Kyle Lowry – Stock Down
Kyle Lowry has arguably been the Raptors best player this season, depending on where you rank Kawhi after this past week. But recently he has been noticeably poor, and like last time, I’m not worried but since it’s a weekly column I would be remiss not to bring up the past week for Kyle, so that’s what I’m going to do.
He struggled shooting, mightily. He was 2-13 from three in the two games he played this week and is now shooting 29-percent in his last five games.
Kyle was given the night off against Cleveland on Saturday night, a move that made a lot of sense. While the Raptors would have been better with Lowry on the court it was a game he could afford to miss, Fred played well enough as his deputy.
Kyle finished with five points and added 11 assists against the Nuggets, his assists were definitely an impactful part of the game but that’s pretty much where the positive impact ends for Lowry. He turned the ball over three times and shot the ball poorly, forcing poor looks and not getting much in the way of results
Wednesday night was markedly worse for Lowry, who continued his ice-cold stretch of shooting. Unlike Monday night, Lowry didn’t rack up double-digit assists this time around, handing out four dimes along with four turnovers. That isn’t a ratio to brag about and his decision-making was questionable at times, he passed up on a wide-open three in favour of giving Ibaka a long, contested two.
He did draw a few charges and while that really does scare me, especially with Embiid crashing into Lowry and sending him into another stratosphere, it is a forced turnover and a high IQ play.
In other news, stop asking Lowry about the DeMar trade. It’s done.