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TSN Raptors Reporter

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SACRAMENTO - When Kyle Lowry, the Raptors' highest-paid player, re-upped in Toronto this summer he knew he was signing on to be the face of the franchise, even if the spotlight would be a shared one.

Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, a tenacious tandem on the floor and good friends off it, have blossomed into one of the NBA's premier backcourt duos but with the latter sidelined for an indefinite period of time, the starting point guard has been thrust into the lead role.

It's a gig he's more than capable of filling and thriving in but it's been something of an adjustment, understandably so. Since inheriting the bulk of the offensive responsibility, along with DeRozan, following last year's trade of Rudy Gay, Lowry has settled in as the quarterback, the straw that stirs the drink, the head of the snake. Now, with their leading scorer out, he's tasked with being the head as well as most of its body.

"I'm always going to be comfortable," Lowry said after scoring a game-high 27 points and matching a season-best 13 assists in Toronto's 117-109 victory over the Kings, snapping the team's two-game losing streak and winning in Sacramento for the first time since December of 2008. 

"At the end of the day, I still gotta go out there and do my job," he continued. "There might be a little bit more of a scoring load on me but I'mma go out there and play my game. Of course we miss DeMar and wish him to get back as soon as possible but until then I've gotta do a job."

As the game was on the line late in the fourth quarter, Lowry was relentless, darting to the rim with reckless abandon and carrying his team down the stretch, scoring 10 in the final frame.

The dagger came with just under a minute left, Raptors up four. Knowing where Lowry wanted to get to, the Kings clogged the lane and forced the fiery guard out of their paint. Channeling his inner DeRozan, Lowry stepped back and drilled a 20-foot, mid-range jumper.

"He made the right reads," Dwane Casey said. "He kicked it out when he was supposed to kick it out and took what the defence gave him."

With DeRozan to lean on, Lowry's instincts had become tremendous, reading game situations and determining whether his team needed him to facilitate or take over at various stages each night. 

"I mean it's my partner," Lowry said of DeRozan, who missed his second straight game with a torn groin tendon Tuesday. "That's my teammate. I think we all found ourselves looking for him but we know he's not there and he's not coming through the door right now so we've got to do our job."

Finding that balance between leading the team and doing too much will continue to be a work in progress, it's a challenge that he had early in his Raptors tenure. 

DeRozan went down early in the second half of Friday's loss to the Mavericks, a night in which Lowry attempted 22 shots, his third highest total as a Raptor. On Sunday in Los Angeles he shot the ball 28 times, a career-high.

"It's probably a little bit too many," Casey said Tuesday morning. "And he'd be the first to tell [you that], but that's an overtime game. It's nowhere near from a selfish standpoint, not even one iota from a selfish standpoint. Just from being in that position from a point [guard] to a scorer, there's a happy medium there and he understands that. I think you'll see a difference in his approach."

Although he put up 21 shots on Tuesday, 11 of them came in the fourth quarter and most of them were hoisted around the rim. He was more efficient, hitting 10 of those shots on the night, while also finding teammates and taking care of the ball.

"They're corralling him, staying with him longer," Casey said of the added attention he's seeing from opposition defences. "Him getting into the paint, the kick outs are going to be there. That's one decision he's gotta see and make, he's a smart player so he'll do that. Because he is going to get attention, more so now than he has."

"I'm just going to be aggressive," Lowry added. "I'm going to take shots that are there for me. Sometimes when I know I've got DeMar he might shoot 22 times and I'm passing up shots. But I can't afford to pass up shots in this situation. I'mma make the right play for my team."

Mutually beneficial trade

Nearly a full 12 months after the Raptors and Kings pulled the trigger on last season's seven-player trade - the one-year anniversary is on Monday - both teams are reaping the benefits.

For Toronto, the franchise's turnaround, while unexpected, was almost immediate. The Raptors are 56-25 since acquiring four key reserves - three of which remain on the team - from the Kings on Dec. 8, 2013, good for the best record in the East.

But Sacramento has also started to make strides in the right direction, doing so in the more difficult conference. Despite finishing the season 23-41 after picking up maligned forward Rudy Gay from Toronto - in addition to Quincy Acy and Aaron Gray, who have since moved on - the Kings have shown some promise to begin the new year, with Gay and DeMarcus Cousins at the forefront.

