Dec 12, 2018
Lowry finds himself in bounce-back win over Clippers
Raptors point guard breaks out of recent slump with strong performance in his team’s 123-99 win over Los Angeles, Josh Lewenberg writes.
LOS ANGELES – Kyle Lowry wasn’t losing sleep over his recent shooting slump, and if he were he wasn’t about to admit it.
The all-star point guard was mired in the worst offensive funk of his 13-year NBA career with the Raptors in Los Angeles to open a daunting four-game West Coast road trip against the surprising Clippers. In the span of four contests, Lowry shot 4-of-28, good for a woeful 14 per cent.
So, was he stressing over it, a reporter asked ahead of morning shoot around on Tuesday?
“Nah,” the 32-year-old said, playing it cool.
How come?
“I don’t get stressed. [What would] I stress for?”
There are plenty of things to get stressed out about.
“Like what?”
Deadlines.
“I have no deadlines.”
Kid stuff.
“My kids are healthy and happy.”
The dog.
“I don’t have a dog.”
What a charmed life that must be, being worry-free. But make no mistake, Lowry is extremely self-aware and cares deeply about his craft. He is many things, but subtle is not one of them. As his struggles mounted, you could see it wearing on him. It was on his face and in his body language. With each miss it got worse. After Sunday’s loss to Milwaukee – Toronto’s second straight defeat and third in four games – he was dejected.
It’s not just that he was missing. He was passing up shots he’s used to taking and he was relying on the three – which, by nature, is high variance. All but three of his last 28 shot attempts had come from beyond the arc. He had lost himself, at least temporarily, but he’s been in this thing too long not to figure it out.
“I’ve been through [it before],” he said ahead of Tuesday’s game. “To me, honestly, it’s such a small sample size I’m not worried about it. I’m shooting all threes and I’ve gotta be better getting into the paint, getting into the mid-range, and playing my game. I’ve gotta get back to being myself.”
On Tuesday night he did just that. His first shot was a layup, coming 90 seconds into the game. Moments after that, he picked off a Clippers pass and got another easy bucket in transition. A few minutes later he drained a three.
Knowing the importance of getting its starting point guard back on track, the team made a conscious effort to get him going, especially without its leading scorer Kawhi Leonard – out with a bruised hip – in the lineup.
Fred VanVleet earned a spot start, in part to allow Lowry to play off the ball. Head coach Nick Nurse ran a play for Lowry to start the second half, getting him a wide-open 12-footer, assisted by VanVleet. Later in the quarter, he drilled another three, also assisted by VanVleet. Then he hit another and then another. Three straight three-pointers, and after each one the bench erupted.
“My guys did a good job pushing the ball, the tempo was great. We got some open looks and my teammates did a job looking for me,” Lowry said after scoring 21 points on 8-of-13 shooting – including 4-for-8 from three-point range – in his team’s 123-99 win. “They always support me, but it was just time for me to step up and play.”
No, he didn’t forget how to shoot. It was almost as if he just needed to see the ball go through the basket a few times.
He was going to bounce-back at some point, that was inevitable, but it was a bit surprising to see him do it on Tuesday against the Clippers and their perimeter defence, which featured established stoppers in Patrick Beverley and Avery Bradley, along with rising star and Canadian rookie Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
To his point earlier in the day, it didn’t seem to matter which team was on the other side. It was about him, more than anything else, getting back to playing his game. Suddenly, the aggressive and confident Lowry had returned, and with him, so did the Raptors.
Even without Leonard, Toronto took an early lead and never looked back. The Clippers came in with an impressive 17-9 record, 9-2 at home, but they were in the second night of a back-to-back and couldn’t stop the Raptors’ high-powered offence.
By halftime, the Raps had already scored 70 points. They were shooting 65 per cent and had 20 assists as a team. VanVleet had already topped his career-high with 10 of them, and would finish the game with 14.
On Sunday, VanVleet praised Lowry – currently second in the league in assists – for the sacrifices he makes to get his teammates going, often prioritizing the pass over his own scoring. On Tuesday, he returned the favour.
“I mean that’s just the standard that he’s worked himself to be in,” VanVleet said. “And that’s the good and bad of being a great player – you’re held to that standard every night. Guys like him don’t really get to have three or four bad nights, so people started to wonder what was wrong with him. But it comes and goes and it’s just shooting the ball, there’s nothing else. He was able to make some shots and get in the paint and get to the line and do some things that we’ve known him to do. And now he’ll probably look to put some good performances together.”
“I kind of felt he would have a good game when I saw him do that little shimmy two-footer under the rim that he hasn’t done for a while,” said Nurse. “He takes it in there and everyone is around and next thing you know he is putting one up over here and it’s in, one of those at-the-rim shots for him. He did a little bit of everything. The stroke looked like when he let it go tonight he knew it was going in, so that was good to see again.”
“I was just happy to see him shooting the ball,” VanVleet added. “And when he’s playing at that level we’re going to be hard to beat.”
It was a night of redemption all around. Overshadowed some by Lowry’s slump, were the struggles of OG Anunoby, who came in averaging 5.7 points on 40 per cent shooting (and 28 per cent from long distance) over his last 10 games. The sophomore had a bounce-back game of his own, scoring 12 points, hitting five of his nine shots and playing excellent defence off the bench.
After coughing up a couple winnable games, including a very winnable game in Brooklyn, this was an important victory for the Raptors, especially if you’re looking ahead. The Raptors team hopped on a plane after the game, headed to the Bay Area to face the Warriors in the second night of a brutal back-to-back on Wednesday, with Leonard’s status still up in the air.
Unlike the last time they saw Golden State – an overtime win in Toronto two weeks ago – the reigning champs are at full strength, or close to it, anyway. Steph Curry and Draymond Green have returned from injury and DeMarcus Cousins isn’t far away from making his Warriors debut, though he isn’t expected to play against the Raptors.
Toronto is in the midst of the most difficult stretch of its schedule. They knew this was coming and, with it, the inevitable adversity it was bound to bring. How they handle and ultimately overcome that adversity should be informative as we try to figure out just how good they can be. Tuesday was a promising step.