TORONTO — During halftime Tuesday, when his team was up by a mere 21 points in what was eventually a 118-95 deconstruction of the Boston Celtics, Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse pulled Kyle Lowry aside.
“I said, ‘We’ve got 66 points and you don’t have any of them,’” Nurse remembered. “I mean, he had five, or four, or something at the half. And I said, ‘You’re playing great, man.’ It doesn’t bother him. He’s got eight assists, we’ve got 19 assists as a team. It feels to me like he’s playing pretty peak level.”
Lowry had five first-half points, for the record. And his night wasn’t going to get much better, scoring-wise. But that’s the thing. The Raptors were on fire. They were playing as well as they have in weeks, months, maybe all season. They bum-rushed a deep, well-coached Boston team with an all-around talent level that belies its position in the Eastern Conference standings. And Lowry had his hands in all of it. There’s a case to be made that he had the best night of any Raptor to touch the floor.
“He made so many winning plays,” fellow guard Jeremy Lin said after the game. “There’s so many things he does that don’t show up on the stat sheet. I wish I could help everybody understand that or see that at the level that players who play on the same team with him do.”
Let’s try. He ambushed an offensive rebound and threw a secondary assist without a foot on the floor:
He set up Pascal Siakam for an and-one with a perfectly-weighted, over-the-shoulder pass like he was Aaron Rodgers:
He had the game’s best non-play when, a split-second after Marc Gasol drew a charge, he blocked a Jayson Tatum attempt into the shadow realm:
Despite missing four of the five shots he took, Lowry went into the locker room at halftime with game-highs in assists (eight), rebounds (five), and plus/minus (21). He played effortful, hounding defence; he hit an early-clock, pull-up three in the midst of an 18-0 run; he drew his team-leading 20th charge of the season. He played so well in the second quarter that Nurse didn’t dare take him off the floor, leaving him out for the entire dozen minutes.
Lowry played the first eight minutes of the third quarter as well, stretching his marathon shift to 20 consecutive minutes of game time. By the end of the night, he had only seven points on 2-of-6 shooting. But he was a plus-18 with 11 assists and six boards. He filled up two box scores — the literal one, and the figurative one for all the little things that don’t end up in box scores.
“He played great for us, man. Regardless if he’s shooting well or not, he makes winning plays. That’s what’s going to get us over the edge — him executing and making the right plays,” said Danny Green. “He’s going to scrap, rebound, get some steals, take some charges, and do the little things that we need him to do for us to win the game.”
And we can go on. Lowry deflected a team-high four passes. No one else had more than one. He tied with Serge Ibaka for the team lead in contested shots with nine, and Kawhi Leonard for the lead in fouls drawn with five. He played 35 minutes, five more than any other player in the game, and was still one of the most active, talkative Raptors on the bench during stoppages in play.
“That’s our general. He’s our leader,” Siakam said. “He does everything that he needs to do to make us successful. It doesn’t matter what day it is, if it’s scoring or passing or taking charges — he always does the right thing for us. That’s why he’s our leader.”
Every once in a while, Lowry has one of these hyper-engaged nights. The kind when he reminds everyone just how integral he is to this team’s success. When he proves once again that the Raptors will go only as far as he’ll take them.
Leonard’s uncommonly talented in a league of uncommon talents, and capable of carrying an offence with little help from the four players operating around him. Siakam’s a monster, and liable to be Toronto’s best player on any given night if defences don’t respect his ability. Ibaka and Gasol form one of the NBA’s most capable centre tandems, and will have games in which they give opposition big men fits. But Lowry’s the one who can make them all click at once.
When Lowry’s humming, when he’s setting up Leonard with back-door bounce-passes, when he’s operating effectively with Ibaka or Gasol in pick-and-rolls, when he’s throwing outlet bombs to a streaking Siakam in transition, the Raptors look like the team they’re supposed to be.
Which is to say nothing of Lowry’s ability to score himself. For one reason or another, his shooting’s suffered this season — and Tuesday’s game was no exception. He’s currently hitting only 34 per cent of his attempts from deep, which stands in stark contrast to the 40-per-cent rate he posted over the last three seasons combined. If his shot starts to fall, if he begins hitting threes even marginally more often than he has been, the Raptors just add another way to beat you.
And maybe this is the start of something for Lowry. This season’s been a strange one for him. He’s been in and out of the lineup due to a back issue, hot and cold with his shot. And he’s yet to hit that pissed-off, prove-a-point, King-Kong-ain’t-got-nothing-on-me gear he reaches at his best. Tuesday’s game might be the closest we’ve seen.
“Winner and floor general,” Lin said, asked to describe Lowry’s game. “He’s just a winner, man. That’s all he cares about. He cares about doing things the right way. He’s just a bulldog. He’s everywhere. He doesn’t back down from anybody. It’s definitely fun to suit up alongside him and go to battle.”
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