Lowry’s fourth-quarter scoring surge Sunday was important for him and Heat
The stretch lasted just 102 seconds, but it was significant for the Heat and veteran point guard Kyle Lowry.
Yes, Lowry’s nine straight points in a span of one minute and 42 seconds late in the fourth quarter of the Heat’s 100-96 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans on Sunday helped lift Miami to the win.
But this stretch was also important for Lowry as he continues to try to find his place within the Heat’s offense as part of lineups that usually prioritize getting the ball in the hands of high-usage players such as Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro and Jimmy Butler. On Sunday, though, the ball was in Lowry’s hands in clutch time and he delivered by making shots on four consecutive offensive possessions during a span that began with 3:03 left in the fourth quarter and ended with 1:21 to play.
“We had some really good execution down the stretch, and Kyle was a major part of that,” coach Erik Spoelstra said, as the Heat (26-22) continues its homestand with an Eastern Conference finals rematch against the Boston Celtics on Tuesday (7:30 p.m., TNT). “They were bottling up some other stuff, and he just kind of went vintage there and made a lot of big plays going down the stretch.”
Butler deserves some credit for Lowry’s late-game spurt. Butler waved center Adebayo over to set the screen that helped create space for Lowry’s pull-up three with 3:03 remaining that began his run of nine points in a row and put Miami ahead by five points.
The Heat ran the same action on the next possession. Lowry used a screen from Adebayo and drove to his left before getting his defender to bite on a pump fake as he
converted on a stepthrough bank shot from five feet away, pushing Miami’s lead back up to five with 2:27 left.
A few seconds later, Butler motioned for others to space the floor for another Lowry-Adebayo pick-and-roll. Lowry took advantage of Adebayo’s screen to get downhill, driving to his left to get all the way to the rim for a layup to give the Heat a four-point advantage with 1:46 to play.
Lowry’s fourth-quarter scoring binge ended with Butler calling for a LowryAdebayo pick-and-roll for the fourth straight possession. Lowry again made the most of it, coming off Adebayo’s screen to dribble into a pull-up twopoint jumper from 18 feet to extend the Heat’s lead to three points with 1:21 remaining.
“Honestly, Jimmy was the reason that I was in the pick-and-roll,” Lowry said. “He just threw me the ball and told me to go make plays. It was one of those nights that it was kind of one of those coverages where I was able to see the floor and take advantage of the opportunity that I had, and that was that.”
Just by hitting those four shots to score nine points in less than two minutes on Sunday, Lowry set a season high for points in the fourth quarter. He closed the win with 17 points on 6-of-9 shooting from the field and 3-of-6 shooting from beyond the arc, two assists and four steals.
“For this particular stretch, that last three minutes, [Lowry] read that intuitively. Any time we were trying to make a pass, they were getting a deflection or a steal,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat committing 22 turnovers in Sunday’s win. “So it was more get to an action and let’s get a shot on goal. I think he felt that and he understood that.”
Herro added, regarding Lowry’s fourth-quarter surge: “I thought it was good to see. Kyle, he can do that any time he really wants. He’s a seasoned vet. He’s closed many games and a lot of big games.
“Right now, he’s just choosing to defer to me, Bam and Jimmy. But there are plenty of opportunities in front of us where he’ll be able to be aggressive and he knows that we all know that he can do that and he’s capable of that still.”
The challenge for Lowry is to find ways to generate his own offense more consistently moving forward in his 17th NBA season.
Lowry, 36, has averaged 12.8 points while shooting 40.9 percent from the field and 34 percent from three-point range and 5.4 assists per game this season. The last time Lowry averaged fewer than 13 points per game in a season was in his first year with the Toronto Raptors in 2012-13, the last time he shot worse than 41 percent from the field in a season was also in 201213, the last time he shot 34 percent or worse on threes in a season came in 201415 with the Raptors, and the last time he averaged fewer than six assists in a season came in 2009-10 with the Houston Rockets.
Lowry has also recorded a usage rate (an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while on the court) of 16.8 percent this season, which would be his lowest single-season usage rate since his rookie campaign in 2006-07 when he played in just 10 games with the Memphis Grizzlies.
“I think it’s just myself and Caleb [Martin], we’re kind of the guys that we’re ball-movers and kind of get Tyler, Bam and Jimmy, make their jobs easier,” Lowry said of his role in the Heat’s preferred starting lineup. “I think that’s the thing we’ve continued to try to do. Tyler has really been great with the pick-androll, Bam has been really good with his pocket-pass jump shots and Jimmy is Jimmy. So me and Caleb, we’re in there just trying to make those guys’ jobs easier.”
But this is a new role for Lowry, who is used to having the ball in his hands more often as evidenced by his low usage rate this season. Lowry is essentially being used as an off-ball floor spacer who scores most of his points on spot-up threes.
Spoelstra knows Lowry needs to become more involved to maximize the Heat offense’s potential. Miami entered Monday with the NBA’s 26thranked offensive rating this season ahead of only the struggling San Antonio Spurs, Detroit Pistons, Charlotte Hornets and Houston Rockets.
“Going forward, yes, what we’re trying to do is find a balance where everybody can be aggressive and assertive and we don’t want him to get lost in the sauce,” Spoelstra said of Lowry, who is the third-highest paid player on the Heat’s roster behind only Adebayo and Butler. “... Certainly when he’s aggressive and you have to play him in pickand-rolls, that makes us much more dynamic.”
As Lowry continues to work to find spots within games to be aggressive, he’s also been battling left knee discomfort that forced him to miss four straight games earlier this month. The left knee issue required treatment to alleviate some of the pain while he was out.
“It’s just adaptability is one of the things that I’ve been doing,” Lowry said. “It’s an adjustment. But that doesn’t matter at the end of the day. It’s about winning basketball games and doing it together.”