A lot riding on Lowry’s back
Team needs all-star guard to be bridge between Leonard and rest of the squad
Kyle Lowry played Thursday night. He wasn’t supposed to, not after a pulsating, big-game loss in Boston on Wednesday, but the 32-year-old point guard got back to Toronto and his aching back felt good enough. He’s still not in shape after missing most of three weeks with an injury that required pain- and inflammation-reducing injections. So in a game against one of the worst teams in basketball, he played.
The Raptors need him. It was a tough game in Boston on Wednesday between two of the best teams in basketball, and down the stretch the Raptors just couldn’t execute. Kawhi Leonard’s iso shotmaking dried up; there was no workable or evident Plan B; Boston’s Kyrie Irving was an electric assassin. Toronto lost.
In this game, Toronto squeaked past the woeful Phoenix Suns 111-109. Lowry needed 15 shots to produce 16 points, and shot 2-for-10 from three. He added nine assists and eight rebounds. He recorded his 5,000th career assist, and got a nice hand from the crowd.
And down the stretch of a tight game, Lowry started pick and rolls but didn’t finish them. He finally looked for his own shot up two with 15.7 seconds left, a kill shot. He missed a long two-pointer. Pascal Siakam got the ball on his own and drove for the left-handed game-winner at the buzzer. Lowry watched.
The end of most games will continue to run through Kawhi, of course. But as the Raptors continue to gear up towards the real games, the real test, the biggest problem to solve isn’t so much Leonard as the gap between him and everybody else.
“The ball’s gonna play through Kawhi mostly, like it does for Kyrie and like it does for (James) Harden and LeBron,” said Raptors coach Nick Nurse before the game. “It’s gonna play through him, and then the other guys gotta be ready to be spaced right, be ready to step in and take ’em, be ready to make the next pass if it’s there, punch into the paint, et cetera. I think we were not using Kawhi enough late.”
Going into Thursday night, Leonard ranked fourth among the top 25 clutch shot-takers in attempts, and, only Washington’s Brad Beal, Dallas rookie Luca Doncic, and Denver’s Nikola Jokic had shot better than Leonard’s 49.3 per cent. Leonard takes about as many clutch shots per 48 minutes of play as Harden, basketball’s shot-creating, scoring supernova. Leonard makes almost four — or 12 per cent — more.
But in Boston things broke down, and Lowry was a spectator. Leonard had just missed back-to-back three-pointers when Lowry took a pull-up three-pointer with time on the shot clock, a four-point lead, and four minutes left. He missed.
It was a shot you take when you’re hot and trying for a killer blow, but Lowry hasn’t been since two games in early December, and before then, maybe October. Other than a late shot-clock three-point fling that missed, he then didn’t touch the ball in a meaningful way again until the game was out of reach.
With 45.7 seconds left Wednesday and the Raptors down 115-106, Lowry walked back onto the court after a timeout visibly frustrated, shaking his head, running his hands through his hair, extending his arms while talking to Leonard, before amiably chat- ting with an elderly Celtics fan in the front row. It was clear frustration, whatever the reason.
After the game, Leonard talked to reporters about how his teammates needed to move when he had the ball, instead of watching. Lowry agreed, and talked about giving Leonard more help
No Raptor should be able to offer more. But while Lowry is averaging more assists than ever, per minute he is taking the fewest shots of his Raptors career, the fewest threes (on his worst three-point shooting percentage since 2010), and attempting the fewest free throws of his career. They don’t have enough shot creators or shooters for that.
“I think the back is obviously feeling better,” Nurse said. “He logged some big minutes in (Sunday’s 140-138 doubleovertime win in Washington), I just think the rest of it needs to come, and I just think he knows he needs to be out there to get the rhythm back and the confidence in his stroke back a little bit. We’re gonna need some production from him, obviously.”
So much rides on Lowry, and he surely knows it; not just this season, but as part of Kawhi’s off-season decision. At its highest levels the NBA is not just about your superstar, but the distance to the next star, and the player beyond that. Toronto’s third-best player, Siakam, isn’t always there yet, though he was Thursday. The bench isn’t the game-changer it was last year.
So Kyle’s got to find himself: his confidence, his role, his shot, his health. He goes up and down every year, of course. This year he was angry at team president Masai Ujiri after the DeMar DeRozan trade, and when Kyle goes south he often pulls back into himself. That can’t happen when you’re aiming to play for a title. If he is healthy and right, Lowry has to be the best 32-year-old, short, slow and brilliant point guard he can be.
Kyle Lowry came into this season trying to prove himself yet again. He aimed to be great. So much rides on it coming true.