TORONTO — For most of his iconic tenure in Toronto, Kyle Lowry felt misunderstood – even by a fan base that now holds him in reverence and calls him the GROAT (Greatest Raptor of All-Time).
He was a tough nut to crack, mostly by design. Lowry put up a wall and let few people inside. He could be prickly, cagey with the media, and unlike his close friend and Raptors co-star DeMar DeRozan, he rarely let his physical or emotional vulnerabilities show. After one of his many head-on collisions with the hardwood, he once told us that he was “too tough” to get a concussion.
He’s a nuanced person with a complex game, which has always made him a fascinating player to cover. But for a time he was more of an acquired taste than universally celebrated figure.
“Nobody deserves it more than that guy, man,” Fred VanVleet said of Lowry the night that the Raptors won the championship. “People crap on him and talk [badly] about him more than any other player in this league that I’ve seen. Our own fans kill him and he’s taken the brunt of slander over the years, and he takes it like a champ.”
As Lowry closes the book on his remarkable 20-year NBA career, fulfilling his long-time promise to sign a one-day contract with Toronto and officially retire as a member of the Raptors, it’s hard to imagine that his approval rating was ever less than 100 per cent.
Maybe it was the championship that tipped the scales. Famously, he opened the 2019 title run by missing all seven of his shots and going scoreless in a Game 1 loss to Orlando. He capped it off by scoring 21 points in the first half of the Game 6 NBA Finals clincher at Oracle Arena.
Maybe it’s Lowry himself. As he’s gotten older and wiser, raised a family, and gone elsewhere in his career, he’s softened a bit. It’s given him new-found perspective on life, basketball, and on his time in Toronto. If there was ever a time in which he took any of it for granted, that’s no longer the case. He understands his place in the franchise’s history and doesn’t take that responsibility lightly. He knows what he means to the city, the country, and its fans, and the feeling has become mutual.
“This is a special moment for me, words can’t really describe it,” said Lowry, now 40, at his retirement press conference in Toronto on Tuesday. “I always said that I would retire a Toronto Raptor and that was everything. This place, I call it home. I mean it through and through. Everything about the city of Toronto, the country of Canada, it’s done special wonders for me.”
But maybe it’s Lowry’s story. It could have been a cautionary tale. Instead, through his sheer force of will and occasional bouts of stubbornness – the same qualities that have sometimes made him a pain in the butt – he turned it into an epic, with a storybook ending befitting of the greatest Raptor ever.
In an alternate edition, there’s a world where Lowry’s career fizzles out long before he can ever become a Canadian sports hero, where he bounces around and gets run out of the league as a malcontent, out-of-shape journeyman after his first or second contract. That’s how things were shaping up before Masai Ujiri sat him down and challenged him to be more than that.
And so, he worked on his game, transformed his body, and turned himself into one of the game’s most unlikely stars. He didn’t look the part. He was never the quickest or most athletic player. Generously listed at 6-feet tall, he was almost always the smallest guy on the court. But he was also the smartest and played the hardest.
He would outwork you. He would out-think you. He was a basketball savant. There isn’t anything he couldn’t or wouldn’t do to gain a little edge here, a little advantage there. He would throw his body around for a rebound or a loose ball. Officially, he only recorded a couple slam dunks over his two decades in the league – both in his first two seasons with Memphis, though he did throw one down in the 2015 All-Star Game. His signature play was drawing a charge, something he also did in an All-Star Game. Stepping in front of human freight trains like DeMarcus Cousins or Zion Williamson, crawling between the legs of George Hill; anything in the name of securing an extra possession. Whatever it took. Believe it or not, he never committed a foul, and God help the poor official who took too long to let him inbound the ball.
His will to win was second to none, his competitive fire unyielding. He gave them an edge and toughness they had been lacking since Charles Oakley was a Raptor a decade earlier, and he did it at a fraction of the size. He wasn’t going to back down from anybody. During an on-court alternation with Ben Simmons, he once told the Australian former first-overall pick to meet him outside of the locker room. Simmons didn’t show up (that joke writes itself).
