind the vacant Raptors bench as Lowry chased after his misses, clambered over rows of seats to get the ball back, tugged at his hood. But in almost every way, Kyle Lowry was alone.
He had just played one of the most baffling games of his career in Tuesday’s Game 1 loss to the Miami Heat, but Lowry’s post-game shooting wasn’t designed to fix whatever mechanical flaws have crept in since his elbow swelled up on March 20, leading him into one of the worst shooting slumps in NBA history. He wasn’t taking shots at game speed, or using a rebounder. Besides, the Raptors point guard says on film the mechanics look right, look good. He might be leaning more, drifting more. But his shot looks OK. It’s just not going in.
No, Lowry’s post-midnight session was designed to be therapeutic. The slump may have started with his right elbow, but it has crept up into his head.
“Just being a kid again,” Lowry said Wednesday. “Trying to have some fun.”
Not to overstate it, but it feels like Lowry’s whole life has led to this crisis. In AAU ball he wasn’t the greatest shooter but he was an attacking bull, a true Philly player, and his confidence never wavered. In the NBA he fought to be a starter with a parade of teammates, including Miami’s Goran Dragic, but he persevered to become an all-star. His confidence propelled him here, even as he needed to be believed in.
“It just hurts me, because it’s unfair,” longtime teammate Luis Scola said.
“He just shouldn’t be going through this, and I’m rooting so much for things to change around . . . I was with Kyle when Kyle was almost out of the rotation in Houston. He (had) come back from an injury and he was barely playing and that was probably the lowest point, after his rookie year when he got hurt. And I was there.
“I have seen him going through up and downs. He had up and downs a lot of times.”
A few minutes earlier, Scola pointed to his own temple and said, “It’s just here. And this is his strength.”
Lowry is trying to grin through his struggles, trying to find the humour. He jokes that he’s the worst shooting player in NBA playoff history, so he has that going for him.
He is disarmingly honest, saying it does run through his head as he rises to take a shot, as he even considers shooting.
“What else could I do?” Lowry asked. “Why being anything I’m not? For me to be honest, I’m always truthful with you all . . . for the most part, except for when I’m injured. But what else am I going to do? I know the pressures I put on myself. I know we won’t advance if I don’t play better. I live with this. This is what I do. I have to play better for us to be a good team to win games.”
His teammates support him. His coaches, too. Everyone knows what’s riding on this, though.
“You know, sometimes you just have to look yourself in the mirror,” said DeMarre Carroll. “You have to man up. You have to be like, ‘I’m the Kyle Lowry that played the 82 games, all-star.’ You can say a lot to encourage him, but I feel like Kyle as the individual and a competitor, who he is, he has to look in the mirror and say ‘I’m Kyle Lowry.’ ”
“His shot looks right, everything looks right,” Scola said. “The only thing that looks bad to me is his body language. He is beaten. And he shouldn’t be. There’s only two players as to why we’re here, and it’s him and DeMar (DeRozan). He’s the soul of our team. He’s everything to us. I don’t care if he misses every shot from now on. I’m OK with that. I’ll lose with him. I have no problem with that. I’ll lose with him because he took me all the way to here.”
Lowry knows the pressure he’s under, because he’s been under it all year. He knows he was the prime part that failed last season. He knows he worked on his jumper along with his body last summer so he could take seven or eight threes per game this year to save wear and tear on his body. He knows that this team relied on him to seize control of games, over and over.
And he knows that every time he thought about taking a shot in Game 1, his struggles filled his head, and it sapped the thing that brought him to this place.
His teammates can support him. Toronto’s fans, too. His coaches, his GM, his family, they can all tell him he’s Kyle Lowry, and he can do this. Every one. But at some point on Thursday night he is going to have to consider a shot and rise into it with a clear mind, and believe it will go in. Everyone can be on his side, everyone can watch. But only Kyle Lowry can save Kyle Lowry now.