The Toronto Raptors have relied on Kyle Lowry as the team’s secondary scorer for years. This season, Lowry’s role has been reinvented to better suit his skills, and it’s made the Raptors a lot more dangerous.
The Toronto Raptors have now qualified for the playoffs in six straight seasons. During that time, the Raptors have lost in the first round twice, despite having home-court advantage both times. Their two most recent playoff runs ended with sweeps in the second round.
After years of retooling and running it back with (mostly) the same core players, last spring, Masai Ujiri decided that enough was enough.
His first move was to fire Dwane Casey. Next, was to pull the trigger on the audacious Kawhi Leonard–DeMar DeRozan trade. In the midst of the chaos, Kyle Lowry came out the other end unscathed.
Except, that’s not entirely true. This season, Lowry is a different player.
Since the Lowry-led Raptors first made the playoffs in 2013/14, he has been the team’s second-leading scorer (behind DeRozan) each season until this year.
This regular season, Lowry averaged 14.2 points per game, putting him behind Kawhi Leonard (26.6), Pascal Siakam (16.9) and Serge Ibaka (15.0). Lowry also averaged 8.7 assists per game this season, good for second best in the league, and by far the most in his career.
Before our eyes, Lowry has gone from a secondary-scoring option to a pass-first point guard who shoots when he’s open.
The question is: which role is Lowry better suited for? A better way to phrase that question is: how has the ‘secondary-scoring option’ version of Lowry turned out in the playoffs?
The answer should be painfully obvious to Raptors fans. As good as Lowry is, he isn’t (and never was) built to be the secondary scorer on a championship team.
He isn’t particularly tall, athletic or quick. Though an excellent outside shooter, he struggles to get to the rim in the playoffs and doesn’t have the creative finishing ability that elite scoring guards like Kyrie Irving or Damian Lillard have.
Despite this, Lowry has been asked again and again to be a consistent 20-plus point scorer in a playoff series. The truth is, that’s not who he is. Lowry impacts the game in other ways.
Lowry is a well above-average playmaker with excellent court vision. He finds rim-runners like Siakam and delivers the ball to them in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
He’s one of the league’s best at taking charges. Though he struggles to keep up with some of the quickest jitterbugs on the perimeter, he’s an exceptionally smart team defender. When he has the energy, he can still lock-in defensively.
Lowry is a knockdown three-point shooter and is as smart and experienced as they come. In the playoffs, when Lowry has been asked to be an elite scorer, not only can he not do it, but he’s so entrenched in trying to do it, that he can’t focus on the other things that make him special.
Lowry’s shortcomings in the playoffs can be attributed to one thing more than anything else: trying to be someone he’s not.
This season, he’s changed his playing style dramatically, and it’s helped the team. With the scoring talent that the Raptors have now, all Lowry needs to do is hit open shots, and punish defenses that aren’t guarding him. Beyond that, he’s free to facilitate, take charges, run the offense, and control the game in the many ways he can. When Lowry’s energy is focused on those things, the Raptors are at their best.
There will certainly be times this postseason when Lowry will need to be aggressive as a scorer, and he is more than capable of taking over a game here and there. What’s important is that Leonard and Siakam, along with shooters like Danny Green, have the ability to carry the bulk of the scoring load in most games.
With that weight now firmly off his shoulders, Lowry can finally be himself, and the Raptors can compete with anyone.