After winning five of their first six games, the Kings - recently riddled with injury and illness - have cooled off a bit, losing eight of their last 12. Still, they've seen enough from the duo of Gay and Cousins to confidently invest in keeping that core together for the foreseeable future.

Gay - who had opted into the final year of his deal over the summer, paying him $19.3 million this season - agreed to a three-year $40 million extension with Sacramento last month.

Among other factors - namely the repetition alongside a similar high-volume wing player in DeRozan - Gay's ambiguous contract situation was one of the primary causes that prompted his trade out of Toronto. Playing off Cousins, a dominate interior presence, the 28-year-old has rediscovered his game in Sacramento.

"That's a mark of a good trade, for both teams," said Casey. "[Gay's] come in here and established himself as one of the stars, one of the key hubs. He fits with this team. They've got an inside presence, he fits the wing that they needed, that kind of gives them a post-up, ball hander type guy."

After shooting 39 per cent, a career-low, in 18 games with the Raptors to begin last season, he shot the ball at a career-best 48 per cent clip as a member of the Kings over the duration of the campaign. This year, he's taking fewer shots than he has since his rookie season (15.7), while averaging more points than he ever has (21.1). His 4.0 assists and 6.7 free throw attempts per game are also career-highs.

"I think giving him a guy like Cousins to really dominate a game [has helped]," said Lowry, a close friend of Gay's. "I think [Valanciunas] was still trying to learn and for me and DeMar it was just kind of a learning process and we didn't really have a lot of time to learn."

Without Cousins in the lineup Tuesday, he missed his third straight game with a virus, Gay thrived with the offence going through him. Scoring 20 points on 16 shots, the former Raptor forward also recorded a career-high 10 assists.

Meanwhile, Greivis Vasquez, Patrick Patterson and Chuck Hayes were all victorious in Sacramento for the first time since being dealt last December.

"It means a lot to us," Vasquez admitted after the game. "We wanted to come out here and give it to them. That's how it is, you get traded from a team and you try to do your best and kill it."

"Both parties should be happy," Casey said. "I know Rudy's happy and we're very happy with the guys we got last year."

Unhappy returns

James Johnson's brief tenure as a member of the Kings is one he'd like to forget.

Sacramento acquired Johnson from Toronto, following a turbulent first stint with the Raptors, back in the summer of 2012. That's where his career would hit rock bottom.

Appearing in 52 games and logging just over 16 minutes per night that season, Johnson shot a career-low 41 per cent from the field, 60 per cent from the line, while hitting just two of his 21 attempts form long range. Off the court, he hardly endeared himself to the Kings' loyal fan base. He was said to be overweight at the time and reportedly wore a Sonics hat into the locker room as the city was fighting to keep their team and block a move to Seattle.

"I just think it was tough for me to play here," Johnson admitted. "I won't put all the onus on Sacramento either. It had a lot to do with me being immature."

"I was playing bad. I had a bad year that year. I have to own up to it."

The rest is history. As a result, Johnson fell out of the NBA completely, signing with Atlanta the following fall, only to be waived a month later and end up in the D-League before redeeming himself in Memphis last season.

Now, he's making the most of his second opportunity in Toronto, excelling in a role he was once hesitant to accept and he's not looking back.

"[It's a] fresh start," Johnson, who was greeted with a few boos as he checked in to begin the second quarter. "[I] try to forget about stuff like that, try to move on. Like I said before, the old James Johnson don't exist no more. The only thing that Sacramento has that has anything to do with me or that holds any value to me is my son was born here."

"We all go through something that makes us better people," Casey said. "We all fall down and how we get back up is important. James has gotten back up and he's on the path of going the right way. So he's got to continue to do that and put everything else in the rearview mirror and grow from it and learn from and forget about it. I think that's the lesson he's probably learned."

In 28 minutes coming off the bench Tuesday, Johnson scored a season-high 19 points, shooting 9-of-13 and grabbing seven boards.

"I think it means more that we didn't lose three in a row than it does coming back to your former team and trying to win," said the 27-year-old forward. "It was a team win and we played like it was any other team, any other game. There's no revenge or no grudges in this league. You never know when you're going to come back, like how I'm back with the Raptors."