Kyle Lowry’s trip to Houston to watch Villanova win a national championship wasn’t a drain on his performance Tuesday. Quite the contrary, actually. Despite getting in at 4:30 a.m. and missing shootaround, Lowry managed to play 40 minutes, scoring 12 of his 21 points in the fourth quarter to help the Raptors seal their victory over the Charlotte Hornets.
Aside from making its star player happy, letting Lowry stay back in Texas to watch his alma mater also provided another benefit: Lowry brought a play back with him. With 2:44 left in the second quarter, the Raptors freed Lowry for a transition three that looked awfully familiar to anyone who watched the national championship game.
In that game, North Parolina’s Marcus Paige hit a ridiculous three that appeared to be sending the game to overtime. Without the benefit of a ball advance and only 4.7 seconds on the clock, Villanova had Ryan Arcidiacono bring the ball up the floor, with several screening actions resulting in trailing big man Kris Jenkins getting an open look from long-range to win the game and the championship. Here’s the play:
Arcidiacono gets a screen at midcourt, and then cuts toward the trailing Jenkins, but the play isn’t quite as simple as that, as SB Nation outlines (shout out to my former Beyond the Box Score editor Justin Bopp for the illustration):
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That’s a lot of action in the frontcourt to make sure no defender was in a strong position to close out on Jenkins.
Anyway, the Raptors used a similar play to get Lowry his second-quarter three, with Lowry playing the role of Jenkins and DeMar DeRozan in the Arcidiacono position. DeRozan catches an errant Hornets shot under the bucket, essentially in the position he’d receive an inbound pass. He then pushes the ball up the floor slowly, allowing the frontcourt to get into better position for a play in semi-transition. Lowry slows even further behind the play, and Jonas Valanciunas runs alongside DeRozan in the event he needs to be freed by a screen (he doesn’t).
Valanciunas makes a rim-run to draw the corner help, occupy Spencer Hawes, and bump Kemba Walker, while Norman Powell and Jason Thompson float to the corners, and DeRozan hits the brakes. Lowry follows, stepping right into his catch-and-shoot motion.
Here’s the whole thing:
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OK, so this probably wasn’t co-opted from Jay Wright. It’s just a similar result, and NBA teams surely all have plays designed to get a quick three without using a timeout. But it’s at least entertaining that Lowry hit such a similar look after being literally the most excited Villanova fan in existence a night prior.
Lowry on his reaction after the Jenkins winner: “I jumped higher than I ever jumped in my career. It was an amazing moment”
— Josh Lewenberg (@JLew1050) April 6, 2016
A photo posted by Kyle Lowry (@kyle_lowry7) on
