Lowry thriving since returning from knee injury
Like with the Heat, the demise of Kyle Lowry was greatly exaggerated.
Lowry, who struggled badly with his shot and his burst while playing through knee discomfort in January, has been spry and productive throughout this postseason.
Friday’s close-out Game 6 win against the Knicks might have been his best performance yet: 11 points, nine assists, three steals, a blocked shot and just one turnover.
The Heat’s bench was a huge asset in the second round, combining to outscore the Knicks’ reserves 183-90 in the series. Lowry averaged 12.2 points per game against New York, beginning the series with an 18-point game and ending it with his secondhighest assist total of the season.
“Kyle is just doing what he does, whether he’s assisting or driving or hitting a three,” coach Erik Spoelstra said. “I’ve seen him do it twice in this series where I’ve probably never seen him do it: the pivot and post-up and scoop underneath. But that’s what competitors do.”
On Friday, that “pivot and post-up and scoop underneath” was a creative twirl and finger roll, around 7-footer Mitchell Robinson, to put the Heat up six with 4:03 left.
Later, Lowry stole an errant Jalen Brunson pass with 16 seconds left on a possession in which the Knicks could have tied or taken the lead.
For the series, Lowry had 34 assists compared with just six turnovers.
He has 15 made threes in the playoffs and converted 20 of 22 free throws.
And most impressively, Lowry — the Heat’s shortest rotation player at 6-0 — leads the team with 10 postseason blocked shots.
Lowry took a moment after Game 6 to reflect on his 15-game hiatus resulting from knee soreness, and everything good that has followed.
“I think just being able to stay with it and having teammates like [Jimmy Butler] and an organization that just said, ‘Look, get yourself healthy.’ That was big,” he said.
“For me, it was all about getting myself healthy to where I can be able to help my team in these types of moments and these types of situations. It was all about staying with it, being resilient and believing in what I’ve done in my career and what I know I still can do.”
Lowry sat out from Feb. 4 to March 10, trying to reduce the discomfort and limitations created by the knee. He returned coming off the bench to help manage his minutes, and his efficiency has improved considerably since.
Including the playoffs, he’s shooting 45 percent since returning March 11, compared with 39.6 percent in 44 games prior to that.
And including playoffs, he’s shooting 39 percent on threes since returning (32 for 82), compared with 33.3 percent (90 for 270) in the 44 games before the extended absence.
“He’s had so many outstanding performances since then that I’ve forgotten all about it, to be honest,” Heat point guard Gabe Vincent said of Lowry’s five-week absence. “It just took time to get right and get back in a flow and a rhythm. It’s been great to see him have that success.”
KNICKS’ REACTION
Here’s what the Knicks had to say about the Heat after losing their secondround series, 4-2:
Brunson, who averaged
A31 points in the series: “Got to give them a lot of credit. They didn’t play like an eighth seed at all. They’re unbelievable. The utmost respect for them and that organization.”
Julius Randle ,on Butler: “Jimmy is the ultimate competitor. As a star player in these moments, he only cares about winning and that says a lot. I have a hell of a lot of respect for him. All of the adversity he has overcome in his career, he deserves to win. I wish him luck.”
Coach Tom Thibodeau :“Bam [Adebayo ]is a heck of a player. He’s a great competitor.”
RJ Barrett: “They’re a very good team, very experienced, very poised. We can learn from that. Experience helps. Looking at the Heat, some of the things they were able to do [stemmed] from the experience they had.”
Barrett, who shot 1 for 10 in Game 6, said: “I played terrible. I’m very disappointed in how I played” on Friday.
AAATHIS AND THAT
Since 1997, the Heat is one of only five teams in professional sports to qualify for a conference or league finals on at least 10 occasions.
The Heat has done it 10 times during that period, the same number as the San Antonio Spurs and St. Louis Cardinals over that span. The New England Patriots have done it 13 times and the New York Yankees 12 times.
After yielding 118.8 points in the first round against Milwaukee, the Heat permitted just 100.5 points per game against the Knicks.
Adebayo’s ongoing streak of nine consecutive games with at least eight rebounds is one short of the Heat playoff record (10 by LeBron James).
The Heat’s 15-7 record in Game 6 is the highest winning percentage of any NBA franchise. The Heat is now 32-20 all-time in playoff series.
AAAABarry Jackson: 305-376-3491, @flasportsbuzz
come to the rink. Even when we were losing, they’re still fun guys.”
The joy comes from the accomplishment, but also the journey.
As Tkachuk said Friday, “Nobody in the world thought we were going to be in this position right now.” The Panthers were nine points out of a postseason spot after Christmas, didn’t clinch their spot in the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs until the last week of the regular season and made it in by just one point, lost three of four to start their first-round series with the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Bruins and have now improbably roared to life in the past three weeks to make the Eastern Conference finals by winning seven of eight.
It’s Florida’s first trip to the NHL Conference Finals since the Panthers made it all the way to the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals in only their third season of existence, and it’s context everyone around the organization carries with them at least a little bit. It’s easier, though, for them to understand what this means in the context of this individual season, and particularly the players who have toiled away in South Florida for years and years, waiting to be part of a run like this one.
