Game tied, the seconds on the clock ticking away as the volume from a raucous Air Canada Centre crowd reached a crescendo, opposite the best player of this generation and a four-time MVP, and with his partner in crime struggling from an illness, everything fell on the shoulders of Kyle Lowry on Friday night.
Win or lose, the Toronto Raptors would downplay the importance of the outcome. It’s “just one of 82” was repeated all day leading up to the showdown with the Cleveland Cavaliers and would be afterward, because that’s what teams preach and what players say. Nevermind that a win would put the Raptors just two games back of the top spot in the Eastern Conference and would give them the season series – and thus the tiebreaker – against the Cavs, while a loss would essentially end their chase in earnest.
The crowd clearly wasn’t buying that it was just another game. Somewhat slow to fill in, the ACC faithful remained muted as the Cavs opened an early lead. A Raptors run to even things woke them, and they wouldn’t rest again. Even as the Cavs later built a 14-point lead, the excitement remained palpable, the crowd exploding for every perceived blown call, every Bismack Biyombo alley-oop, and every ridiculous Lowry bucket, growing in degree-of-difficulty by the possession. LeBron James gave Toronto’s home court dap before the game, and he got exactly what he was expecting from them.
The Raptors would have cover, were they to lose. DeRozan and Cory Joseph were under the weather, the former missing a chunk of the second half and turning in one of his worst offensive nights of the season. DeMarre Carroll, the team’s would-be James-stopper, remains sidelined. Ineffectiveness for Luis Scola and foul trouble for several others forced Anthony Bennett, of all people, into spot duty, and any game that involves Bennett gets an asterisk. Jonas Valanciunas missed a stretch after eating a James elbow to the bread basket, too. And, again, it’s “just one of 82.”
Win, and the Raptors would downplay it as the same. The Cavs are the Cavs, but it’s a regular season game on home court, Cleveland was without Mo Williams, Kyrie Irving was off his game, and Goliath never gets up for the battle quite as much as David. They’d still be two games back. Their focus is firmly on postseason success, and they have to get better before mid-April. Which they do, but saying as much ignores that, admit it or not, Cleveland at least represented a chance to see how far the Raptors have come and how far they still have left to go.
And so with the game tied, clock dwindling, pesky Matthew Dellavedova guarding, and his teammates only running action to create safety-valve options, everything fell on the shoulders of Lowry.
“He knew that it was on his back,” head coach Dwane Casey said afterward. “He did an excellent job of leading the team and finishing the game out, especially with those guys feeling rough.”
Lowry ate up some time, and with 6.2 on the game clock and 3.2 on the shot clock, he jabbed at Dellavedova, stepped back nearly to the 3-point line to create space, and let fly.
Bang. And Lowry shrugged, like he saw this coming all along, since the day he signed his four-year contract, an agreement to lead this franchise where it’s never been before. And maybe he did – he really has been good enough this season to expect the world of himself, and the Raptors likewise expect the world of him.
“It’s never a surprise to me,” DeRozan said of Lowry’s performance. “It’s more so entertaining to watch because I feel like I have the luxury to say that’s my point guard.”
Watch that clip again and turn the volume up. The ACC shook when Lowry sank that shot. There are so few home-court moments like this, so few occasions on which a game – and, if you’re of the more recency biased mind, the season to date – comes down to a single possession, allowing 19,800 people to share a mind, an emotion, and an anxiety. There’s a reason this team is playing so well at home, why opposing players give lip service to the quality of the crowd, and why the All-Star Game was held here. This is a terrific sports city, with some terrific teams and some terrific players, and yes, terrific crowds. There were no hushed tones for the final three seconds.
The bucket not only gave the Raptors a 99-97 lead, it also gave Lowry a career-high of 43 points. Somehow, despite the tortured nature of the oft-moribund franchise, the game’s final possession almost felt a foregone conclusion. There were nerves, obviously; no Raptors fan is quite delusional enough to Nick Young away from the screen or court and assume victory. But so much momentum has been building for this team, this franchise, and this city, that Lowry sinking the step-back felt like too big a moment to not close the game. The fact that he set a career-high in the process, on a night he had to more or less carry the offense, in a season in which he’s taken his play to a level only Vince Carter has touched in a Raptors uniform, felt all too fitting.
The Cavs called timeout.
Then they called timeout again. Then Bismack Biyombo deflected a Kevin Love inbound pass out of bounds. When Love finally got a pass inside the lines, it set up a wild LeBron James misfire.
Raptors win. Lowry sets a career high with a masterful 15-of-20, 43-point, nine-assist performance that also saw him turn in a pretty stout defensive effort. The Raptors move to two games back of the Cavs. They also win a franchise-record 10th home game in a row. And, naturally, the one-of-82 platitudes begin again.
“It was a good game and we enjoyed it,” Lowry said, humble and knowingly defiant. “It was a matchup that we take one game at a time. It’s no measuring stick. It was just a game for us to get better.”
It wasn’t just a game, though. Even if the Raptors didn’t want it to be and don’t want to admit it – and even if they honestly don’t feel that way – it was bigger.
It was a performance, likely the best and most dominant of Lowry’s career. It was an evening, one of the best in-attendance experiences on the ACC’s resume. It was a moment, the photo of DeRozan mobbing Lowry at the buzzer submitting itself for entry into the pantheon of iconic Raptors stills. It was a reminder, to those asleep at the wheel of their fandom, that after the name Steph Curry, Lowry’s appears in a small handful of MVP runner-up candidates, and to those in the know, of just how good Raptors fans have it to call a player this good, at the very top of his game, their own.
And it was a statement, that if it comes down to it – and to be clear, the Raptors remain correct that there’s plenty of work to do before that conversation’s warranted – the Raptors can hang with the Cavaliers. That’s what employing a superstar allows you to do.
Asked after the game about the difficulty of potentially voting for All-NBA teams, Patrick Patterson submitted, “If I had a vote, it’s Kyle for everything.”
Actually, Pat, it’s Kyle Lowry Over Everything.
