Lowry ready for emotional return to Toronto, his home for 9 years
With a week left in the regular season, it appears that the wait is finally over for Kyle Lowry.
After missing the first three games of the fourgame series against the Toronto Raptors for personal reasons, the veteran point guard was on track this weekend to play against his former team for the first time since joining the Miami Heat last summer. The game Sunday (7 p.m., Bally Sports Sun) will be at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, where Lowry played for nearly a decade.
“I’ve tried to avoid for a long time thinking about it, but it’s right here,” Lowry said before the Heat kicked off its back-to-back set Saturday night at the Chicago Bulls. “I’m looking forward to it, just being able to go to a place I’ve called home for so long and a place I still call home, that has a dear and special place in my heart. It’s going to be emotional.
“I’m sure they’ll cheer me for a while, and then if we start to win, boo me.
It’s all love and it’s just being able to show the appreciation I want to and I’m sure they’ll appreciate me for what I’ve been able to do.”
Lowry, who spent the previous nine seasons in Toronto and is considered one of the greatest players in Raptors history, was a key part of the Kawhi Leonard-led team that won the NBA title in 2019.
Sunday won’t just be Lowry’s first game in Toronto since moving to Miami. He said it also will be his first time spending more than a few hours in Toronto since February 2020. His final season with the Raptors in 202021 came with the team playing its home games in Tampa because of COVID-19 restrictions in Canada.
“It feels like going home,” said Lowry, who penned a thank-you letter to Toronto that was published Friday by The Players’ Tribune. “I did a lot of things for the city, the organization. The city embraced me, and the organization embraced me, and we created a lifelong bond.”
The Heat’s first visit to Toronto this season, a 110-106 loss on Feb. 1, came with very limited attendance because of COVID-19 restrictions still in place. Lowry said he wouldn’t have played in that game under those circumstances, even if personal reasons hadn’t kept him out, because that’s not how he envisioned his return.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t have played in the game just for the serious fact that I want to be able to play in front of our fans and I want to play in front of their fans,” he said.
The restrictions have since been lifted and Scotiabank Arena is operating at its full capacity of about 19,800.
His return to Toronto will come during a hectic weekend because of the back-to-back games. The Heat was scheduled to land in Toronto early Sunday after playing in Chicago on Saturday night.
“I don’t care,” Lowry said. “I’m just happy to be able to be up there, play in front of fans.”
The players the Heat dealt to the Raptors to acquire Lowry through a sign-and-trade were guard Goran Dragic and forward Precious Achiuwa. Dragic played in just five games with the Raptors this season before being traded and eventually joining the Brooklyn Nets. Achiuwa is still with the Raptors, averaging 9.0 points and 6.7 rebounds in 23.6 minutes.
While the Heat sits in first place in the Eastern Conference, the Raptors have won five straight and 11 of their past 13 games. Entering Saturday’s games, they were in sixth place in the East.
“I’m really excited,” Lowry said of the Raptors’ play this season. “I’m happy for those guys, because of the close-knit relationships that I have with those guys, the personal relationships that I’ve built around the organization.
“Also, it’s a team, a franchise that I helped kind of build back up to a point where it’s a contending team, it’s a playoffcompetitive team every year. So I’m happy and I’m just proud to have been a part of it.”
But Lowry is on the other side now, and he knows Raptors coach Nick Nurse will welcome him back to Toronto with a game plan designed to slow him down.
“Let me be real,” Lowry said with a laugh. “Nick is not going to let me have a game, at all . ... Anybody that we played against didn’t have a good game. So I know what I’m expecting.”
HARDAWAY CRIES OVER HOF VOTE
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was happy to hear that former Heat point guard Tim Hardaway will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a member of the 2022 class.
“Really thrilled for him,” Spoelstra said. “It has been a long process for him. We’ve talked about how it has made so much sense for him to be a Hall of Famer.”
Spoelstra was referring not just to Hardaway’s years with the Heat, but his earlier years with the Golden State Warriors as a member of “Run TMC” with Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin.
Hardaway, 55, last played with the Heat in 2001 and retired in 2003.
“It took a while,” Spoelstra said. “But nonetheless, I know he’s really excited about it, we’re really happy for him and we get to spend another weekend celebrating our family member being able to have such an incredible honor.”
Hardaway was formally named to the Hall of Fame on Saturday. He had been named a finalist on past ballots but wasn’t voted in.
“I’ve been through this before three or four times,” he said during an interview with ESPN on Saturday. “I was scared to answer the phone, to tell you the truth. I was shaking because I just didn’t want to hear them say again, ‘You didn’t have enough votes.’
“But I answered the phone and he said, ‘I got some really good news for you this time.’ I just started crying.”