Make that another Toronto Raptors record for Kyle Lowry to stake his claim to.
The franchise’s career leader in assists, steals, three-pointers and win shares is now also the holder of the longest press conference held by a player in club history, according to the team’s public relations department.
Lowry held court with an assembled group of media over Zoom Tuesday morning for about 45 minutes, where he discussed a wide variety of topics after playing through what he described as “one of the most difficult NBA seasons I’ve ever had.”
Here are some of the highlights from Lowry’s record-breaking media session.
[snippet id=4725691]
His future is undecided at the moment
The biggest question regarding Lowry as the off-season hits is: What team will he play for next season?
For the third time in his Raptors career, Lowry is entering the summer as an unrestricted free agent, and though it’s obviously a huge decision he’ll need to make, he’s unsure what the future might hold for the time being.
“I don’t have an answer for you,” Lowry said when asked if he was returning to Toronto.
For more on Lowry’s situation, here’s Sportsnet’s Michael Grange with a compelling argument for why the Raptors should look into bringing back the best player they’ve ever had this off-season.
For now, though, all we know about Lowry’s free agency is that he’s undecided about what he’s looking to do and will have plenty of time between now and the opening of free agency on August 2 to come to a decision.
I don’t think there’s any question Lowry misses Toronto
If Lowry’s uncertain future makes you nervous, keep in mind that he still very much loves the city of Toronto, and there won’t be any need to convince him of its merits when he makes his decision.
“Toronto’s always gonna be home to me,” said Lowry. “It’s a situation I would love to be in, and if it works out, it works out. If not, then we make choices on what’s best for myself and my family.”
Even more encouraging, Lowry said during his press conference that he wants to compete for another championship and that he believes the Raptors are basically right at that level now.
“I think the organization, the team, is still there. It still can play at a championship level,” said Lowry. “It needs to add a couple pieces here and there but with the leadership and the coaching staff and the players that the team has, it’s not far off.
“And I feel that, to be honest with you, before the COVID thing, I think we were hitting a good stride to still get there, right? Last year we lost in the bubble to a great team in the Celtics and they beat us in a seven-game series and our confidence, still, was building off of that.”
And if nothing else will convince you of Lowry’s love for Toronto, then it’ll probably have to be his answer to a young CBC Kids reporter’s question at the end of the press conference.
“Thank you. Thank you. I know this year hasn’t been the most winningest season. It hasn’t been, like, what they’re used to. You know what I mean? It’s not the winning that they’re used to seeing,” said Lowry when asked to convey a message to all the Canadian Raptors fans at home.
“But we played our butts off every opportunity that we could. We played extremely hard. And for us, and for them as fans, just know that there isn’t a day where we don’t think about wishing that we could be in front of them playing basketball.
“There’s not a day that goes by that we [don’t] say, ‘Man, I wish we were in Scotiabank Arena playing in front of our fans, in front of our young fans, our older fans.’ There’s not a day that didn’t go by that we wish we were pulling up into — you know, riding down University or coming off the DVP or the Gardiner – going into our home building. There wasn’t a day where we didn’t miss practicing at our own practice facility. There wasn’t a day where we didn’t miss practicing at our own practice facility. There wasn’t a day where we didn’t wish that we were coming out of a home tunnel and [seeing] our fans standing up there, signing autographs. There wasn’t one day where we didn’t think about Jurassic Park. We thought about them every single day and thought about the fans every single day.
“And that’s the one thing I’ll say is that it was one bad year, [and] it wasn’t even a bad year, it was just a difficult year. A challenging [year]. We just ran out of games to get back to where we needed to get to. But it’s always a new year. This is, you know, it’s a time where things are different, right? Hopefully we can get back to normal and the world can be back to normal and everybody can come and cheer as loud as possible.”
Lowry is ‘well rested’ entering the off-season
Lowry only played 46 of the 72 games this season, missing games for both injuries and the sake of rest as the team appeared set on bottoming out and aiming for a better draft pick down the stretch of the season.
Most notably, Lowry only played nine games since the March 25 trade deadline and missed the last seven games of the season after he turned back the clock with a vintage 37-point performance against the Los Angeles Lakers on May 2.
“I think it was a decision that, you know, still had a little bit of back tightness the next game, and then it was a decision between myself and my agent and our organization to make sure that my body was fully right, just in case we could make a push and also to evaluate younger talent,” said Lowry when asked why he didn’t play a game again since that May 2 contest.
“That was a decision that we all made collectively. I wasn’t mad at the decision. It was kind of a good game to not play after, just so you know.
“A lot of things went into that. I wouldn’t say it was just one thing. I think it was a multiple amount of things that went into that. But it was a decision that was made collectively.”
The time he got off during this season might’ve ultimately done Lowry good in the long term. Though it was known before, Lowry said that he wasn’t retiring and that he has “a ton of basketball left” in him.
Still, at 35 years old he isn’t exactly a “young spring chicken” – despite his likely protestations to that remark – so the more time his body gets a break, the better it probably is for him.
So, given all the time he spent off during the season, I asked Lowry how he was feeling physically entering the off-season, and he simply responded, with a knowing grin, “well rested.”
The reason why Lowry didn’t demand a trade at the deadline
Many fans and members of the media have been asking a couple common questions: Why did the Raptors opt to hold onto Lowry at the trade deadline instead of trading him to a contender? And, why didn’t Lowry demand a trade to a better team himself?
Lowry made his rationale known about the matter Tuesday.
“I started the season off. I got to the point where I wanted to be with these guys. I wanted to finish the season out with these guys. I wanted to try to make a push. I wanted to try to make a run for a championship,” said Lowry. “I told Freddy [VanVleet] — this was like, whatever, January — ‘I wanna finish the season out. I feel like we can do something special.’ And then COVID hit and we went down, and I basically was like, ‘I’m a man of my word. I’m not gonna force anything.’
“I trust the decision-making of Bobby [Webster] and Masai [Ujiri]. They decided not to do it. There’s a reason they decided not to, and Masai gave you guys the reason on why he didn’t. As a man, I respect it. He was in open communication with me about it. I’m not that guy. I’m gonna go out there. If I said something in January that I truly believed, I stuck with it. Those guys had the final decision, and they made the call not to [trade me]. I roll with what they’ve done the last eight years. I haven’t been happy about all the things they’ve done, but I rolled with it and figured it out.”
Lowry is a hell of a teammate
Despite this being a down year, for all of the Raptors, Lowry still found some joy in the season by watching his younger teammates learn and grow.
“It’s the things that all my teammates do, the accomplishments they had,” said Lowry.
“Jalen Harris with his career night, of course Malachi [Flynn’s] career night, Yuta [Watanabe] getting a contract, us signing Freddie Gillespie, us getting Khem Birch on a buyout and him having a fantastic year, Pascal just taking a beating in the media and then coming back and playing his butt off, right? OG [Anunoby’s] growth, the growth of OG and understanding what he is going to be. Freddie. I can talk about him at length. Fifty-four points, becoming a leader, our second-leading scorer, should have been an all-star. Who else? Stanley Johnson. A guy who was a high pick, super high, and then had to get down low and then come back up and finish the season where he did.
“Just being able to see the growth of everybody on our team. Having Gary [Trent Jr.] come over and having his career night. All the small things that my teammates have done is always the highlight of my personal season. What I do personally don’t matter to me. It’s what those guys learn and gain and what they do throughout a season is the highlight for me.”
[relatedlinks]
