Leonard and Lowry deliver on stressful buzzer-beater games
TORONTO — Nick Nurse was joking a bit last week when he said he wanted his Toronto Raptors to get into a few games with white-knuckle finishes once he had Kawhi Leonard and Kyle Lowry in the lineup at the same time.
Of course, the head coach would prefer a 15- or 20-point win to a buzzer-beater situation, but if a test came, he was interested to see how his top two players would handle it on the court together.
“I think we want to see just some more minutes together, just some more cohesion together,” Nurse said when Lowry returned from a 10-game injury absence to join Leonard in the lineup. “Organizing late game. When there’s close late games, where we going, what we doing, how we getting the ball, where it goes?
“It’s pretty simple when one of them’s on and one of them’s off. It becomes a little harder, in a good way. It’s a good problem that you’ve got two choices to make: Who’s bringing it, who isn’t bringing it?”
Little did he know what was coming. Two of Toronto’s past three games have come down to final possessions, and while neither Lowry nor Leonard actually made a game-winning shot, they both made game-winning plays for teammates — and it’s all working out pretty well.
On Jan. 8 against Atlanta, Leonard made the decisive defensive play and Lowry fed Serge Ibaka for the game-winning dunk; on Sunday in Washington, Leonard rebounded his own miss and made a pass to Ibaka for the game-breaking three-pointer with less than 15 seconds left in the second overtime period.
Leonard and Lowry had both missed potential game-winning shots against Washington, but game-winning plays count just as much. And they’re just as important.
Leonard has said often that the crucible of a tight regular season can only help the Raptors when the playoffs roll around, and Sunday’s taut affair in Washington had him at it again.
“Helps us get better as a team,” he said of the 140-138 doubleovertime victory that extended Toronto’s National Basketball Association-best record to 33-12 and was their fifth win in a row. “Executing, just being familiar with those close games down the stretch. Seconds on the clock, one minute left, needing stops.”
Regardless of who has been on the floor or even available, the Raptors have done a pretty good job finishing out close games so far this season. They have a 15-7 record in games decided by 10 points or less, and they are 6-3 in games that end with a four-point-or-less margin.
To illustrate their depth, Danny Green has won a game at the buzzer, Ibaka’s now had two late game-winning plays in a week, Fred VanVleet made a big threepointer to beat Indiana one night. The presence of Leonard and Lowry draws so much attention from opponents that it frees up space and opportunities for others. And the more options available to Nurse, the better.
Forgetting for a second about how those games got that close in the first place, it shows some solid late-game execution.
Some nights it’s needed because the Raptors can’t bury teams when they have the chance, other nights because their opponents do what NBA teams do and start playing well.
But the fact that the Raptors are able to win a large proportion of close late games is good. And the fact that they’ve had two games to practise out of the past three is giving Nurse what he wanted, even if it is a bit stress inducing.