DeMar DeRozan is going to have company in Los Angeles.
Kyle Lowry will be announced as one of the reserves for the 2018 NBA All-Star Game on Tuesday, Michael Grange of Sportsnet first reported. The All-Star reserves are selected via vote from each conference’s coaches.
This marks the fourth season in a row in which Lowry has been selected to the All-Star Game, tying him with DeRozan for the third-most appearances in Toronto Raptors franchise history, each one behind Chris Bosh and Vince Carter. This is the third consecutive year in which both Lowry and DeRozan will represent the Raptors, something the franchise had only experienced once before (Carter and Antonio Davis in 2001).
It’s a continued nod to the success of the Raptors with Lowry and DeRozan co-managing at the helm, and for the first time, head coach Dwane Casey may be joining them. Brad Stevens is ineligible to coach in the All-Star Game since he coached last year, and so the Eastern Conference team with the best record excluding the Boston Celtics will send their coaching staff to the game. The Raptors have a four-game cushion on the Cleveland Cavaliers right now and only have seven games left before the Feb. 4 cut-off (Cleveland has six). No Raptors coach has ever coached in the All-Star Game, and while Casey has sternly downplayed its importance to him, it would be a nice recognition of his success over the past few years.
Casey has, however, campaigned quite hard for Lowry, who wasn’t a sure thing to be voted in by the coaches. Lowry was competing with Victor Oladipo, Bradley Beal, John Wall, Ben Simmons, Khris Middleton, Kemba Walker, and Goran Dragic for a maximum of four spots (two guards and two wild cards). The case for Lowry is a little more nuanced than a straight look at his stat line, both because Lowry’s numbers are muted some by a decreased role this year and because a lot of Lowry’s impact shows up off the box score, as usual.
Not that the numbers aren’t impressive. Lowry is averaging 17 points, and while he’s “only” shooting 42.5 percent, his ability to hit the three at a high volume and get to the line makes him quite efficient. Those 17 points have come on a 59.7 true-shooting percentage, which ranks sixth in the league among guards with an average usage rate or higher. He’s also averaging 6.7 assists, six rebounds, and 1.2 steals, numbers that also look better under an advanced lens. Lowry’s assist rate of 29.7 percent is 20th in the league among all players, for example, and his rebound rate of 10.3 percent is the highest in the league for any player 6-foot-2 or shorter (it’s also the highest ever, by a sizable margin, for a player 6-foot or under). He also leads the league in charges drawn, and while his defense isn’t quite where it was in recent years, he’s been mostly steady.
From a catch-all stat perspective, Lowry’s Win Shares rate and Box Plus-Minus are roughly in line with his averages for the last four years, albeit down some from his career-year last year. Real Plus-Minus ranks him 11th among all players in the NBA in wins produced, too, and Jacob Goldstein’s new PIPM metric has him 19th (and seventh using a multi-year formula). The Raptors have once again been great when Lowry’s on the floor, to the tune of plus-7 points per-100 possessions, and the fact that they haven’t suffered without him this year (plus-6.2) speaks to the team’s improved depth and DeRozan’s ascension more than Lowry making less of an impact.
Lowry, by the way, has an All-Star appearance as one of the bonuses in his contract (worth $200,000), though he needs to hit some other benchmarks for it to trigger. He also has bonuses for the Raptors making it certain distances in the post-season, and some other undisclosed bonuses that could impact the Raptors’ tax situation. They’re surely happy for him here regardless. As for the “he should just get the rest” crowd, it’s worth noting that Lowry is averaging his fewest minutes in years and that last year’s All-Star flare-up was more a case of hiding an issue thought to be minor than anything he did to himself there (and honestly, it might have been the golf that hurt it the most). The actual physical toll of All-Star Weekend is pretty low, you just have to hope that the right decisions are made if there’s anything nagging or lingering when that weekend comes.
Here are the rosters from the two conferences:
EASTERN CONFERENCE
Kyrie Irving
DeMar DeRozan
LeBron James
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Joel Embiid
—
Kyle Lowry
Bradley Beal
Kristaps Porzingis
Kevin Love
Al Horford
John Wall
Victor Oladipo
WESTERN CONFERENCE
Steph Curry
James Harden
Kevin Durant
Anthony Davis
DeMarcus Cousins
—
Damian Lillard
Russell Westbrook
LaMarcus Aldridge
Jimmy Butler
Draymond Green
Klay Thompson
Karl-Anthony Towns
From here, LeBron James and Steph Curry will pick for teams in a session that, insanely, won’t be televised. The rosters will be revealed Thursday on TNT.
