TORONTO — Like everyone, Nick Nurse was in a bit of a daze Sunday afternoon. Less than two hours after haunting word first emerged of Kobe Bryant’s death along with his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others in a helicopter crash, Nurse’s team was on the floor in San Antonio playing the Spurs. It was a lot to process.
So forgive the Toronto Raptors head coach for not realizing just how torrential Pascal Siakam’s start to that game was — he scored 25 in the first quarter alone — until he grabbed a halftime stat sheet. Nurse’s eyes went wide.
“I mean, I knew he was cooking,” Nurse said before Tuesday night’s 130-114 steamrolling of the Atlanta Hawks. “If it would have said 15 I would have believed that. But I didn’t have any idea he had 30 at that point.”
The 25 first-quarter points set a franchise record, and the 30 by halftime were more than Siakam scored in all but five of his 80 games last season. You know, the one that was supposed to be his breakout.
Thing is he’s just kept breaking things since, which is why Siakam’s name will be read as one of the Eastern Conference’s starters at next month’s NBA all-star game in Chicago. All things considered, he really should have been playing in that showcase last season. This time around, he gave them no choice.
His consistency’s the thing. Early in the season, when Siakam mixed a couple of cold nights in among efforts of 30- and 40-plus points, it was a knock against him. He’s still learning how to operate as the focal point of the offence. Teams are game-planning for him now. Can he be The Guy?
And then he just smashed it all to pieces. Siakam was on another level over a nine-game stretch this December before a groin injury brought things to a halt and forced him to miss 11 straight contests. And after taking a few games to find his sea legs upon his return, he’s right back at it.
Just named the Eastern Conference player of the week, Siakam began Tuesday’s game with an and-one on Toronto’s first possession. Moments later, he banked in a floater on an end-to-end drive. And moments after that, he put Kevin Huerter on skates before drilling a three in his face.
He finished with 24 points and nine rebounds on what could be considered an off night by his standards. Just how apt any of Siakam’s early-season criticism was is a matter of opinion. Just know that, no matter how transcendent a player you are, they’ll always find a way to poke holes in your game. Bryant’s career is a good example.
Kyle Lowry’s is, too. No player has been more important, impactful, or indispensable to this golden era of Raptors basketball than him. Tuesday night, he became the franchise’s leader in assists with 3,771. And while the gravitational pull of Siakam’s rise has vacuumed deserved attention and praise, it’s not often enough said that Lowry is playing about as well as he has in his career, too.
“If that guy’s not on an all-star ballot, considering the last 18 months, the last six months, and where our team is — that’s unfathomable to me,” Nurse said of his point guard. “That anybody that has decent knowledge of the game or the NBA would keep him off, it wouldn’t make sense to me. It wouldn’t make any sense to me at all.”
Still, while Siakam’s all-star credentials are overt, Lowry’s are less obvious. You won’t find him in the top 10 of any counting categories aside from charges drawn, which isn’t traditionally cited among all-star criteria. He hasn’t had many truly prolific scoring nights this season, reaching 30 points on only four occasions. So far he has just six double-doubles, and one triple-double to his name.
By way of contrast, Trae Young — the all-star starter who scored 18 with 13 assists Tuesday night as his Hawks fell to 12-36 — has 18 double-doubles, two triple-doubles, and 23 nights of 30 points or more this season on a very, very bad team.
What Lowry does have is an essentially endless catalogue of hustle plays made, which lead directly to his team winning games. They crop up in all quarters but they’re never more apparent and appreciable than when they occur in crucial, late-game moments.
Take that win over San Antonio on Sunday. As Fred VanVleet missed a three with his team up by two and 20 seconds remaining, Lowry snuck into the paint and ambushed Spurs rebounder Dejounte Murray, causing him to fumble the ball out of bounds and give the Raptors possession.
Or how about a couple nights earlier, when Lowry plucked an inbounds pass out from under New York Knicks forward Julius Randle in the dying moments, stealing another critical possession for his team.
That inbounds play was actually a design the Raptors used to run years ago, which Lowry recognized in real time and countered. It’s not as easy as it looks.
When you watch Lowry often, you tend to get used to all these unlikely events he creates. The rebounds he poaches from taller opponents. The charges he draws stepping in front of locomotives with 50 pounds on him. The relentless defensive possessions he spends ping-ponging around the court, swatting at any ball that comes near him, darting over one screen, under another, crashing to the floor, hustling to his feet, and crashing to the floor again.
“I can’t believe how many times he rides a six-10, 250-pound guy out of bounds to grab a rebound, at his size,” Nurse said. “That’s going on five times a game. It’s unbelievable.”
We really don’t talk about Lowry’s efforts enough. And the flip side of that is those who don’t watch the Raptors regularly don’t talk about it enough, either. Lowry’s best plays aren’t the ones that make highlights. They’re the gritty, tenacious, indispensable ones that help teams win games. But unlike Young, who makes YouTubers money every time he touches the floor, no one’s stitching together compilations of Lowry.
“I am constantly amazed at the plays this guy makes away from scoring and assisting,” Nurse said. “He competes. If you want to list a whole lot of skills that make guys good, or if you’re drafting people, picking guys for your team or whatever, guys who compete has got to be up there really high. And he wins, right? He wins. He’s been out there with a lot of different groups of guys over the last seven years and he’s been one of the constants. And the record looks the same almost every year.”
Which is to say nothing of the fact Lowry’s averaging over 20 points per game — not far off his career-high of 22.4 in 2016-17 — while flirting with the league-lead in minutes per game as a soon-to-be 34-year-old. Tuesday night, he set a franchise assist record and made all those little plays he always does while flirting with a triple-double.
This time, Nurse noticed. He left Lowry on the floor long into the fourth quarter of a long-since-decided game to let him chase the three-category statistical feat. Lowry didn’t get there, finishing two rebounds short. But his team won by a lot. And maybe that’s fitting.
“It’s my teammates. It’s the work my teammates did to help put in to help put me in that position,” Lowry said, asked what it would mean to hear his name when the league’s all-star reserves are announced on Thursday. “It would mean a lot. It’d be great. I’d be really happy. I’d be super ecstatic for it. But I’m so happy for Pascal. For him being a starter for the first time and the development that he’s had — I’m just so happy for him.”
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