If you hadn’t heard, Kyle Lowry is a champion.
However, at one point in his basketball career the Toronto Raptors star point guard must’ve wondered if he’d ever hoist a meaningful trophy.
“After you put so much time and passion into this game, there’s a lot of emotion that gets attached to the idea of being a champion,” Lowry wrote in a Players’ Tribune article. “Having that validation. And the closer you get to realizing that goal without getting there — without actually reaching that pinnacle — the more it hurts.”
Lowry explained that he lost two high school championships and when he was at Villanova his teams were eliminated in the March Madness tournament by eventual national champions North Carolina and Florida in back-to-back years.
All his championship woes ended in 2019, of course, when Lowry, Kawhi Leonard and company led the Raptors to the first championship in franchise history.
Now that he’s been to the top, the 33-year-old sounds hungrier than ever to get back there.
“One thing I know for sure is that just winning a championship won’t fulfill you,” he explained. “It doesn’t feel like the end of a journey. Instead it pushes you. Because now it isn’t this dream or idea — now you know what it takes, and you know how it feels to get there. And once that happens, all you want is to do everything in your power to feel it again. That’s what’s driving me this year. That’s what got me up early to head right back to the gym a week after our parade.”
The Raptors open the 2019-20 campaign on Tuesday at home against the new-look New Orleans Pelicans minus superstar rookie Zion Williamson.
“Once that banner gets raised to the rafters, we won’t be looking up at it too long,” Lowry added. “All the focus will be on getting another one. Because that one isn’t going anywhere. It’s staying right there.”
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