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TSN Raptors Reporter

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BOSTON - With just under 40 seconds to go, the game tied at 105, Kyle Lowry poked the ball away from Celtics' rookie Marcus Smart, igniting the signature play of the evening.

"I just sat on the crossover," said the Raptors' point guard. "If he got by me he would've gotten a layup but I anticipated it well and I know that DeMar [DeRozan] is always going to trail me. So I was just hoping he was hurrying up."

Leading the fast break, Lowry flipped the ball back to DeRozan - following behind him as predicted - who finished it off with the go-ahead, one-handed slam.

"That's our thing," DeRozan boasted. "Whenever he's on the fast break he knows I'm trailing and I'm finding an opening gap where I can catch it and go through and try to get a foul or something. So that's just how we play. He knew I was coming."

"The play of the game was the steal [Lowry] had at the end," Dwane Casey said.

As the whistle blew - DeRozan would go to the line to cap off a three-point play - Lowry turned to face the Garden crowd, arms spread at waist level, and let out a roar.

At the moment, he had that look in his eyes. He had that same look, or variations of it, from the second quarter on. Most of the NBA is familiar with it by now and it doesn't usually bode well for whomever is on the other side.

"He's got that angry face," said Patrick Patterson. "That's what he always looks like."

There was no way Lowry was letting his team lose that game.

"Yesterday they said I wasn't aggressive enough and with us missing [Jonas Valanciunas] and [Amir Johnson] I had to be more aggressive tonight," said Lowry after scoring 35 points - his highest as a Raptor - on just 17 shots in Toronto's comeback 110-107 road win over the Boston Celtics Wednesday.

The Raptors were without their starting frontcourt. Valanciunas sat out nursing a couple injuries - namely a sore hand - after taking a beating in a game the night before. Johnson stayed back in Toronto, missing his third straight contest with an ankle injury.

For Lowry and the rest of Wednesday's starters it was the same story on a different night. Plagued by slow starts to begin the season, Toronto allowed the host Celtics to shoot a whopping 79 per cent in a 35-point first quarter.

It got ugly, and fast. Boston hit its first eight shots, going nearly half the period without a miss. They made 11 of their first 12 until, before you knew it, the Raptors were stuck in a 16-point hole and Lowry was having deja vu.

"Our starting unit, we haven't been playing up to par," he had said after a similarly crushing slow start soured Tuesday night's win over the Thunder. "I think… I know we need to play a lot better. It's one of them things we've got to fix internally."

Midway through the second quarter, Lowry and company finally delivered on that promise. With that same starting unit on the floor, the Raptors closed the opening half on a 20-7 run putting a dent in their well-earned deficit.

"They decided to compete," said Casey. "That's the thing. You take the whip out in the derby and just keep cracking the whip, cracking the whip, cracking the whip. We can't be that way. It shouldn't have to come from me to crack the whip at every turn to get us going. But they decided to get going. To be a playoff or championship calibre team we shouldn't have to say giddy up."

As the half ended, with momentum starting to turn in favour of the visitors, the ball was in Lowry's hands once again.

Unhappy with a foul he committed on the other end, sending Rajon Rondo to the line, he drove into the body of the Celtics' All-Star point guard, took a step back and drained the buzzer-beating jumper.

Without breaking stride or watching the ball splash through the mesh, Lowry walked straight to the locker room. No roar that time. Just business.

"Rajon, he's got good hands so I had to get my step back and get freed up," he said. "It was kind of a momentum push for us. He just got the two free throws so I wanted to make up for the dumb foul I did."

Lowry was pissed off. Competition, as it usually does, fuelled him. A battle with Rondo, who finished with a triple-double of 13 points, 10 rebounds and 15 assists. A dog fight with Smart, who he went head-to-head with a couple occasions in the pre-season. But more than anything else he was ticked off at himself and at his team. They had let themselves down again.

Toronto has allowed 30 or more points in the first quarter of each of its last three games. Opponents are shooting 71 per cent over that span.

"I call us drama queens, honestly," DeRozan said of the slow starts. "We're like a suspenseful movie. We've got to get out of that habit. I don't know. We're just a group of guys that love a challenge for some reason. I don't know why."

Despite their 4-1 start to the campaign - Toronto's finest in 10 years - we've yet to see the Raptors at their best for anything even close to a 48-minute interval.

They've yet to face elite competition, sure, but they're also coming off a stretch of four games in five nights without their two most important defenders and interior players for the second half of it.

"We can't be satisfied with that," Casey said. "I'm happy we won but we're trying to build something here."

"We've got to develop a playing personality starting the game. Starting the game. We can't wait till we get punched in the mouth. [We have to] understand that teams are coming after our necks and respond accordingly."

The good news, and it's not insignificant, is that Lowry is already looking like the All-Star that the Raptors hoped he would be when they committed to him this summer.

Prior to Wednesday's contest, the Raptors became the first team to record 10 or fewer turnovers in four straight games to open a season since the NBA began tracking the stat in 1970. They gave the ball away just seven times in Boston, forcing the Celtics into 28 turnovers.

Lowry has been the catalyst, with the ball in his hands more than any other Raptor player. The point guard did not commit a turnover on Wednesday. It's the fourth time in five games he's gone without one. He's committed just two in 171 minutes.

Help is also on the way. Although the Raptors have decided to err on the side of caution in regards to Valanciunas and Johnson, Casey believes there's a reasonable chance one or both could be back in the lineup to face the Wizards at home on Friday.