Kyle Lowry keys comeback victory in glorious return to lineup

The tag-team champs are back again. Top guys. Clink me.

Raptors 105, Pistons 102 | Box Score | Quick Reaction | Reaction Podcast

For a little over five weeks, Toronto Raptors fans waited patiently.

Waited for information on the team’s injured All-Star point guard, who underwent surgery to remove loose bodies in his right wrist on Feb. 28. Waited to see whether a newfound defensive identity spurred by two trade deadline acquisitions was sustainable, and whether it could make the team a legitimate two-way threat when the point guard returned. Waited to see just how much the point guard’s All-Star counterpart could continue to evolve and improve, and whether the two complementary offensive pieces would be even deadlier when reunited. Waited to see just how good this team – a team that reached the Eastern Conference Finals a year ago hardly playing its best ball, that’s grown, that’s developed, that’s fortified, but that’s sputtered and fought off malaise and apathy at times since finding unlikely success – could be if and when all of the pieces were together at once.

All the while, there was the dreadful anticipation that all of the waiting would require more waiting, that a return from wrist surgery could carry with it a mini-slump, that said return might not come in time for the team to be playoff-ready, that there may be an adjustment period and an ironing out of unfamiliarity.

About 90 minutes before the Raptors tipped off against the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday, at least some of that waiting came to a halt. Kyle Lowry, 36 days after undergoing surgery and with just one partial practice and a few pre-game workouts under his belt, was returning to the lineup.

However the game turned out, this would be a positive. Lowry was returning with enough time to get as many as four games and a half-dozen practices in before the postseason, and with the Raptors unsure whether the third or fourth seed in the Eastern Conference was preferable, the focus could fall on comfort and chemistry rather than the bottom line. Anything Lowry showed short of complete disaster would be a step in the right direction, and if he looked solid, or even good, optimism could and likely would abound. This would be a process game if there ever were one.

For a half, some of the lingering concerns persisted. Lowry looked good more or less out of the gate, but the Raptors as a whole suffered from a bit of a post-Pacers beatdown hangover, a sort of Born Ready Dysentery. The defense was shaky from the word go, Segre Ibaka looked tired on what will mercifully be his final back-to-back of the year, DeMar DeRozan seemed perhaps a little too eager to have the offensive load off of his shoulders, and the team’s non-Lowry shooters were cold. The Pistons rolled to a 33-15 lead after a quarter and held a 10-point edge at halftime, one the Raptors let slip to 12 entering the fourth quarter. Cracks showed, and head coach Dwane Casey deviated from his plan (for a night) to go with something close to a tight playoff rotation thanks to early ineffectiveness from Jonas Valanciunas, a major rebounding deficit, and the apparent removal from even the 10-man rotation for Norman Powell, who was jumped by Delon Wright on the wing.

The fourth quarter marked the end of any more waiting. No more waiting for Lowry to return – he hit threes, he contested with verticality in transition, he zipped dimes, and he drew charges. No more waiting to figure out what the Raptors’ closing lineup might be – Casey went with the starters and P.J. Tucker in place of DeMarre Carroll, trusting Valanciunas opposite Andre Drummond and being rewarded heavily for his faith in the big man. No more waiting to see how Lowry might fit with Ibaka – the latter’s presence spotting up around the Lowry-DeRozan two-man game was appreciated, and the Pistons weren’t ready to handle the Raptors’ pet two-one pick-and-roll with a legitimate power forward outside and the Valanciunas threat inside. No more waiting to see if Lowry and DeRozan would need time to re-acclimate – they each finished with 10 assists and you could practically feel the mind-meld as they traded possessions down the stretch.

More than anything, there was no more waiting to see if Lowry was still the beating heart of this team, the engine, the Queen Bee, in Casey’s own words. DeRozan has carried an enormous load in his stead and is turning in one of the best seasons in franchise history. There’s little question of that. Lowry’s return provides an extra gear, makes life easier on DeRozan, and gives the team their most demonstrative non-Tucker avatar back. These two make each other better, and the waiting to see if they would be back ended emphatically. The Raptors dug themselves a hole and the Pistons turned to Lowry and posited a question. His answer:

In reality, Lowry’s answer was even more straightforward. Asked about hitting the ground running in his first game back, Lowry told the broadcast, “If I’mma play, ain’t no minutes restrictions on me, man…Ain’t no easy minutes. It’s going out here and going balls to the wall.”

Lowry’s balls-to-the-wall approach saw him play 42 minutes – Casey admitted after he had planned to keep his minutes down – score 27 points on 9-of-16 shooting, add five rebounds, dish 10 assists, and pick up two steals. It saw him pull the team from the brink of a second consecutive ugly defeat when he helped lead a comeback charge to start the fourth quarter, and it saw him settle right back in the groove him and his tag-team partner have been developing for years now in the second half of the frame. The Raptors trailed by as many as 20 points. They didn’t lead once until the final 90 seconds of the game. They pulled it out.

Down the stretch, the questions grew more granular, and that closing lineup was able to display some important quick-made chemistry as the game suddenly became winnable and felt like a big deal, psychologically. Ibaka’s play rebounded, DeRozan shook off a cold scoring start to the night with an excellent stretch run, Valanciunas played the entire fourth and got touches down the stretch, and Lowry fit in as well as had always been hoped and as well as made sense logically, but a degree to which couldn’t just be assumed, safely, without, you know, seeing it, feeling what this team the Raptors have been waiting on would look like in reality.

It looks like a beautiful ATO play for a DeRozan bucket.


It looks like Ibaka’s shooting proving invaluable after DeRozan draws a switch to a smaller defender on the two-one action.


It looks like Valanciunas being on the receiving end of a nice play call, read, and pass, and sticking the finish.


It looked like the Pistons scoring 22 points on 24 possessions in the fourth quarter, getting zero free-throw attempts and seeing their rebounding edge disappear, all while turning the ball over six times. (The Raptors oddly slowed things down a bit when super-small and were okay speeding things up when larger, but hey, whatever works.)

And of course, it looks the same as it ever did every once in a while, because DeRozan is just on that level right now.

There remain things to clean up with a week left in the regular season, of course. Lowry’s return is not a panacea, and some of the weaknesses that popped up late in the team’s 14-7 stretch without him, namely the defense over the last few games, will need to be addressed. Detroit has little business scoring 109.4 points per-100 possessions on this defense, Casey is going to need a game or two to find the best rotations, and there’s always a risk of complacency setting in without too much tangible on the line (although Wednesday’s events certainly make the three-seed look more attractive at the moment). The Raptors are not perfect, and they’ll need to play better than letting even a hungry Detroit team have their way for three quarters when the postseason opens next weekend.

There is time, and the Raptors know these things. The bigger picture is far more important here, and it now includes Lowry back in the frame. On Wednesday, the Raptors found a fourth-quarter gear that provides a glimpse of what they can be now that the waiting has ceased. That it’s ceased with a buffer period before the lights get a little brighter is all that really mattered in this one. The glimpse of what could be was just a reminder of what, exactly, you’ve been waiting on.

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