He spoke glowingly about the all-star weekend coming north a year from now: “It’s going to be crazy. Book your tickets now.” He unfailingly deferred credit for his squad’s unprecedented success to others: “One man goes down and the next guy’s got to step up. That’s how we roll on our team.” And he talked, too, about the game he uses as an escape from his day job. He said that as much as his competitive streak serves him well on the golf course — Curry said Lowry “talks a lot of smack about his (golf) game” — an 18-hole round demands a distinctly different focus than is required in leading, say, a fourth-quarter comeback. Said Lowry: “You go from trying to run everyone over and going fast to being patient, slow, and having time to think about what you want to try to do.” He repeated those last few words making air quotes — “Try to do” — and then he laughed.
Ujiri credits Lowry for running with the opportunity to lead the Raptors | Ottawa Citizen
“I am super (proud),” Ujiri said, before boarding a flight to New York for the weekend’s all-star festivities. “I texted him yesterday and I told him, I’m so proud of him.” “People made all this stuff up, once he takes the contract, he’s going to take the contract and run, he’s going to come back out of shape, blah blah blah,” Ujiri said. “It’s not easy for people to keep hearing all this stuff, I think Kyle has handled it really well, I’m really proud of him.”
The 29-year-old Lowry has taken a longer, bumpier route to this weekend’s all-star game in New York than the NBA superstars he’ll be dishing out assists to. There were stops in Memphis and Houston, and by the time he arrived in Toronto he’d been painted with the reputation of being a tough guy to coach. Toronto has brought out the best in Lowry. He’s averaging a career-high 18.8 points a night, and continues to endear himself to fans with his heart and hustle. He is the team leader in taking charges, a lunging and diving example of a putting one’s body on the line.
Quick: Who has been the second-best Raptor this year, behind Kyle Lowry? The default answer is DeRozan, an all-star year ago, but he missed 21 games with a groin injury (and has not played up to his level of a year ago when he has been healthy). Lou Williams has been better than the Raptors could have hoped, and he scored 27 points against Washington on Wednesday, but he is mostly a one-dimensional player (but what a dimension). Jonas Valanciunas has the second highest player efficiency rating on the team, but remains a defensive liability. Amir Johnson is a different player from one night to the next. James Johnson’s role has varied too much to consider him. That leaves … Patrick Patterson? Patterson’s per-game averages of 8.5 points and 5.7 rebounds are ordinary, and his PER is just slightly above average. However, he is adaptable and the most agile big-man defender on the team — key for the Raptors, who struggle to stop the ball at the first line of attack. “He’s probably playing the most consistent basketball defensively and offensively as anybody for us individually,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said.
After each game, everyone in the family room makes the short trip down the ACC concourse to a secondary one across from the Raptors locker area, where players and coaches greet their families before heading to the parking lot. Brenda Casey describes the area as “like a doctor’s waiting room”—only with far more comfortable seating. It’s a Sunday night, and the Raptors have just lost a heartbreaker to the New Orleans Pelicans, coughing up a nine-point lead late in the fourth. With 1.6 seconds remaining, DeRozan got a decent look for a game-winning triple, but the shot didn’t fall. “He was fouled,” his fiancée, Kiara, says moments afterward, “but [the refs] wouldn’t call that.” Within five minutes, the “waiting room” has filled with friends and families, who sit in near-silence. The tension is palpable; an NFL playoff game on television offers a much-needed distraction. DeRozan is the first player in the room. He offers a few terse greetings to familiar faces, and then makes a beeline for his two-year-old daughter, Diar, and Kiara, who is celebrating her birthday (Doyle’s granddaughter baked cupcakes and decorated the family room for the occasion). DeRozan picks up Diar, plants a huge kiss on her cheek and plops down in a chair, holding his daughter firmly in his lap.
It’s those huge games that Williams can put up coming off the bench that stick with the fans, his teammates and even the coaches. Williams has scored over 30 points twice this season and set a new career high of 36 points against the Cavaliers in Cleveland. In the 18 contests Williams has scored 18 or more points, he is shooting 46.1 percent from the field, 41.7 percent from three point range, getting to the free throw line over 7 times and the Raptors have a record of 15 wins to just 3 loses. When Williams is hot, the Raptors win games by over 9 points on average. However, when Williams is cold, Toronto is often headed for a rough evening. The good news has been Williams has only failed to score in double digits 12 times this season and the Raptors still managed to win five of those games. On those dozen cold nights, Williams shot 18.6 percent from the field and 18.2 percent from three-point range and he was taking almost 4 long range bombs before shutting it down or being shut down by Casey. A shooter has to believe the next one is going in, but when it isn’t happening, it can be painful to watch.
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The Raptors have been up-and-down defensively, and if this was displayed on a chart quarter by quarter, the graph would be all over the place. The Raptors have been switching on all perimeter screens, which was a reason for some easy scores, and players getting into foul trouble. There were various situations where screens were being switched, and Jonas Valanciunas would end up guarding Jarrett Jack at the top of the 3-point line, or Kyle Lowry would be stuck trying to out-muscle Nene with his back-to-the-basket. Neither of those scenes are ideal in any case, so why are the Raptors consistently finding themselves in bad situations? Only reasons to think of are either the unwillingness to fight through screens, or poor communication. Since their 13-3 start to the season, the defence had significantly dropped in it’s communication. They’ve got to start fighting through screens, blitzing, hedging, and communicating when things go array. The team had settled to turning it on and off. Since already mentioning the “turning it on and off,” the Raptors have acted and played with an attitude as if they’ve already won an NBA championship; they’re only 19 games over .500. They’ve allowed teams to get back into games, and they’ve come back from large deficits. It’s allowed them to survive bad starts, but it’s also thrown great starts and great runs right out the window. A lot of what fans and analysts are seeing from the team when adversity hits is the team’s inability to have a consistent mindset and attitude; they’ve lost some of the hunger which made this team so dangerous. Again, the Raptors have proven to be one of the league’s best teams, but they’ve accomplished nothing but an un-guaranteed high seed in the temperamental Eastern conference. Their hunger must be revived in order for them to continue on the path that’ll lead them to success into the play-offs.
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By the end of December, the Raptors were 24-8 and leading the Eastern Conference, the first time they had ever done so that late in the season. Lowry was named Eastern Conference Player of the Month after averaging 22 points, nine assists and four rebounds per game (he’d eventually get voted in as an All-Star starter as well). Everything was going right. Raptors fans were overjoyed, and in a foolish display of hubris, they let their guards down.
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