So much for day-to-day.
Kyle Lowry will undergo surgery Tuesday to remove loose bodies from his right wrist, the Toronto Raptors announced Monday. Lowry’s aim is to return in time for the postseason. On the dimmest of bright sides, Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical reports that it’s possible Lowry could return in four-to-five weeks, early enough to get some regular season games in before the playoffs.
This is quite the reversal of course from Sunday, when head coach Dwane Casey said that there was nothing significant revealed in the diagnostic testing on Lowry’s wrist, and that the All-Star point guard was day-to-day with a sore wrist. Lowry first felt soreness in the wrist nearly two weeks ago, awaking uncomfortable following the team’s victory over Charlotte. Thinking nothing of it, Lowry said little, going about his All-Star Weekend plans while treating the soreness symptomatically with ice. When soreness persisted out of the eight-day layoff – Lowry participated in the 3-Point Contest and All-Star Game during that time – he was held out of Friday’s game and set for testing. Initially, there was optimism. This is obviously not as rosy an outcome as the team initially put forth, and whatever the specifics behind the scenes, this is obviously a very bad look for Lowry and the Raptors.
This is also, of course, about as close to a disaster scenario as you can concoct for the Raptors. Yes, the Raptors are 3-0 without their “Queen Bee” this season, but they’ve also been 13.7 points per-100 possessions better with him on the floor than off of it. Since the start of 2012-13, the Raptors have outscored opponents by 1,218 points with Lowry on the floor and been outscored by 200 points when he sits. He’s averaging 22.8 points, 4.8 rebounds, 6.9 assists, and 1.4 steals while knocking down 41.7 percent of his threes. He ranks seventh in the entire NBA in Win Shares and VORP, 11th in Box Plus-Minus, and fourth in Real Plus-Minus. He is, without question, one of the most important players to their team’s success in the entire NBA, and losing him is a massive blow.
The biggest burden here falls on DeMar DeRozan, Lowry’s tag-team partner and fellow All-Star. Luckily for the Raptors, DeRozan isn’t exactly Marty Jannetty when the two are separated, and while the team’s been better when Lowry is the lone star by the numbers, DeRozan has been incredible in the games Lowry’s missed. Life is much, much harder for DeRozan in those scenarios, though, with defenses able to load up to trap him or force the ball out of his hands. Lowry is also the team’s best 3-point shooter, and DeRozan’s now down his best option to kick the ball out to, and the person who helps provide him space more than anyone. DeRozan absolutely has the talent to manage around that, as he has in back-to-back games out of the break, but it’s taxing, and there will be nights where he needs help from around the roster.
In 56 games, Lowry was also averaging a league-high 37.7 minutes, and those have to be accounted for by Cory Joseph, Delon Wright, and Fred VanVleet. Point guard depth is a strength of this team, and there’s reason to be optimistic about each player’s chances of contributing. At the same time, you’re talking about someone who was nearly out of the rotation before the break and two players who essentially amount to rookies. Yes, Joseph can be a strong defender, and he’s been nothing short of a God-send with Lowry out. Wright has long looked NBA-ready, with a funky and tough-to-guard offensive style and the length to be a disruptive factor on the defensive end. VanVleet has some Lowry to his game, an undersized “bulldog,” in the words of Casey. The Raptors have to hope that those three can keep the point guard position afloat.
(The Raptors could theoretically dive into the buyout market for help, adding a Brandon Jennings or Jose Calderon. Doing so would require cutting VanVleet, a player the team is high on and believes can give them minutes right now, and they may not be willing to do that just to stem the tide for a few weeks. It’s an option, though.)
This also stands to shift more minutes to wing players. Casey is unlikely to rely as heavily on lineups with two point guards now, which means there’s a full wing rotation to split between DeRozan, DeMarre Carroll, Norman Powell, and P.J. Tucker. Powell’s shown some juice as a secondary shot-creator, and the Raptors will hope against hope he can find some consistency to that part of his game with regular run. Carroll and Tucker are lower-usage players, but they’re smart ones capable of attacking a closeout and making the right pass to keep the play moving. Serge Ibaka, Patrick Patterson, and Jonas Valanciunas all take on more importance in their roles, too, as DeRozan will need players around him to knock down open looks he creates or even take some touches off of his already substantial workload.
All three of those swingmen behind DeRozan, and Ibaka and Patterson are also quality defenders, which might be the real shift here for Toronto. Lowry is a two-way menace, but his absence simply can’t be made up for on the offensive end. What the Raptors can do, largely thanks to their new additions, is continue their shift to being more of a two-way team. They held Boston to the lowest offensive rating they’ve held a playoff team to since Dec. 23 on Friday, for example, and their new, switch-heavy closing lineup bottled up a difficult Portland frontcourt by getting aggressive at the point of attack, talking a ton, and moving frantically behind the ball-handler. That Masai Ujiri and company added Tucker and Ibaka now looks like a serious floor-saver rather than a ceiling-lifter, and they’ll be counted on far more than initially expected.
There are the slightest of silver linings here, but none of them come anywhere close to making up for the loss of Lowry. It’s a chance to see what life is like without him. Maybe it lowers his value in contract talks if the team plays well without him. It’s the rest he probably should have been getting anyway, just in a higher dose. The Raptors weren’t going to catch Boston for the No. 2-seed, anyway, and they might be able to hang well enough to still compete for the three-seed. Joseph has been strong when filling in over the last two years, and Wright has been really impressive. Bleach is actually delicious. These things may be true, but they’re hard to focus on in the immediate aftermath of one of the Raptors’ stars hitting the shelf for an extended period. Given it’s a wrist injury, there’s also the concern of Lowry being uncomfortable once he’s back and taking some time to find his shooting form. It’s his dominant hand, after all, and the track record of players hitting the ground running off of wrist injuries is somewhat spotty.
The next few weeks could be trying. The Raptors have a relatively easy schedule, but they draw Washington twice, Indiana thrice, and Miami three times, too. They’re embattled in a fight for playoff positioning, where one spot in the standings could mean the difference between home court in the first round or, if they survive all of this, Cleveland in the second round. It saps the energy out of a three-game winning streak and two fun deadline acquisitions. It leaves the Raptors looking over their shoulders constantly, and it stands to leave Raptors fans on the edge of panic for the entirety of his absence. Perhaps more frustrating than anything (other than the P.R. perspective of all of this) is that the Raptors are losing precious time to develop a chemistry with Lowry at the helm of their new look, and they’ll essentially spend the rest of the season – and perhaps part of the playoffs – trying to familiarize and re-familiarize.
This final trimester was supposed to be about getting back to who they were, or finding a new them, and getting in form for the postseason. Now it’s about just surviving. No, the Raptors aren’t at much risk of missing the postseason, with their magic number already down to 16. They own a tiebreaker over the Celtics if it matters and would own one over the Wizards by splitting the series this week. And there is probably enough on the roster – especially if they lock in defensively – to weather the storm. But this is unquestionably terrible news, and it makes the final seven weeks of the Raptors season much, much more difficult.
