CLEVELAND — Kyle Lowry walked across the floor of Quicken Loans Arena looking like an old man with an arthritic hip, so gingerly was he favouring his sprained left ankle.
He looked even older as he climbed down a couple of steps from the podium after his post-game press conference. He used the handrails as crutches, even then wincing with each step.
But being a professional athlete means always believing the impossible can be done. It’s part of the job description until it can’t be done at all.
So Lowry says he plans to play Friday when the Raptors return the best-of-seven second-round series against the Cleveland Cavaliers to the friendly confines of the Air Canada Centre.
He plans to defy the long odds placed on him by his own physiology after a terrifying moment early in the third quarter of the Raptors’ 125-103 loss to the Cavaliers when Cleveland’s Tristan Thompson threw aside Norm Powell, who rolled into Lowry’s left leg as he planted it on the floor.
Lowry went down and stayed down. Later he admitted he was relieved he hadn’t shredded his knee rather than rolled up the inside of his ankle. He says he sensed what was happening in a microsecond and was able to create enough room that his ankle took Powell’s weight and not his knee. LeBron James watched it and he was as worried as anyone else.
"I saw it, it didn’t look that great," said James. "I just wanted him to get up, he’s a good friend of mine, a respected guy in our league."
Lowry stayed down for a while as his teammates gathered around him with grave concern, but after a quick trip to the dressing room he came back to play before the game got truly out of hand and intends to play again in Game 3.
"I didn’t see the replay," Lowry said. "I know what happened. It was kind of scary [and] it’s painful, but I’m not going to complain about it. I’m gonna get treatment, and get ready to play in Game 3."
You would never want to doubt him and Lowry is as tough as they come, but it would seem like a long shot given how sore his ankle was after he cooled down post-game, the pain and swelling likely to get worse overnight.
But professional athletes are like that. They don’t admit defeat until defeated.
And as Lowry is looking at his ankle, the Raptors are looking at their predicament — down 2-0 to the high-flying Cavs — and not yet ready to admit what from every angle looks like the inevitable: for the second-year in a row, the Cavaliers are going to end the Raptors’ season.
It’s just a matter of when. But right now, it looks like it won’t take long.
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That’s from the outside. From within the Raptors have a handy example they turn to. It was a year ago that Toronto lost the first two games of the Eastern Conference Finals by an aggregate of 50 points and won two games at home before losing to the Cavs in six.
Their refusal to go quietly has been a point of pride as they have geared up for the rematch against the Cavaliers.
So having been blown out twice in Cleveland (the 11-point margin in Game 1 flattered by a Raptors surge in garbage time), Toronto won’t concede that they can’t come back to Cleveland next week with the series tied again.
"We’re in the same place we were in last year," said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey. "Until a team wins on another team’s court, it’s not a series … they played well, we shake their hands. They played great [but] we haven’t scratched the surface of where we can go. We take our butt whooping and go home."
But that defiance, that optimism in the face of insurmountable odds — how do you expect to win four of the next five games against a team that beat you by an average margin of 24 points a game over the past two playoff series? — doesn’t obscure that the Raptors did indeed get their butts whooped by the Cavaliers.
The insertion of Norm Powell and Patrick Patterson into the starting lineup in place of Jonas Valanciunas and DeMarre Carroll produced a total of 11 points. The hope that having more quickness, and a better ability to switch and rotate against the Cavs three-point happy attack? There was no impact.
Cleveland made their first nine triples, and shot 18-of-33 from deep on the night and 54.7 per cent overall from the floor while getting to the free-throw line 34 times. There was some hope having the aggressive, ball-handling Powell on the floor would somehow suck up some of LeBron’s energy. Not even close, as James went off for 39 points on 14 shots, including four triples. He made 21 trips to the line himself. James added four assists, made three steals and blocked two shots. He passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for second place on the all-time post-season scoring list. He has Michael Jordan in view.
The Raptors have yet to even hint at having an answer for how to contain him and as long as the Cavs are winning the three-point line so decisively — Toronto shot just 5-of-17 — they won’t be beaten.
The Raptors trailed by 12 after the first quarter, and 14 at half — in the first half of their last five playoff games in Cleveland, the Raptors have now trailed by a total of 95 points — before a 21-8 Cavs run to end the third quarter gave Cleveland a 26-point lead heading into the fourth quarter.
By that point Lowry’s night was done. There was no point in grinding his ankle any further in a lost cause.
And while this is where it’s tempting to grind the Raptors, the reality is more likely they’re David taking on Goliath without a slingshot, while Goliath has an arsenal they can choose from, regardless of what the situation requires.
"They’re getting good looks, they’re getting in the paint, they’re taking tough shots," said Lowry. "LeBron hit a couple threes with guys on him. It’s definitely discouraging during the game, but you’ve got to find ways to be positive, think about ways to: OK, what can we do next? What can we do better? Or how can we not let them get that three? Or what’s the next move? They’re shooting the ball extremely [well]…they made 18 threes tonight, they shot 54 per cent. That’ll win you a game."
And a series. The Raptors did get a boost from Valanciunas who scored 23 points on 10 shots, 19 in the first half, as his teammates found him open in the paint as the Cavs put most of their energy into trapping DeRozan.
Lowry was at his best with 15 of his 20 points in his most aggressive first half of the playoffs, a necessity given he averaged 28 points on 63 per cent shooting in the two games the Raptors won against Cleveland in the playoffs last year.
But the Cavs were successful taking away DeRozan, limiting him to five points on 11 shots, while fouling him in the act of shooting only once. It was a masterclass.
And then Lowry got tangled up with Powell.
The Raptors aren’t going anywhere without big efforts from their big stars. "At the end of the day we’re going to go where Kyle and DeMar go," said Casey.
Well, Lowry’s ankle is so sore he can barely walk and DeRozan is coming off one of the worst post-season games of his career. Meanwhile, the Cavaliers are playing their best basketball of 2016-17, finally jarred from their season-long slumber by the siren of the playoffs.
"They’re defending champs, and they’re looking… you know… that’s what they look like right now," said Lowry. "They’re playing extremely well."
The Raptors task — winning four of the next five — seems impossible, like playing a playoff game 48 hours after tearing up your ankle.
But trying to do impossible things is in the job description. So Lowry will try to will his ankle into game shape, and the Raptors will try to convince themselves that they can slay Goliath, down 0-2, even with a limp, even with the elastic broken in their slingshot.