He didn’t suffer fools. Ask a question he didn’t like or agree with and he’d surely let you hear about it. He would go weeks, months, or in some cases years without speaking to or answering questions from specific members of the media over perceived slights. He refused to acknowledge Ujiri and most of his front office for half a season after they traded DeRozan. Legend has it that he didn’t feel like practising one morning on the road, so he grabbed the ball and sat down in the middle of the court in protest. “That’s just Kyle being Kyle,” became part of the team’s vernacular. They felt it was worth it to take the good with the bad, and for the most part, it was.
Lowry became the engine that drove the most successful era in franchise history, it’s true heart and soul, and the lone on-court figure that bridged the gap between its various iterations.
He was the perfect on and off court complement to DeRozan for those young upstart Raptors teams – their buddy-cop routine would allow for the playful and less intense side of his personality to start coming out. He sacrificed touches and embraced his role as more of a facilitator playing next to Kawhi Leonard in 2018-19, then led the team’s very fun post-Leonard championship defence the following season.
“Watching him play basketball stirred everybody’s heart,” said Raptors general manager Bobby Webster. “Every possession for him was life and death. Every opposing player’s drive was a new chance to take a charge. I think every post-up attempt on him was destined to be a miss. In many ways, I think of the franchise before Kyle and after Kyle.”
After nine memorable seasons in Toronto, he left – amicably, with the organization opting to go in a younger direction – as a six-time all-star and the franchise’s leader in assists, steals, and three-pointers made, second in points, minutes and games played.
After playing out the rest of his career in Miami and his hometown of Philadelphia, Lowry achieved one of the goals he set for himself, to reach 20 seasons. He’s one of 12 players in the history of the league to play for two decades and just the second point guard to ever do it, joining Chris Paul. Eight of the other 11 are either Hall of Famers or future Hall of Famers.
Basketball-reference.com has Lowry’s Hall of Fame probability at 85.7 per cent, which feels right. If you weren’t fortunate enough to watch him much during his Raptors prime, his numbers might seem underwhelming. Career averages of 13.8 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 6.0 assists are good, not great. During an eight-season run with Toronto, not including his forgettable first year, he averaged 18.3 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 7.2 assists, while shooting 43 per cent from the field and 38 per cent from three-point range. Better, but doesn’t exactly scream Hall of Fame.
But it was never about the numbers. The advanced stats and, more importantly, the eye test told a different story: few drove winning like Lowry did. There aren’t many who can shoot 2-for-12, score five points, and be the best and most impactful player on the floor, but that was also “Kyle being Kyle.”
Lowry didn’t just transform his game; he changed the way people thought about him. His first All-Star berth should have come during the fabled 2013-14 campaign, when his own personal breakout coincided with the Raptors’ unlikely post-Rudy Gay turnaround. Instead, DeRozan was chosen, with Lowry’s cantankerous reputation costing him votes among the coaches. Six years later, Lowry’s final All-Star selection came when he was a borderline candidate. This time, he got the benefit of the doubt from many of those same coaches, as a respected veteran leader and winner.
When Lowry left for Miami, he was told that his number would be the first that the Raptors ever retire. In 2024, the organization opted to retire Vince Carter’s jersey for the franchise’s 30thanniversary season – a decision that Lowry supported (he and Carter are golfing buddies) but one that elicited a mixed reaction from the fan base. Understandable, given the complicated history. But when Lowry’s No. 7 goes up into the rafters at Scotiabank Arena this coming season, it’s hard to imagine anybody being conflicted.
In retrospect, there were so many moments where the relationship between player and team could have frayed. When Lowry first showed up to Toronto, he did so reluctantly, thinking it would be a temporary stop on his journey. He didn’t even bother to get to know his teammates, DeRozan included.
A few weeks after they traded Gay, his friend from their time together in Memphis, Lowry had his bags packed and was waiting for a pending trade to New York to become official before Knicks owner James Dolan vetoed it. He contemplated leaving in free agency in 2014 and then again in 2017, but the point guard market was cooler than expected. Then, he was nearly dealt back to the Grizzlies for his former teammate Mike Conley at the trade deadline of the championship season.
Through one force or another, Lowry and the Raptors kept ending up back together. Maybe it was fate. Lowry needed the Raptors just as much as the Raptors needed Lowry, and it wasn’t until they both realized and fully embraced it that magic happened.
Now, they’ll forever be synonymous with each other. It only seems right.