All-Star center Aleksander Barkov has been a Panther since 2013 and defenseman Aaron Ekblad since 2014, and neither even won a playoff series until last year, let alone had a chance to play for a spot in the Stanley Cup Finals. Bobrovsky fought through almost four full seasons of inconsistent play in Florida — and harsh criticism of his seven-year, $70 million contract — before he finally got to be the biggest reason the Panthers pulled off a second-round upset of the Maple Leafs in five games. Even newer fixtures, such as general manager Bill Zito and Maurice, fell under scrutiny because of just how poorly the regular season went a year after Florida won the Presidents’ Trophy.
The Panthers did not downplay this accomplishment, just like they didn’t downplay the significance of their first-round upset of Boston last week.
“It’s an unreal feeling,”
Barkov said Friday. “To go to the Eastern Conference finals is a big deal for us and that’s all I can think right now.”
There was one big difference between this victory and their triumph in Round 1.
After the past two weeks, Florida almost came to expect this.
If the Panthers could beat the Bruins, they could beat anyone. They were underdogs, but that was all based on the regular season and an assumption Florida, which had the fewest regularseason points of any playoff team, couldn’t possibly maintain their high level of play from the first round.
They quickly bucked those expectations. They stole Games 1 and 2 in Canada, won Game 3 at home to take a commanding series lead, lost a tossup in Game 4 and then came back to Toronto to finish off their 4-1 series victory. It all took 11 days and the Panthers were celebrating another stunner less than two weeks after they won Game 7 in Boston to complete perhaps the biggest upset in NHL history.
The scenes were strikingly similar: Florida won in overtime on the road and the crowd, which just days earlier was anticipating something like a coronation, was shellshocked with the suddenness of the ending.
“We deserve to enjoy this one tonight. It was a grind of a series, even though it was only five games,” Tkachuk said. “A lot of people weren’t expecting a lot from us, including a bunch of Leaf fans before this series.”
The right wing smiled. He saw the viral videos of Maple Leafs fans, when the Panthers were creeping toward their upset of the Bruins last month, chanting, “We want Florida!”
“I don’t think they want Florida that much anymore,” he said. “I wasn’t hearing many of those after that game.”
At this point, anyone would be foolish to. The Panthers are much closer to the team they were last year than they were in the regular season, but really they’re a blend of those two in the best ways possible because they stuck with their new identity through a trying regular season, trusting it would pay off now.
They have the talent — with players such as Ekblad, Barkov, Tkachuk, Bobrovsky and defenseman Brandon Montour — to hang with anyone, and also the structure and attitude to win tighter games in the Cup playoffs.
It’s no coincidence Florida beat Toronto with defense, holding the highpowered Maple Leafs to two goals in every game. It was the focus from Day 1 of training camp to get tighter defensively and be content to win low-scoring games, even if it meant an occasional loss when some bounce went the wrong way.
“All year, we talked about that, how to play in these types of games. You don’t open up,” Barkov said. “It’s kind of paying off.”
When these playoffs began, the Panthers of course wanted to win the Stanley Cup, but it wasn’t even quite the primary objective, Maurice admitted.
All the changes they made in the past year — hiring Maurice, trading two stars and a firstround pick for Tkachuk, overhauling their entire style of play — were made with a multi-year timeline in mind. Simply getting to the playoffs was important.
“You either win the Stanley Cup or you don’t. We’ve got a bunch of things that we’ve got to learn to become a hard enough team to at some point win and we learned a bunch of them,” Maurice said. “It’s more important that we learn. We want to win the Stanley Cup, but from where we were coming from we were going to learn almost everything we needed to learn about winning in the Boston series.”
It has primed them to be successful for years to come and also next week, when they’ll face the Hurricanes — another Cup contender — in Round 3.
Carolina finished the regular season with the second most points in the NHL. It’ll be another challenge for Florida. The past month has gotten the Panthers ready for it.
“We are real comfortable in kind of a hard fight,” Maurice said. “We’ll take a bunch of punches in this Carolina series, for sure. We’re pretty good at getting off the mat.”
David Wilson: 305-376-3406, @DBWilson2
Oilers star and Boston Bruins forward David Pastrnak were named finalists for the 202223 Hart Memorial Trophy, the league’s Most Valuable Player award, on Friday.
McDavid, Pastrnak and Tkachuk were the top three vote-getters from Professional Hockey Writers Association voting, but McDavid is widely expected to win the award after leading the NHL in goals, assists and points.
All league-wide awards will be revealed during the NHL Awards show on June 26 in Nashville, Tenn.
In his first season with the Panthers, Tkachuk, 25, put up 109 points (40 goals, 69 assists) in 79 games.
He became the fourth player in NHL history and the first since 1988-89 to post consecutive 100-point seasons after changing teams in the intermittent offseason — he was traded to Florida by the Calgary Flames — and he was named MVP of the NHL All-Star Game.
McDavid, 26, is vying to win the Hart for the third time. He also won in 2016-17 and 2020-21.
His 64 goals, 89 assists and 153 points all marked career highs. The 153 points marked the highest total the NHL has seen since Mario Lemieux posted 161 points in just 70 games in 1995-96.
Pastrnak, who turns 27 later this month, ranked second in the league with 61 goals and third with 113 points.
LATE FRIDAY
Golden Knights 4, Oilers 3: Jack Eichel had a goal and two assists and host Vegas set a franchise playoff record with three goals in an 89-second span en route to a victory over Edmonton in Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinal series. Mark Stone, Reilly Smith and Nicolas Hague each scored goals during that span late in the second period, as Vegas took a 3-2 lead in the best-of-7 series. The Golden Knights would clinch a berth in the Western Conference finals with a Game 6 win on Sunday in Edmonton.
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